Fool's Gold (17 page)

‘Couldn’t you have controlled them?’

‘We ran many criminals out of town, but no one was ever lynched when I was in charge. Mind you, I was only promoted to Colonel once it was all over.’

‘Promoted?’

‘I was already a captain; sea captain, but they could never see the distinction,’ he chuckled. ‘In the end I gave up trying. It’s like being called Brother Jack, or Cornish, in the mines. In the end it’s easier to go along with it than argue. Besides, it suited me at the time.’

‘You had a past to forget too?’ she demanded, with renewed interest.

He tipped his hat back from over his eyes and gave her a long, hard look which she found rather unnerving.

‘Don’t tell me if you’d rather not,’ she said hastily.

He shrugged. ‘Let’s just say I left Cornwall in a hurry,’ he said frankly.

‘So where did you go? America?’

‘Brittany at first.’

‘Hence Kerhouan?’

‘Hence Kerhouan. I knew that part of Brittany well, since we did a fair bit of trade with them. And I knew the sea, so we joined an Atlantic packet as crewmen.’

‘And how did the fleeing seaman become the owner of Tresco?’ she asked with interest.

‘Not all at once,’ he grinned reminiscently. ‘Gradually worked my way up until I had my own ship — “a small thing, but mine own”. We used to trade up and down the eastern seaboard. Then we carried a shipment around the Horn and no sooner had we delivered the goods than the rumour of gold reached the harbour and suddenly I had no crew.’

‘So you went to the mines too and made your fortune,’ she concluded.

‘We saw which way the wind was blowing. Kerhouan and I sailed the brig back to Panama City two-handed, and picked up a crowd of would-be gold-rushers. With them as crew, we picked up supplies and landed them all safely at Yerba Buena. The profit from that little venture saw us through the first year; after that, we realised we could make more profit selling my expertise to the bigger mining companies and conglomerates that were springing up than standing all hours waist-deep in a stream.’

‘What expertise? What earthly good could your knowledge of seamanship do them up in the hills?’

‘I only knew the sea as every Cornish lad knows the sea; I’d never made a living from it. My parents had greater plans for me.’ There was a bitterness in his voice at odds with the smile on his face. ‘But it was not to be and when we fell on hard times, which coincided with one of the regular slumps in the fishing, I was sent down the mines. I made use of the education I had received and when I left Cornwall, I was well on the way to becoming a good mining engineer.

‘When the forty-niners moved on from panning to burrowing in the hillsides for the veins, I designed ’em pumping engines and improved pit props. And spent every spare minute looking for a likely spot to dig out my own fortune. I bought my mine from an easterner who was heading back home, poorer, sicker and tireder than he came.

‘’Course he’d driven his shaft in quite the wrong direction: I saw the potential and sank all my money into the mine. Kerhouan and a few other Cornishmen, Brother Jacks, worked with me. And that’s where I got the money for Tresco.’

‘That was the mine that collapsed?’ she asked softly.

‘I suppose Kerhouan told Chen Kai?’ He closed his eyes and for a moment she thought he wasn’t going to go on. ‘Not that it matters. We lined our new shaft in the proper manner, but we could not afford to reline his; the day after we dug out a fortune in gold, the tunnel collapsed. Only three of us survived. Kerhouan was away fetching supplies and Jem pulled me out. Only because he didn’t know where the gold had been stored.’ He grinned. ‘’Course, he planned to take off with the gold before Kerhouan returned. But I confounded him by surviving.’

‘And the mine?’ Her gentle voice broke in on his bitter memories.

‘We never reopened it. And never will.’ His eyes were hard as pebbles. ‘I lay there for weeks, thinking of the men who’d died. I saw how we had destroyed that beautiful valley, scarred it with spoil heaps and desolate canyons which we’d dug out, defaced and abandoned. All for greed, the greed that had killed my partners and sent me back underground when I so hated and loathed it.’

