The Aussie tilted back his head in thought a moment.
"Like to have a family, Fancy. A couple of nippers and a wife who thinks the sun rises off my big toe. That's about it. Like to start that some time soon, if some pretty little bird would just cooperate."
The laughter in Fancy's eyes made Caz smile; she was a rare one, if entirely too rich for his blood.
"You'd best make a few more trips to town to do your bird hunting, my friend. It seems to me there's a real shortage up here in these woods."
"You just remember that, Fancy, next time you go traipsing off somewhere by yourself. You drive Hart bonkers with your carelessness. He's daft in love with you, in case you haven't noticed. Not that they all aren't twittered over you, it's just the bigger they are the harder they fall." He finished the tea and laid the cup aside, not expecting her to answer. Standing, he gave her a hand up, then brushed the twigs and grass from his pants, to give her time either to pursue the subject or change it.
"You're a good friend to all of us, aren't you, Caz?" she said unexpectedly.
"Damned right I am. What else is life about?" He leaned over and kissed her forehead, a brotherly smack, then sauntered back toward the digs. Fancy cleaned up the cups and thought about how simple life would be if only we could love the one who loved us most, and we weren't plagued by ambition.
Chapter 30
"Gimme that sweet li'l hand of yours, honey," Bandana demanded. "Gonna show you some-thin' real important."
Fancy did as she was told and McBain placed a jagged piece of rock in her palm. The brilliant spring day had lured them out to the mine shaft; a small, timbered doorway led into the dark and musty mountain, where a year of labor had chipped away a tunnel.
"See that? That's what Esmeralda's gonna look like."
"Esmeralda? Who's she?"
"Ain't a she, Fance. Esmeralda's a 'it'! Esmeralda's what I call the mother lode. The one I'm gonna bring in before I die. I think of her as a woman, seductive as homemade sin."
Fancy laughed softly, and Bandana smiled at her. When he smiled, his leathery skin crinkled up like brown parchment, but there was youth and vigor in his eyes.
"Why's she different from the rest?" Fancy stared at the unprepossessing lump in her hand.
" 'Cause she's Bonanza, darlin', with a capital B." He drew out the syllables so there was no mistaking the importance of the word. "She's been waitin' here for me ten thousand years... settin' and thinkin' about me jes' like I been thinkin' about her. Jes' like a woman. Contrary and hard to git."
Fancy leaned against an outcrop of rock and prepared to listen. She sniffed the air appreciatively and looked around her—spring was happening.
"I'm ready, Bandana. I could use a bonanza right about now."
Bandana nodded and fixed her with a steady gaze. She was a game little thing, all right, but he could sense the desperation that drove her. She wouldn't stay on this mountain much longer and judging by the boys' behavior of late, maybe that was just as well.
"Tell you what, Fance, I'm gonna do somethin' I swore I'd never do. I'm gonna tell you Esmeralda's secret."
"I'm good with secrets."
"I know you are, Fance, old girl. Hell, you're my pal, ain't you? That's why I'm gonna tell you Esmeralda's story." Bandana leaned back and relaxed a little; Fancy, watching, wondered what his age might be.
"Long about fifteen years ago, right around the time they hit it big on the Comstock, I was workin' a dig in Six Mile Canyon, along with a lot of other pick-and-shovel boys. No great shakes it was, but there was enough glitter in them hills to keep a lot of men hopin'.
"Well, this one day, Fance, I'm out hip-deep in the stream, pannin' out my beans money, when this old codger sort of drags hisself up to the edge of the water. He don't say nothin', just sets there lookin' like the last leaf on a November maple. You could see he was down on his luck, real tapped out. Old, too. You know, a lot of men out here look old afore their time, what with the work and the disappointments. But this old geezer was old for true, and since I was just a kid, he looked like Methuselah's older brother to me.
"Any rate, I kept on workin' and somethin' about him kept me watchin' him. Seemed like he was too tired even to drink from the stream. You could see he'd come a long way; clothes all covered in dust and little bits of leaves and needles stuck in 'em, like he'd been sleepin' wild without a bedroll.
