When the Wind Blows (36 page)

But Diana was still her daughter, and she wanted to put off what she must do as long as she could.

Besides, the wind wasn’t blowing, and when the wind didn’t blow, Diana was all right.

It was late in the season. Maybe the wind wouldn’t blow again that year.

And maybe Christie wouldn’t cry.

25

Two days later three men from Denver—a geologist and two archeologists from the university—arrived in Amberton. Matt Crowley led them up to the cave, then waited while the three men did their work.

While the geologist examined the tunnel, one of the archeologists put on a wet suit and scuba gear and, with the aid of a rope, descended into the pool at the bottom of the shaft.

The water, cold and crystal clear, was deeper than the diver had expected. The pile of bones lay twentyfive feet below the surface.

Though he worked quickly, depositing the bones in plastic bags, then sending them to the surface on a second rope, his air supply was nearly exhausted when he finally finished the job and returned to the surface. A few minutes later the three scientists emerged from the cave.

“Well?” Matt asked.

The geologist spoke first.

“It’s a natural cave. Nothing more than a fissure in the sandstone. The water’s been collecting for centuries, but it’s rain water, seeping in from above.”

“What’s that mean as far as the mine’s concerned?”

The geologist shrugged. “Nothing much. When you blow it, the cave’ll probably collapse and dump the water into the mine, but it won’t do much damage. If you’re worried about tapping into a spring or something,
you can stop—the mine would have flooded years ago if there were something like that down there.”

Satisfied, Matt turned to the archeologists. “What about the bones? Are they human?”

The archeologist who had hauled the bones up after his partner collected them nodded. “They’re human, at least all the ones I’ve gotten a look at. Babies, not more than a few days old, if that. Their skull plates hadn’t even fused when they were dumped in here.”

“How old are they?”

The archeologist shrugged. “Can’t say for sure. A hundred years—probably a lot more. But they’re not recent, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’ll know better tomorrow, when we’ve had a chance to spread ’em out and look at ’em.” He glanced at the mouth of the cave, nearly hidden behind the shrubbery. “When you planning to blow it?”

“Couple of days,” Matt said. “We been holding off till you guys got here. Any point in waiting?”

The archeologists shook their heads, and the diver spoke. “Not as far as I can see. I got everything out of the pool.”

“And I got the rest,” the other one added. “There’s nothing on the walls, and the bones on the ground aren’t anything. Doesn’t look like anybody ever lived in the cave. Still,” he added, “it’d be nice to excavate it.”

“It’ll never happen,” Matt said. “The woman who owns the property wants it blown as soon as possible.”

The scientists packed their gear, and they all started down the trail. When they reached the mine, Esperanza Rodriguez was sitting on the porch of the cabin, watching them with angry eyes. Matt Crowley waved to her, but instead of returning the greeting, she only went inside the cabin and shut the door.

“What’s eating her?” the geologist asked.

Matt hesitated, then decided to say nothing. These
men were strangers to him, and he liked Esperanza. He didn’t want to expose her to ridicule.

“She just likes to keep to herself,” he said.

When the men from Denver were gone, Matt drove into town to tell Dan Gurley what had been found.

“You tell anybody about the bones?” Dan asked when Matt was done. Matt shook his head.

“Figured we might as well wait till we knew what they were,” he said. “No sense stirring up the town.”

Dan nodded his agreement. “Then let’s keep it that way. With two kids dead, no telling what might happen if this got out. Okay?”

“Fine. Can I start setting the dynamite tomorrow?”

“Okay by me. You still going to have Juan help you?”

“Sure,” Matt replied. “Why not?”

“I dunno,” Dan said thoughtfully. “I just have a feeling that Esperanza isn’t going to like it. She might not let Juan do it.”

Matt grinned. “And he might not tell her he’s going to,” he said.

   The next day Jeff Crowley appeared at the Ambers’.

By noon, Diana was in the barn, helping the two children saddle the horses that would carry them up to the aspen grove. A fourth horse would carry their gear, and it was that horse that was giving them trouble.

“It’s going to fall off,” Jeff remarked as he looked at the old mare, which was loaded down with sleeping bags, a tarp, boxes of food, and an ice chest.

“If it’s tied right, it’ll be fine,” Diana told him. “Pull the rope tighter.”

Jeff tugged at the rope, and the horse stamped its feet and whinnied angrily.

“What are we going to cook on?” Christie asked. “Do you have a stove?”

“We’ll build a fire,” Jeff told her. “We’re going camping, stupid.”

“Don’t you call me stupid,” Christie flared.

“Then don’t ask dumb questions. Haven’t you ever been camping?” Jeff was feeling like an expert, having gone hunting with his father the winter before.

“What if I haven’t?”

“Oh, brother,” Jeff muttered. He had a feeling that he should have stayed home—everyone knew that girls weren’t any good on camp-outs.

Diana, pleased that the spat had died a natural death before she’d had to do something about it, tied the last knot, then checked the load to be sure it was balanced properly. “Okay, let’s take the horses outside.”

The children scrambled onto the horses, and as they emerged from the barn Diana glanced toward the house. Her mother, who had stayed in her room all morning, was still nowhere to be seen. For a moment Diana considered going into the house to see if she was all right, but she was sure that if she did, Edna would find some reason why she must stay with her.

“Let’s go,” Diana called. Holding the lead for the pack horse, she led them out of the corral.

   From the house, Edna watched them go. She scanned the sky and nodded to herself. So far, there were no clouds piled up over the mountains, and the weather report that morning had not mentioned any storms coming in from the west. Maybe everything was going to be all right. Only when the little caravan was out of sight did she start up the stairs to the third floor.

She looked around the nursery, wondering where to start.

The toys.

She found a box and began putting the stuffed animals
into it. She held each one of them for a moment.

