Have I thanked you recently for reading this story? I certainly haven't thanked you enough, particularly you wonderful, generous, stalwart ones who are taking the time to provide feedback, or who are adding "Rush" to your alerts or favs. I really appreciate it.
Have you been wondering when the little murdered girl might show up?
Rush
Chapter Six
-:- -:- -:-
Erica sat between them in the man-skip, Steve at the front and Sam at the rear. There was a loud clang as Steve threw the switch that set the hoist in motion, the skip lurching at the start of its descent, and Erica fell back against Sam with a surprised laugh, knocking her safety helmet askew.
"Sorry!" she said, looking up at him over her shoulder.
Sam scooted forward a little, his hands on her upper arms to help brace her.
"That better?" he asked over the clatter of the iron wheels on the track, and she smiled at him again.
"Much."
-:- -:- -:-
Once they entered the main drift at the Thirty-Six and Steve had the carbon lights on, generator growling noisily, Erica immediately began taking notes of everything she saw. The worried mine-owner grabbed Sam by the elbow, pulling him to one side.
"Is there any sign of—you know, that thing?" he asked, anxiety growing in his voice.
Sam used his best calming tone. "You said yourself that almost nothing happens at this level, so try not to worry."
But he kept a sharp eye out, anyway, surreptitiously sniffing the air from time to time for any scent of the ghost mule's return. All his other senses were alert for signs of the phantom miner.
Erica went earnestly about her business, poking into every cranny of the drift. She was quick and efficient, and not much escaped her, although Sam was able to hastily sketch several wards across rough granite in places he hoped the inspector would not find them. Hex signs meant to fend off the supernatural might be a little hard to explain.
More than once, when he wasn't surreptitiously drawing or on the lookout for ghosts, Sam caught himself just watching Erica.
"This the tunnel to the lower passages?" she asked Steve, peering into the darkness that led down to the Forty-Eight.
"I won't be using that," Steve said immediately, "so it'll be blocked off. No need for any of us to go down there today."
The two spent some time discussing how best to keep careless and curious tourists from wandering where they didn't belong, the constant scratch of Erica's pen as she jotted down her observations amazingly loud, despite the noise of the generator.
Steve craned his neck to read what she was writing, and Sam grinned when she turned away so the mine-owner couldn't see.
"You'll get a full report, Mr. Hartson, I promise," she said drolly.
Sam was relieved, though, when Erica and Steve finally moved away from the lower tunnel, walking slowly through the drift back toward the upper tunnel, talking barricades and safety rails and reflective paint. For a moment, the young hunter paused, listening to their conversation with one ear, the other tuned to any sound from the Forty-Eight.
But no stone rattled, no whisper taunted him, and after a few moments he rejoined Steve and Erica, now chatting busily about air recirculation.
"All right," his ex-classmate said finally, closing her notebook. "I think I've seen enough for today. I've got a few more safety checks on my route this afternoon, while I'm up here, but then I'll head back to the office and write up my initial report. I think you should be able to expect it by tomorrow afternoon."
Steve blinked, the anxiety falling visibly from his shoulders. "So soon? Wow, that's fast. The guy I talked to earlier from your office said six weeks."
Erica's eyes danced to Sam's for a moment. "You're going to be here, right?" she asked him.
Sam nodded, smile widening, and Erica also nodded, obviously pleased. "Good. Then I'll make an extra effort to expedite things. So, can we get back to daylight, gentlemen? I've got lots to do."
He heard it faintly, then—a thin wail, plaintive and tormented, rising from the lower drift and raising the hairs on his forearms. Sam's lips thinned, and he gave Steve a pointed look.
"Yeah, let's get back topside," he said, eyes drilling into the mine-owner's.
"Sure," Steve agreed amiably, and Sam knew he hadn't heard whatever was crying down below.
Nor had Erica, apparently, because she was sauntering casually past the generator, giving it an easy once-over before making her way into the upper passage.
"Everybody got their headlights on?" Steve asked, his pace maddeningly slow. "Let me just get the generator off, and—"
"I'll do that, Steve," Sam said quickly, brushing past him. "Why don't you two get back to the skip and start it up, so we can get out of here."
He punched the last few words, and Steve suddenly caught on, turning to Sam quickly with fear blanching his face.
"Oh, God," he whispered. "Is something here?"
"It might be coming," Sam replied, keeping his voice low and even. "Distract Erica if you have to, but let's get back outside as fast as we can."
Steve already had one hand at the small of Erica's back, hurrying her along the passage as Sam shut down the generator, plunging the main drift into darkness. Then, the pace he set with his long legs moved them along even faster.
As soon as they reached the man-skip, Steve rushed to get the mine inspector settled, then reached immediately for the hoist controls.
"You comfortable up there in the back, Erica?" he asked, climbing into the vehicle in front of her, blocking her view and doing a fair job of keeping the tremor from his voice. "Sam, please hurry."
Sam waited until the others were both seated before he scrambled into the low end of the skip, facing down the shaft with his back to Steve. He quickly had the salt-gun racked where Erica couldn't see it, his eyes and ears straining for any sign that would indicate something had followed them up from the lower drift.