"Finally, I couldn't stand it no more, so I calls out to him, 'Hey, gramps, how's it goin'?' I says. 'Not so good, sonny,' he calls back, 'ain't got a pot to piss in.' Well, at that, everybody along the stream started laughin'—but it wasn't a good laugh, if you know what I mean, Fance. They wasn't laughin' with him, but at him. So I says to everybody loud as I could, 'What say we stand this feller to an hour's work?'
"Now what that meant was, whatever you panned in an hour you give it to somebody who was harder up than you. Men did that on the digs from time to time. But 'stead of sayin' okay, they just sort of ignored me. So I says to the old geezer, 'I'll stand you an hour's work, old-timer,' and I did it. Panned out some dust and a small nugget, not a fortune, mind you, but enough to keep him going a few days more. Come to think of it, that nugget was more'n I'd dredged for myself that day, sort of like he had a good angel watchin' out for him.
"So I give him the gold and I shared my stew with him and a blanket, thinkin' I was a damned fine feller for bein' so charitable. Well, now, here comes the interestin' part. While we was whilin' away the night, front of the campfire, he spun me a tale about Esmeralda. Told me he'd found the mother lode. Described it to a fare-thee-well, and I half believed him 'cause he was so sure of all the details, and I half didn't, 'cause he was kind of loco, like a lot of old prospectors get from the lonelies.
"Now, as you well know by now on account of my bein' such a good teacher, gold comes in a lot of different forms out here. It peeks out at you in crystals or wires, in reticulation or leaf or vein. It kin be gold on quartz or gold on galena or any number of other queer ways Nature sees fit to stuff it into these hills. But Esmeralda—she's a bona fide A-number-one vein. So big and gorgeous it'd set a man's heart to thumpin' just to see her twinkle.
"Well, now, next morning I woke up and my blanket, my grub and my burro were all gone. So was the old geezer, of course, but on the ground, pinned under a rock, was a note. It said he was sorry to repay my kindness with thievin' but he was sorta desperate to git home to die. Said in return for me takin' pity on him he was givin' me Esmeralda, on account of he was too old and sick to work her anyways.
"There was a scribbled-out map of Mount Massive, latitude and longitude and a passel of landmarks. Not enough so's I could find her easy, but enough so's I know I'm close."
"And you think the story's true?" Fancy asked, incredulous that Bandana would give credence to a "lost mine" tale. Such legends abounded in the goldfields, and they were all so false as to be a joke to fool a tenderfoot.
"Damned right! I know she's here. Jes' waitin' for me. Not jes' because of what the old coot said, but because I seen it all since then, Fance. Got a sense of it, darlin'; a nose for it. Like some men kin dowse water, I kin find them precious minerals stuck down in these mountains a million years. I done it twicet before. Third time's the charm." He paused to make sure she understood the importance of the gift he was giving her.
"Gonna share her with you, Fance," he said with unmistakable reverence. "I'm gonna find silver for the boys and me and our partnership, but Esmeralda's different. She's solid gold and she's mine alone. Now I'm makin' her yours, too, if you'll agree to my terms."
Fancy looked puzzled.
"You gotta promise me you won't never tell nobody about her and you won't never sell 'er. If I'm alive and either one of us finds her, she's mine to divide up as I please. But if I'm dead, she's yours alone. But not to sell into lesser hands, Fance, 'cause she's my only legacy. I ain't got no kids to keep my name, nor wife to mourn me, nor worldly goods to leave behind. Jes' Esmeralda..." He paused and looked he
r squarely in the eye. "And you."
Fancy knew she mustn't treat his offer with less respect than he did. Bandana was no man's fool.
"I love you, Bandana," she said with finality. "I'll take good care of her if we find her, and I accept your terms."
Whether or not there was truth in the tale didn't matter, Fancy thought when Bandana had left her. There was a bond between them that the secret forged tighter, and that was gold of a different kind.
Chapter 31
"Got to talk to you about serious subjects, bro," Chance said. The two McAllisters were alone together for the first time in weeks.