They were all left over from Diana’s childhood.

Diana, unlike most children, had never put her toys away. Instead she had always kept them in the nursery, even after she had finally moved downstairs, and Edna, afraid of upsetting Diana, had never objected to it. But now the teddy bear, its fabric beginning to rot and smelling of years of dust, seemed ready to fall apart.

Edna piled the stuffed bear and all his friends into the box, then took down the paper bird that was suspended over the crib. That, too, went into the box.

She took the last of Christie’s clothes out of the closet and wondered what to do with them.

The guest room. She smiled bitterly as she realized that even though Diana had occupied it for thirty years, she still thought of it as the guest room.

She would put Christie’s things in the guest room, and after Diana was gone, Christie could keep it. She would decide what to do with Diana’s things later.

The curtains—those white lace curtains that looked so pretty half a century ago—fell into shreds as Edna took them down. They, too, went into the box with the toys.

Edna took the box down the hall, unlocked the storage room, and opened it. She pulled the string, and as the light went on she gasped.

The floor of the storage room was covered with the shredded remains of what had been the Lyons family album.

“That poor child,” Edna murmured to herself, but even as she uttered the words she wasn’t sure whether they were for Christie or for Diana. She put the box from the nursery on a shelf, then began cleaning up the mess on the floor.

Sometime, when things were settled, she and Christie would try to piece them back together.

Leaving the storeroom, Edna went to inspect the nursery once more. Except for the cradle, the crib, and the rocking chair, it was empty.

Edna went back downstairs and found a hammer and some nails.

With tears flowing down her cheeks, she nailed the door of the nursery closed…

   Matt Crowley pressed the button, and the elevator whined to life, shuddered, then began its long descent into the depths of the mine. Beside him, Juan Rodriguez looked nervously up at the cables from which the car was suspended.

“It’s all right, Juan. Those cables won’t break.”

Juan shuddered, suddenly wishing he hadn’t come. “I don’t like this place,” Juan said. “My mother says there are spirits here.”

“Naw. You don’t believe in ghosts, do you?”

Juan squirmed and shuffled his feet. “My mother does,” he said. “She says there are babies here, and when they cry, people die.”

“Well, don’t you believe that,” Matt said, though in his mind’s eye he suddenly saw the pile of bones the team from the university had pulled from the cave the day before. “That’s just a story to scare people.”

“But people die here,” Juan protested. “And I heard the babies cry once.”

Matt decided to change the subject. If Juan kept talking, he would certainly scare himself into going home. “You know how this stuff works?” He indicated the box of dynamite, and Juan looked at it doubtfully.

“It blows up,” he said.

“Only when it’s fused, and so far this stuff isn’t fused. Now, all I want you to do is drill holes for me, then I’ll put the dynamite sticks in the holes, install the fuses, and wire it. I don’t want you even to touch the dynamite.”

“I won’t,” Juan promised.

“That’s right. All you have to do is drill the holes where I tell you.”

“Okay.”

The elevator rattled to a stop at the bottom, and the two men got out. Together they went through the mine, Matt marking the places where he wanted holes drilled. Then he gave Juan an auger and told him to start drilling.

Juan, eager to please, began working while Matt opened the box of dynamite and started preparing the fuses. By sunset the job would be finished, and tomorrow afternoon, if all went well, the mine would be gone.

They worked slowly and carefully, and by late afternoon the mine was riddled with dynamite. When the charge was set off, the supports of the shafts would be blown away, and the mine would fall in on itself.

Matt fed the wire out carefully as the elevator took them back to the surface, then laid wire along the floor of the tunnel until he came to the entrance. When he and Juan were finished for the day, he left the roll of wire next to the equipment box. In the morning he would return, run the wire down the hill, and attach the blasting machine.

“Done,” he said.

Juan scratched his head. “How do you set it off?”

“A cinch,” Matt told him. He opened the box and took out a blasting machine. “I attach the wires to these terminals, then, when I push the plunger, this box generates a charge. When the rack hits the pin at the bottom, the charge is released, and the detonating caps go off. They set off the dynamite. Boom!” He put the blasting machine back in the box and dropped the lid closed, then switched off the power. The lights strung along the walls of the mine went out and plunged them into gloom. “Let’s go home.”

As they left the mine Matt glanced instinctively up at the mountains, then pointed and grinned at Juan. “Looks like we might have heard your mother’s babies in a couple of more hours,” he said.

A cloud bank was building above the Rockies, towering into the sky. Juan looked at it worriedly. “I wish Mama was home,” he said.

“Isn’t she?” Matt asked.

Juan shook his head. “She’s in church. All day. Maybe all night, too.”

“You mind staying by yourself?”

Juan ground the toe of his boot into the dirt and shoved his hands deep in his pockets. Without looking at Matt, he nodded.

“Then you come home with me,” Matt told him. “Jeff’s off camping, so there’s nobody there but me and Joyce. If you want, you can even spend the night.”

Juan’s eyes lit up. “Really?”

“Really,” Matt assured him. He glanced once more at the mine and got into his truck. Tomorrow, if all went well, they would come back, attach the blaster, and push the plunger. And then, at last, the mine would be gone. He started the engine, jammed the truck into gear, and roared off down the hill.

   Eddie Whitefawn cut across the Ambers’ pasture. He was searching for Jeff Crowley. It was only an hour since he’d heard that Jeff was going camping with Christie and Miss Diana, and he hoped he could talk Jeff out of going. Not that he wanted to tell Jeff that he’d seen Miss Diana up at the mine the night Jay-Jay had died. He didn’t. That, he was sure, would only lead to trouble with the marshal, and he’d long ago learned that the less you said, the more trouble you stayed out of. Still, he didn’t want anything to happen to his friend.