"Go now," he ordered crisply, and Steve released the cable mechanism.
The man-skip jerked to a start, eliciting a slight yelp from Erica at the upper end.
"Hey!" she said in mild protest. "What's the hurry?"
Sam could feel Steve shaking, sandwiched between the hunter and the inspector, which meant that Erica could probably feel him, too. She was probably also puzzled by the haste with which they'd left the Thirty-Six.
"Erica," Sam called up to her over his shoulder, his voice light but his eyes never leaving the tunnel as it deepened beneath him, "I'd be interested in seeing the other mines you're checking out today. Is that possible?"
He was a little surprised by his own boldness—the straightforward approach to women was purely Dean's forte—but he hoped the question would distract her from the bum's rush she was getting at the North Cedar.
"Lunch first?" she called back to him, and despite his concern, Sam found himself with the beginnings of another smile on his face.
The Thirty-Six sank away below them as the skip continued its climb toward daylight, and nothing stirred in the darkness.
-:- -:- -:-
There was a crap-load of weird stuff in the Rattlesnake Museum, most of it apparently from the town's early days, and a lot of it from people whose names Dean recognized. In one display case, he found horse-like wooden dentures next to a label that read "Leland Hartson"; a careworn hymnal labeled "William Clancy"; those funny little eyeglasses and a shaving brush with a label for JT Markham; hair-combs that apparently once belonged to a Katie Kaheny; and what looked like Delilah Reardon's pocket watch.
"Hey, Grace?" Dean said, peering in curiously at the photos accompanying the exhibit. "I've been in town about a day, and I already know all these names except for Katie Kaheny and this Clancy guy. Who were they?"
Grace joined him at the display, frowning briefly, then rolling her eyes with a smile. "The volunteer docents like to try to keep me amused, so sometimes they'll move the labels around on the weekend, see how many I can find during the week. Looks like they've been busy! Anyway, Bull Clancy was one of our founding fathers, I guess you could say—he discovered both the North Cedar and the Inishmurray lodes. The Inishmurray wasn't as profitable as the North Cedar, but he did all right for himself."
"I thought Steve Hartson's great-granddaddy owned the North Cedar," Dean said, eyeing an old daguerreotype of three men in what once must have passed for business suits. "That guy right there, right? Yeah, Leland Hartson."
"Mm-hmm," Grace acquiesced, and Dean tried very hard not to be distracted by the fact that her face was right next to his as they leaned over to peer into the display, her mouth so close he could kiss her with hardly any effort at all. "That's JT Markham standing next to Leland—he was the North Cedar's foreman, and the owner of The Baron Hotel. And that's Bull Clancy on JT's left."
"Easy to see where he got his nickname," Dean commented. Clancy was definitely a big man, and there was something phony about the guy's broad smile that made Dean pause until Grace brushed lightly against him and his brain plummeted southward.
"I think it was probably actually derived from 'William,'" Grace said, oblivious to the effect she was having on her visitor. "You know, 'William' became 'Bill,' and 'Bill' became 'Bull.' His appearance helped, no doubt, and there are stories about his temper, too."
Dean straightened reluctantly, knee aching dully and attention recaptured by more memorabilia and pictures in the next case. "So there's JT again," he said, pointing at two of the images. "What's he doing with Delilah Reardon?"
The woman in the daguerreotypes bore a strong resemblance to the spirit he had seen in The Baron the previous night, right before she'd plunged a knife into his chest—the one he'd finally decided was a hallucination. Seeing her in these pictures? Maybe he'd been wrong about being wrong.
"That's Delilah in that one, yes," Grace said, "but that's his wife Agnes with him in the one on the left."
"Huh. Yeah—I see the difference, now," Dean murmured, brow furrowed a moment as he considered the two images. "Guess ol' JT had a type."
He moved on to another display, this one of what could only be opium paraphernalia, and Dean raised his eyebrows at the collection of pipes, bottles and dampers amidst coins and trinkets that he guessed were Chinese. "So if Bull Clancy discovered the North Cedar, how did Leland Hartson end up with it?"
"His good luck, and Clancy's bad," Grace answered readily. "Bull discovered the ore veins at the North Cedar and the Inishmurray at just about the same time, but he could only work one of them. He was hard up for money, and the Inishmurray lode looked richest, so he sold the North Cedar to Leland Hartson for five hundred dollars cash. It was an honest deal, but Clancy came out on the short end. Hartson had to tunnel down almost a mile before he could tell for certain, but the North Cedar turned out to be much richer than the Inishmurray, and the Inishmurray had nothing but trouble in all the years they mined it."
There were more pictures mounted on the wall beside the display of opium-smoking accessories, and Dean paused again, peering closer at one print, faded with age. A crowd gathered near the base of an oak tree, faces full of frozen emotion ranging from rage to something akin to joy as they watched the figure dangling from a sturdy branch, a thick rope knotted around his neck. Someone had written a date across the bottom of the daguerreotype: May 6, 1854.
"Well, happy anniversary," Dean murmured before turning to Grace and indicating the picture with a tip of his head.