Something in Chance's tone made Hart look up from his tin dishful of beans and bacon, senses alert. As long as he could recall, he and his brother had confided in each other; their father always held that blood was thicker than water and brothers' blood, the thickest of them all.
"Been thinking a lot lately about what I want out of life."
Hart chuckled. "Always thought you wanted everything."
"True enough, but it just occurred to me I've got to make a plan for how to get it. A specific plan. There's going to be a lot of money one of these days, bro. I feel it in my gut. What do you mean to do with yours?"
"Same as I always wanted, Chance. Go to school. Learn to draw and paint the kinds of pictures I got in my mind. I'd still like to see if they'll have me at Yale."
"You draw real fine now, bro."
"I got it in me to do better, Chance, but I need to learn things first. Light and shadow. Perspective. There are pictures in my head struggling to get out onto canvas, but I don't have the know-how to do them justice. Look at all I learned from Here. There's more even he doesn't know."
Chance nodded. Hart knew his brother didn't really understand the urgent need in him to be an artist, but simply wished him well.
Chance stared at the fire as he spoke, his even features looking more rugged in the dark than in daylight.
"I don't want to be a miner. I want to be a mine owner, bro. I want to know what it means to have power, Hart, to hobnob with the men who make things happen... maybe try my hand at politics, or go back to the law—I had a knack for that. I don't want to go to school for it, though. I learn better on the job. Don't want to go East either, I intend to make my fortune right here in Colorado."
"While you're making all those mighty plans, maybe you'd better figure out what to do about Fancy, Chance. You two have gotten pretty thick these last months."
Chance looked startled at Hart's boldness and didn't reply.
Hart noted with annoyance that his brother hadn't responded by saying he loved her; of course, that could be because men didn't speak easily of such things. He scanned Chance's eyes for clues to his intent, and finding none, returned his gaze to his plate. He felt his heart do a little flip-flop, like a trout does in a stream when he first finds out you've hooked him. "Just how serious are you about her?"
"Damned if I know, bro. Maybe she won't want any man for the long haul. I'm not all that sure I'd want to stay with one woman forever. I do know we're two of a kind, though, Fancy and me. Both wild cards. And you know how lucky I am, bro—she'd probably have me if I asked her right."
"You know what they say, Chance," Hart replied, quelling his anger. "Lucky in cards, unlucky in love."
"Couldn't be you had a mind to try your hand with her yourself, could it, brother? Because if you do, now's the time to say so, loud and clear."
"You know what I've got in mind for myself," Hart answered, not lying exactly. "Same as I always intended... I aim to go off into the Territory and paint me some Indians." Chance looked uncertain; his brother was acting very odd. But then, Hart never had been free and easy where girls were concerned, maybe that was it. It was obvious Hart had a real fondness for Fancy, but outside of that kiss on Christmas Eve, he'd never made the slightest move toward courting her that Chance could see. Besides, it was plain to anyone who looked that she was not the kind of girl for Hart, not by a country mile.
"The life I'm planning isn't the sort she'd ever want," Hart added; this time at least it was the truth. "She's made for the governor's mansion and the likes of you, Chance. Not for a scribbler like me."
"Are you real sure about that?" Chance asked again. He loved Hart; they might be vastly different men, but they were part of a matched set. "No woman would ever be worth interfering with the way things are between us, bro. Not even Fancy."
"I'm sure," Hart answered quietly. In an even contest she would have picked Chance anyway, he thought, and was ashamed of the bitterness that provoked.
Hart poked up the fire with a piece of hickory.
"Are you planning to ask her to marry you, Chance?"
"Good God, bro, don't let's get ahead of ourselves here. I may not be the marrying kind, not like you and Daddy. Might be I've got a ways to go before I know for sure."
Hart looked up from the fireglow, fixed his brother with a steady gaze, and spoke deliberately.
"Don't you hurt her, Chance. She's a real good friend of mine." With that, he tossed the stick he'd been fiddling with into the dying fire, turned and walked away, leaving Chance to ponder his behavior.
