Auraria: A Novel (47 page)

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Shadburn ran to Holtzclaw, who stood outside of the terrapin’s cave, watching the dam shudder as the notes of the Song of Parting reverberated through the earth. “Tell me, Holtzclaw, what you are doing so that this dam does not fail me.” Shadburn put both his hands on top of Holtzclaw’s shoulders. “We can’t let this lake be emptied, not with so many rich idlers scouring the mountainsides. It is so much worse than before. They will find the horrible gold from the moon maidens. They’ll know where it came from, where I came from.”

“The whole core of the dam is sodden,” said Holtzclaw. “The railroad twins did not use good clay, and they didn’t pack it well or leave it enough time to cure. We paid them for a dam, and they gave us a bath plug.”

“They are treasonous, perfidious scoundrels,” said Shadburn. “Deal breakers. Base humans with hidden motives. Unfit to bear the title of businessmen.”

“They can’t bear all the fault. We put the structure on top of running springs—though it could hardly be avoided in this valley—so the dam is washing away from the inside too.”

“And we can’t open the floodgates?” said Shadburn.

“They’re permanently sealed,” said Holtzclaw. “The railroad twins said it was necessary, given the weight of the water and the size of the lake.”

“A lie, I’m sure. They left out the floodgates to save some money—my money, given in good faith—for their own pockets. Worse, you believed them! What sort of nonsense is that, a dam that cannot be opened?” Shadburn picked up a pebble and hurled it at the great and harmless and vulnerable dam. The stone glanced off its water-streaked face, and a new rivulet started to flow from the bruise.

“Do whatever you can,” said Shadburn. “Pack on more mud. Bring in stone, bricks, and tree stumps. Tear down the hotel and dump the rubble down into the canyon, if it will help.”

“If the water keeps rising,” said Holtzclaw, “then no reinforcement will save the dam.”

“Then you must ask the rain to stop.”

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Holtzclaw wandered for a day, looking for the princess. She had never answered his beck and call; she’d just appeared, as she willed, near watery places. With the lake rising quickly, the rains crashing down, there was no place left that was more wet or watery than any other. The whole valley was one rushing river. Holtzclaw looked across the churning surface of the lake, choked with runoff and debris. Across the water, the Queen of the Mountains shone with a few feeble electric lights. The Maiden of the Lake rocked in the current; it looked gray and dingy, already worn and old and yet never opened. In the distance, the railroad bridge, abandoned, was buffeted by a sudden freshet bursting from the mountains above.

Trahlyta was not in the baths of the Queen of the Mountains. She was not attending the white cairn, telling legends to visitors. She was not at the Sugar Shoals or the Five Forks Creek, which was an angry cataract. Holtzclaw was soaked to his core; mud caked his trousers to the knees. Only the crown of his head, sheltered by his fine Auraria hat, was still dry.

He saw a small, familiar signpost: “water” and an arrow. It could have pointed in all directions and been just as truthful. But the sign once again guided him in his need.

Holtzclaw followed the side path. Old chestnuts loomed overhead, dripping icicles. Tree trunks were rimed on the windward side with ice, layered like verdant moss. The frosted path widened into a clearing. In the middle of her rock-lined spring, Trahlyta reclined on her island.

“Hello, James. Lovely weather, isn’t it?” She radiated delight.

“The weather is causing me trouble, Princess. The lake is rising.”

“Oh, it’s not trouble,” said Trahlyta. “It’s necessary.”

“To do what?”

“To stir up the deep currents. To impel the wild wonder fish to dig.”

“Why wait until now? Why not wash the dam away months ago?”

“Because, James, you were so excited about your gala. And I thought it might be instructive for everyone, but especially you.”

“You won’t stop the rain then?” said Holtzclaw.

“It’s the simplest act in the world,” said the princess. “But it won’t save the dam. Enough raindrops have fallen on the mountainsides; they will run off the stone summits and down through the channels of the earth, come out springs again, and they will all make their way into the lake.”

“And then?”

The princess made a popping sound against the side of her cheek, like a cork being pulled from a bottle of claret.

“But I’ve worked so hard,” said Holtzclaw. “For silkworms, for Shadburn, and with so little to show. And if this dam bursts, and the lake rushes out, then I will have nothing.”