‘But you had been brought up with mining …’

‘I’d always hated it. I remember my first day down the copper mine as if it were yesterday. We spent the day waist deep in water, hacking away at the rock face, looking for colour. The only time we climbed up out of the mire was to eat. I put my pastie down on my kerchief and a rat ran alongside me and began to gnaw at it. From that day on I thought of nothing but getting out of the mines — and yet I let my greed draw me back. When I was fit again, I blew up the entrance to the mine and took my share of the gold to buy Tresco. The rest — the rest is just fool’s gold as far as I’m concerned. And I won’t care if I never see another nugget as long as I live. So the cinnabar can stay where it is: I won’t help the mining companies to ravage the land any more than it is.’

‘Why buy these hills if not for mining? Why not more fertile valley land?’

‘You’ve seen what man can do to the land,’ he said bitterly. ‘Polluting and blocking the rivers. I control my own water supply. All the Tresco, from the source at Clearwater Lake down to where it runs into the Sacramento, is on my land.

‘Tresco is a living memorial to Tregorran, Humphries, Jespor and Freestone — the Brother Jacks who didn’t make it.’ He gazed blindly into the distance as if he were seeing their faces again, then, very quietly and with an earnestness that made Alicia shiver, he went on: ‘And if Lamarr tries to take it from me, I’ll kill him.’

At last the thunder and lightning ceased, although the curtain of rain still hung over the landscape. Alicia shivered. Soon, if they were to stay, they would have to light the fire.

‘Can you saddle your own horse?’ he asked abruptly, rising to his feet and sniffing the air. ‘The worst of the storm has passed so you shouldn’t have any trouble with the mare.’

‘Yes. But surely we can’t make it back to Tresco in this light?’ The driving rain had so overcast the mid-afternoon sky that it was more like dusk than day.

‘Not Tresco, no. Although perhaps alone I could have made it.’ He raised his hand to forestall her protest. ‘I know, I know, it’s not you — it’s that dratted horse. She’s been eating her head off for far too long in the stables with no one to ride her.’

And that ‘dratted horse’, having stood docilely to have her saddle put on flatly refused to budge from beneath the overhang and no amount of coaxing could move her.

‘There’s nothing else for it,’ he concluded through gritted teeth. ‘I’m damned if I’ll freeze for an obstinate mare. You’ll have to get up before me. It’s not too far — no more than half an hour normally.’

‘But your poor horse!’

‘He’s carried heavier loads, haven’t you, Ross?’ he drawled, patting the stallion’s neck. ‘He’s sure-footed and he knows the trail to Pedro’s house very well.’ He reached his hand down to her. ‘Come on!’ he ordered impatiently. ‘Or we’ll be here all night.’

‘But what about Rosita?’ she asked.

‘Rosita? She’ll either stay here and sulk or follow us.’ He drew her up with some difficulty, impeded as she was by damp skirts that had dried clammy on her, and held the mettlesome stallion tightly in check while she settled herself in front of him.

It was a long, wet and weary journey, but as he had said, Ross knew the way well. He skirted the sagebrush, almost invisible in the grey light, and minced daintily across the unexpected cascades that tumbled down the hillside. And when she looked around after a few minutes, Rosita was trotting obediently behind Ross, ears flattened in the torrential rain, the picture of equine misery.

‘Lean back!’ growled Cornish. ‘Makes my arms ache reaching round you!’ Unwillingly she relaxed her tense muscles and forced herself to lean back against him. As the warmth seeped from his body into hers she began to shake. It was a long time since she had been so aware of a man’s body. She had travelled for years with a man — but this was not Chen Kai.

She was not the only one to suffer. The feel of her waist under his hand brought back vividly to him the sight of her half-dressed body shimmering in the sunlight at the
agua caliente
. He wanted to press her closer to him, to bury his face in her neck and breathe in the fragrance of her hair; it took an iron control not to do so.

Working with women was the very Devil! he told himself grimly. But his innate honesty forced him to qualify that: working with
this
woman.

Once the solution would have been easy: a trip to town, preferably San Francisco, where he was not quite so well known, and a visit to one of the more discreet brothels. He had done that before, most recently after the break with Belle, but on that occasion he had induced in himself such a feeling of self-disgust that he was not eager to repeat the experience.

