The Tender Vine (Diamond of the Rockies #3)(31)

Carina looked at her husband, a man so accustomed to the road he preferred it to house and hearth. Well, here was a test. Like her climbing up to the mine time after time when she first discovered it to conquer her fear of heights. How would being closed in work on Quillan’s mind? It wasn’t doing too well with hers.

His fingers sank into her hair, cupping the back of her skull. “Ever played crambo?”

She raised her head. “What?”

Father Antoine smiled. “A rhyming game. But we haven’t any paper.”

Quillan shrugged. “We’ll do it without. You ask the question, Father; Carina, give a noun.”

Father Antoine cocked his head, then said, “Do you wear pomade?”

Carina sat up straighter. “Any noun at all?”

Quillan smiled. “Whatever comes to mind.”

“Toad.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Now I’ll make four lines of rhyme that answer the question using your . . . interesting noun.”

“You said anything.”

“Mm-hmm.” He sat for a few moments. “If with something sweet and smelly, I should coat my hair with a jelly, when I took me down the road, dust would coat me like a toad.”

Carina clapped her hands and laughed. “That’s why you never wore your hair like Mr. Beck.”

“That, Carina, is not the only reason.”

She sat up fully, locked her arms around her knees, and leaned the small of her back to the wall. “Now Father takes a turn. I’ll name the question.”

They sat and played until her stomach told her dinnertime had come. She said nothing, though, and when neither man mentioned food, she guessed they would need it more tomorrow. Per piacere, Signore, let us get out tomorrow.

Quillan got up and extinguished all but one of the candles. “Need to save what we have.” They talked in the near dark, Father Antoine telling about Placerville and other camps in the early days of his wandering. Carina grew weary and lay down again on the mat.

Father Antoine sat wrapped in a blanket, arms crossed above his knees, head resting on his arms. It looked as though he’d folded up, but she didn’t think he was asleep. His lips moved silently, and his closed eyelids shifted. In a while Quillan lay down on the mine floor beside her, his back to hers. The three blankets Quillan had brought gave them one apiece, but the cold grew steadily.

“We could light the timbers and melt our way out.” Carina said drowsily, expecting no answer.

But Quillan said, “It might come to that.” Then he pressed his back closer.

She drifted into sleep thinking this was the third time she’d slept in a mine. Once in the shaft where she’d fallen during the flood, once after the vigilantes hung Berkley Beck and all the roughs, and now under a massive blanket of snow. Signore, is there something I should know?





NINE

Walls of stone, iron bands, rope around my mind.

Air that thins, darkness deep, reasoning confined.

Fear, fear, fear.

—Quillan

QUILLAN LAY STIFFLY ALERT. Carina’s breath sounded like a soft breeze, Father Antoine’s a leather bellows. But he couldn’t get anywhere near sleep. He kept picturing Jack and Jock on the circular shelf outside the mine with a mountain of snow rushing down on them like a train. He prayed their demise had been swift—a broken neck, a blow to the head. But he guessed they’d been pummeled down the slope, then suffocated where they stopped, the powder more deadly than the icy boulders that carried it.

He pressed his hand to his eyes. How could he have known? Could he have? The day had been so clear and promising. He’d thought they’d spend an hour or two in the cave, then go back out to lunch by the horses and be home again before the sun set. Nature never considered his plans.

His team had survived the flood, both Jack and Jock swimming to safety. Was that only months ago? He pressed closer to Carina. He had thought he’d lost her then. It was the first time he realized how much she mattered.

His plan to escape was a good one—to wait until he could delve the snow. And he’d tried to make the waiting as easy as he could. He’d sensed Carina’s fear, and the word games had helped. Yes, his plan was sound. But what if the snow didn’t pack? What if it was too deep to get through with nothing but poles? How long could they stretch one lunch? Would someone come? Alex Makepeace? Possibly. He forced his eyes to close. It did no good to ponder it now.

Could they burn the timbers and melt the snow? They’d likely bring the tunnel down on their heads. Was there another way? Quillan couldn’t think. Had the horses seen it coming? Had they run? Why hadn’t he put them inside? They’d have been safe inside. There was just room for them all in the short tunnel before the shaft. He groaned. If he’d only brought them inside.

His thoughts circled again. They were driving him crazy. Crazy like Leona Shepard? His foster mother spent her days trapped in a mind that had lost touch with reality. His mother, too. Would his do the same? How long could he stay in here before he cracked?

Quillan rubbed his neck and searched the space around him. Something was different. Was it morning? The darkness was not so complete. If he moved his hand in front of his face, he could almost see it shift. Or did he imagine it? He raised up on one elbow. No. There was an almost imperceptible lightening.

Now if the day dawned clear and the sun could penetrate . . . He folded his blanket over Carina and felt for the candle he had used last night. He shuffled on his knees to his pack and took the box of matches from the outer pocket. He struck a flame and lit the candle. Neither Carina nor the priest woke up.