“Then you have been doing the wrong work,” said the princess.

“What about the people who live downstream? Won’t the dam flood their lands? Won’t there be a great disaster, like at Johnstown?”

“Below us, the land is wide and flat. Some fields will get muddy, that’s all.”

“Have you ever left this valley to see for yourself? How do you know what the waters do in someone else’s domain?”

“I’ve met the Queen of the Lowlands at our conferences,” said the princess. “She’s blonde and heavyset, with wide footsteps—a hearty eater. Now James, you trust me, don’t you?”

Holtzclaw searched himself and was surprised to admit that he did.

“Then I will stop the rains for you,” said the princess, “and you will destroy the dam for me.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

In the early morning hours of what was to be the sixth day of rain, Holtzclaw kept vigil from the dark veranda of the Queen of the Mountains. Next to him was a bottle of rare and ancient claret. His ears, so used to the rhythmic patterns of the droplets falling on the roof and earth, immediately noticed when the noise of the rain changed. The tempo slowed, and droplets fell in uneven accents and syncopations. And then, there was no rain.

Lamplights awoke within the hotel. From inside came muffled cheers.

Still, all around him was the sound of water. Creeks and rills ran high. Springs gushed up from beneath the golf course and bath pavilions. Burst pipes churned forth streams of mineral waters. Droplets shook loose from leaves when breezes rolled off the mountaintops.

Shadburn emerged from the hotel with his fishing rod and reel slung over his shoulder, like a soldier’s gun on parade. He held up a small silver pail. Writhing pink worms peeked over the rim; one, boosted by the teeming mass of life beneath it, escaped over the edge. Holtzclaw watched it squirm between the boards of the veranda to a wet, happy freedom.

“Oh, Holtzclaw, still awake, eh?” he said. “You should get some sleep, now the weather’s settled down. Or do you want to come fishing? They’ll be biting better than ever. They’re always hungry after the rains end.”

Holtzclaw politely declined. He stayed on the veranda of the Queen of the Mountains, alone in the early morning stillness, to watch the sunrise. When the sun broke above the top of Sinking Mountain, there was a green flash—so brief and subtle that had Holtzclaw not been staring at the mountain, he would have missed it. The stars slipped from their places in the dawn light, quivering and falling as if they were fat with dew.

His rumination was interrupted by two explosions. Twin rockets shot up from the dam, overpowering the morning twilight. Their trails glowed an angry red—they were distress signals, launched from the Maiden of the Lake.

Holtzclaw flew to the dam. He slid on mud slides and tumbled over fallen limbs, but he picked himself up, time and again, and finally reached the scene of the disaster. The Maiden of the Lake was lodged against the entrance to the spillway. The powerful current, still coursing down from the mountainsides and into the lake, held the boat in its precarious place, where it blocked the flow of water into the spillway. The flume that led from the top of the dam was dry.

A wave crashed into the Maiden of the Lake, rocking the one and a half funnels. Holtzclaw heard splintering wood and twisting metal. The current was trying to force the pleasure boat down the flume, while at the same time, the rising lake pool threatened to topple the boat over the face of the dam. The lake, already high, seemed to be rising before his eyes.

Lizzie Rathbun stood on the rear deck, watching out for someone. Holtzclaw ran onto the top of the dam, his feet squelching in the soft earth. He approached the boat through the dry flume and clambered aboard. Ms. Rathbun met him.

“The boat slipped its mooring and drifted here,” said Ms. Rathbun. “And we have no engine to free ourselves.” Holtzclaw admired her calm, but he did not share it.

“This is not an accident, is it?” said Holtzclaw. “The ropes were too thick to break. It’s sabotage. Do you know who’s responsible? The moon maidens? The railroad twins?”

Ms. Rathbun rolled her eyes. “I haven’t any idea, Holtzclaw. Really, I don’t.”

“Then there’s only one solution,” said Holtzclaw. “Scuttle the ship. We have to clear the spillway if the dam and lake are to survive. If the water starts coming over the top of the dam, there’s nothing we can do to stop it. The dam will burst.”