Chance had never had the slightest inclination toward approaching life like Hart did, all seriousness and integrity. But that didn't mean he didn't admire his brother for being so upstanding. In fact, he thought that Hart, like their daddy before him, was about the best kind of man you could be.
Spring wrought changes in all of them.
"Cain't not feel young in springtime. Not once the sap rises," Bandana told them before he took off to the digs he'd staked out farther up the Gulch. Whether he was off working the second claim, or simply working off his own sap in some mysterious fashion, the three left behind weren't certain. Not that it mattered to them much, for each was infected with the fever in his own way.
The mountain bloomed, the trickles of water became torrents, the creatures with whom they shared their world came out of hibernation and stretched in the sun; the season turned, and the earth became warm and erupted in kaleidoscopic color. Fancy felt reborn.
Chance found there were an amazing number of excuses for being alone with her; and Hart found myriad reasons why he had to be off somewhere that they weren't.
Fancy laughed and the sound carried clear as bells on the brilliant air.
"I feel absolutely wonderful!" she breathed, love making every moment special.
Chance's shaggy head lay in her lap; he was smiling up at her. His dark hair shone in the sunlight and his face, newly shorn of winter whiskers, still was shadowed by the hint of where the beard had been. Fancy thought it a manly face, and handsome enough to take any girl's breath away; she dismissed the fact that it might be almost too pretty for strength.
"What would you do now if you could do anything you wanted, with no worry about propriety?" An indolent smile played at his lips.
"Something wild and reckless... like taking off all my clothes and letting the sun warm all the parts of me. Like running naked through that stream over there and letting the wind dry me. Like being lazy and languid and good for absolutely nothing and being waited on hand and foot..."
Chance laughed. "The naked part sounded just right to me, why don't we leave it at that?" He raised his head from her lap and brushed her breasts with his lips.
Oh, God, how she wanted him; it was getting harder not to touch as she wished to... harder not to be touched in return. If only she had access to any of the devices Magda had told her about to thwart pregnancy, she would have followed her heart and loins, but without such contraceptives she couldn't take the risk.
She'd tried Chance on as a lover in her mind, often enough—in the night quiet where fantasies could do no harm, where life was what you wanted, not what you got, where people didn't die and houses didn't burn and the worst doubt that ever assailed you was over which new frock would make your husband love you more.
Chance saw the desire in Fancy's dusky eyes; she was grow
ing more wanton, more responsive to his caresses. He knew better than to push her too fast, but any day now...
He sought her mouth and finding it willing, pulled her down on top of him, her body covering his on the warm earth. It would be so easy to push her over the boundaries of restraint... damn the fact that they were all stuck here together, with no escape. Damn the fact that it didn't seem quite right to do that to a friend.
Fancy pushed herself away from Chance's questing mouth and hands and sat back on the grass, breathless. Her hair was tousled and her shirt buttons were undone. Chance thought she was the most sensual creature he'd ever laid eyes on.
"You have the oddest habit of disappearing right before my eyes," he said quietly, his eyes intent on hers. "Where did you go just then?"
"I don't know. I guess I just never got over growing up rich, Chance. I still want so much."
Chance laughed good-naturedly. "Then I guess you'd have to say I've never gotten over growing up poor, because I want it all."
"You're driving me mad..."
"We're two of a kind, Fancy—that's not my fault," he said. "And besides, I love you." He hadn't intended to use these words against her defenses as he had from time to time with other women. Could it be that he really meant them this time? he wondered. And how the hell could a man ever tell the difference between lust and love?
"Don't say that," she whispered. "I have to go soon."
He saw she was suddenly fragile and felt a pang of conscience. "Why do you have to go?"
"I don't know why... maybe because I'm afraid of what I feel with you. Maybe because I have to go find something..." . "Find what?"
"Everything, Chance. Don't you see? I have to find everything!" Fancy stood up reluctantly and tugged her clothes back into place.
Chance watched her. "I can tell you one thing for certain, sugar," he said. "Whichever man you choose on your way to whatever it is you're looking for, no one will ever understand you like I do."