It was a close question which of them was the more relieved when the light appeared over the brow of the hill.

The welcome they received from Pedro and Julia was as warm as the glow from the blazing fire that lit up the main room of the log cabin and they were swiftly installed in rocking chairs on either side of the fire, Alicia in a borrowed robe of Julia’s and Cornish in a dry shirt with a blanket round his waist, Pedro’s pants having proved too small. Their clothes steamed on one side of the fire while to the other a coffee pot hissed and bubbled merrily.

Julia, a merry and sociable girl of eighteen or nineteen, was delighted to have their company and plied them with delicious food which soon warmed them through. Her brother Manuel was rather more serious, modelling himself on his brother-in-law Pedro, a more taciturn man, though no less genuine in his welcome.

‘We get so few visitors this far from Sacramento,’ prattled Julia gaily as she handed round the plates of deliciously savoury meat and vegetables, concoctions of beans flavoured with hot spices, and delicate sweet pancakes. ‘You should come to see us more often, Colonel Jack!’ she scolded. ‘I’ll wager you don’t get fed like this at Tresco!’

Cornish looked across the table at Alicia and gave her a broad wink. ‘Depends who’s doing the cooking!’ he said deliberately.

Alicia looked at him in stunned silence. Had he been aware all the time that she was helping Kai?

Over supper, there were the usual polite questions, not too probing, about her arrival at Tresco, where she had come from, how long she had been in California.

She managed to answer most of them with a light touch — and without giving too much away.

‘You wouldn’t have liked working for that Jem though,’ said Julia with an expressive shudder. ‘Be happy you didn’t come to Tresco until he was gone.’

‘Ever been in Mokelumne?’ asked Pedro curiously, as he handed the sweet cakes across the table. ‘Or Sonora? Your face looks kinda familiar.’

The fact that she had had the same feeling of déja-vu about Pedro did nothing to stop the familiar sinking feeling in her stomach.

‘Years ago,’ she responded swiftly, conscious of the rancher’s eyes fixed on her. Adroitly she turned the conversation back to Pedro and Julia, asking them how long they had been in California, where they had met? By the time Julia had recounted the story, with many giggles and blushes and sidelong glances at Pedro, the difficult moment had passed.

After supper, Pedro and Manuel took the lantern and went out to check on the sheep fold, while Julia and Alicia cleared away and washed up the dishes and Cornish discarded the blanket for his dry pants.

On their return, Manuel, much to his disgust, was sent bleary-eyed to bed while Pedro picked up his guitar and began to strum a gentle tune. Alicia, in the place of honour in the rocking chair, felt a strange contentment creeping over her, and a pang of envy too of this serene little family. She let her eyes close and imagined them in a few years’ time, with children on their knees, secure in their valley, well-fed and content, while she — she might be on the road again, drifting from town to town, struggling to earn an honest living.

She suddenly became aware that the music had stopped. She opened her tired eyes. Cornish was sitting on the other side of the fire, regarding her closely with a frown between his eyes.

‘What is it?’ he demanded sharply.

‘What?’

‘You looked as though you were about to burst into tears.’

‘I — I was just thinking about Tamsin,’ she lied. ‘Hoping she won’t worry when we don’t return.’

‘Chen’s not a fool,’ he replied shortly. ‘He only has to look at the weather to realise we could never have made it back to Tresco. And Kerhouan knows we’re near Pedro’s cabin.’

She glanced around her, barely suppressing a yawn. ‘Where are Julia and Pedro?’ she asked.

‘They rise early and retire early,’ he explained. ‘I told them not to wait up. You’ve been dozing for over an hour,’ he added drily.

‘Sorry.’

‘You’ve been burning the candle at both ends for too long,’ he observed. ‘I should have realised …’ He rose and stretched. ‘Bed,’ he pronounced.

‘Where?’

He nodded to the two bedrolls in front of the fire, side by side on the brightly coloured Mexican rugs. Her eyes widened.

‘I can’t sleep in the same room as you!’ she exclaimed hotly.