“I knew that you’d choose loyalty to your employer’s business over your own.”

“Either we sacrifice the boat, or both are lost,” he said. It was not loyalty, but logic. “First, we’ll get you off the ship. Then, I’ll go back up to the hotel. I hope there’s a piece or two of dynamite left. I’ll put a charge below the waterline, on the opposite side from the spillway. We’ll hope that it’s powerful enough to open a gap in the hull that will let the boat sink in time, but not so powerful that it will damage the flume any further.”

“Oh, there’s no need to go back up to the hotel,” said Ms. Rathbun. “There are explosives here. If you need them, take them. But I can’t condone it. I must register my protestations, at least formally.”

“Can’t you see the danger? The boat is a loss in any case now. If the flume isn’t cleared, then the boat will be destroyed when the dam bursts—it will be dashed to pieces on the canyon walls as the lake goes roaring down the Terrible Cascade.”

“Still, I protest,” said Ms. Rathbun. Yet she led him back to her suite, at the head of the grand staircase. Two deeply crimson love-apples were the only remaining decoration—all the other furniture had been removed. Ms. Rathbun opened a wooden crate to reveal several sticks of dynamite, a length of fuse cord, a blasting cap, and even a flint for sparking.

“It’s only prudent,” said Ms. Rathbun, in response to Holtzclaw’s questioning expression.

They went to the lowest deck, and Ms. Rathbun pointed to certain welded seam. “Now, if I were you, I’d put the dynamite right here. It’s a weak spot, I’m sure. While you get prepared, I will work up some tears and warm up my screams. And you must haul me off the boat by my hair. I will wail and cry and scream and plead, but you will be deaf to all my distresses.”

“Why is all this necessary?”

“Because, Holtzclaw, of the insurance claims. For natural disaster, floods, acts of weather, the policies pay very little. Several pay nothing.” Ms. Rathbun’s voice welled up with tears; her voice cracked, then she decided it was the wrong timbre. “But if you, dear Holtzclaw, sink it for your own reasons: out of malice, or jealousy, or spurned romance—and these are very plausible motives, Holtzclaw—well, that is an actionable injury, with a guilty party to pursue, and I am entitled to much greater compensation from the insurance claims.”

“Don’t you mean, ‘we are entitled?’” said Holtzclaw. “This is my ship, too. If I set the charge, then there’s no recourse. It’s destruction of my own property.”

“There’s not a paper with your name on it,” said Ms. Rathbun. “On all the receipts for furniture and fixtures and paintings, for the work that was done here—there’s only Elizabeth Rathbun. You were worried about your employer’s reaction, so you kept your name out of it. Not that Shadburn cared in the least.”

Holtzclaw stifled a small chuckle, but he could not stop a smile from escaping. “It’s too complicated by half,” he said. It was not the Charleston Chomp, the Cincinnati Slip-off, the Asheville Attitude, or the Fitzgerald Flip. Her trick did not deserve its own name. “If crime was in the cards, you could have just clubbed me over the head and taken my gold months ago.”

“I would rather wait for the money to come to me.”

Holtzclaw considered refusing to play his part; he could leave Ms. Rathbun on the boat, retreat up the hill, and watch the lake build up behind the clogged spillway. But she had trapped him—for the lake to survive, the boat had to be destroyed.

Holtzclaw set the charge in the place Ms. Rathbun had indicated and spooled out the blasting cord. He did not pull Ms. Rathbun by the hair—she decided that would be too far out of character for Holtzclaw, but she did summon convincing tears.

Chattering gawkers crowded the shores of the lake; they cheered and hollered as Holtzclaw and Ms. Rathbun emerged from the twisted, straining boat. They witnessed Holtzclaw striking the spark as Ms. Rathbun implored him to stop. Then Ms. Rathbun stuck her fingers in her ears.

The shock of the explosion made Holtzclaw stumble. He turned back toward the sawdust and spray. The spillway was choked with debris; the flume was a smoking wreck. Its iron supports gave way; rivets and pylons and buttresses tore from the cliff wall with sharp sounds, like choleric voices of birds. The battered and weary dam sagged several more feet, carved out by the stresses of the explosion. It was a mortal blow.