"Looks like that was an interesting neck-tie party," he said noncommittally. "This is that tree in the park, right?"
Once again, he was extremely conscious of Grace as she moved to stand beside him, static electricity between them causing her long, black hair to float out as if to attach itself to him, bringing with it the light scent of her shampoo. She smoothed it self-consciously, her eyes skittering to his as she pulled it forward over her opposite shoulder, out of the way, and Dean grinned.
There was a lot to be said for chemistry.
"Quon-Jin Chin," Grace said, tapping delicately with one finger on the image of the hanged man. "He was the most powerful Chinese in Rattlesnake—actually, in most of the Mother Lode. Some said he swindled his countrymen, took advantage of their weakness by providing them with opium, but he claimed only to be a businessman. Most of the white community feared him, although he had enough influence that they generally tolerated him."
"Stretched his neck for him," Dean observed. "That doesn't sound very tolerant to me."
Grace turned, gazing up at him, and once again his brain headed south, intrigued by the flawlessness of her complexion, the warmth of her dark eyes, her prettiness marred only by the frown-line between her brows.
"Remember I showed you how we honor our ancestors in the joss house? Well, no one honors Quon-Jin. The sin he committed was unpardonable, and it prompted a terrible race-war in the county that almost finished the Chinese here. Even so, there were many of the Chinese community who spoke out against what he had done, saying that he deserved his punishment. Based on my reading, I have to agree with them."
Dean looked back at the daguerreotype, noting again the upturned faces of the crowd around the hanging tree. The majority were white, but not all—sprinkled throughout were a handful of black men and several who could be Hispanic. It was hard to tell, but Dean thought that Chin was the only Asian in the picture.
"What did he do?" he asked.
"Let me show you."
Taking his elbow gently, Grace steered him toward a wooden filing cabinet near the reception desk, opening the drawer labeled A-D and pulling out a thin folder. The tab on it read "Chinese" in what looked like black grease-pencil.
"Do you want to sit? It can't be very comfortable for you, standing with that brace. Please, join me on the settee."
She sat on a threadbare loveseat and smiled up at him invitingly, giving him little choice but to sit close beside her. Not that he minded. Truth be told, his knee was starting to hurt again, and he was more than a little tired. Damn drugs. Didn't seem to be bothering his libido, though…
Once he was settled, Grace opened the folder and extracted a yellowed photocopy of an old newspaper article, handing it to him.
"CHINAMAN HANGED!!!" the headline screamed. "VIGILANCE COMMITTEE AVENGES LITTLE KATIE'S DEATH!"
"Ah," Dean murmured, taking the brittle paper gingerly. "I'm guessin' this is Rattlesnake's most famous murder."
The prose was purple, of course, filled with lurid details describing Quon-Jin Chin's final moments, but the upshot was simple. A little girl had been brutally murdered behind Eureka Street, and an eyewitness—Agnes Markham, in fact—named Chin as the killer. He'd been given a kangaroo trial and sentenced to death, with his punishment meted out that same afternoon.
Dean frowned, squinting to read the blurred type. "Who's this Katie? Seems like she was pretty popular."
"Actually, some people think that Katie Kaheny might be one of Rattlesnake's ghosts," Grace told him. "She was quite a well-known entertainer, even though she was only eight years old when she died. They called her 'the Little Darling of the Mother Lode,' and people came from all over Gold Rush country to see her sing and dance. They say that gold nuggets rained down around her when she performed, that's how much the miners loved her."
"I don't know," Dean said, mockingly doubtful. "Could be they were just throwin' rocks."
The young woman laughed, patting his arm as if to quell his irreverence. "Katie and her mother lived in Rattlesnake for several years—they came from San Francisco just after the second big fire here. It wiped out the whole south side of town, and Katie actually donated quite a bit of money to help rebuild. Well, her mother managed her money, of course, but it certainly helped their standing in the community."
"I'm guessin' that ol' Quon-Jin wasn't considered quite as upstanding a pillar." Dean looked up from the news article in his hand, to the small display of opium-smoking paraphernalia, to the daguerreotype of Chin's hanging.
Grace shrugged, her voice gone curiously flat. "Like I said, he was Chinese. To many of the whites in the mining towns, the Chinese were less than human. Would you like to hear something ironic, Dean? The name 'Quon-Jin' actually means 'Bright Gold.' Do you suppose his parents knew when he was born that he was destined to end his life in a time and place that worshipped gold?"
It took a long moment for Dean to respond, his thoughts on John Winchester's last words to his oldest son, on what their dad might have known about Sam, about the future. Watch out for Sammy, Dean, he'd said. What must it have been like, to die believing there was something evil in your youngest boy, so evil that one day your oldest might have to kill him?
Dean cleared his throat. "I don't put much stock in destiny, and I don't think any parent likes to think about the end of their kids' lives," he said gruffly.
After another second, he turned to her, handing back the photocopy and donning his favorite charming smile. "So, Quon-Jin means 'Bright Gold.' And Grace is Chinese for…?"
She laughed, quickly recovering from whatever had bothered her earlier. "You're smooth, Radon Man. 'Grace' is actually the English translation for part of my Chinese name."
"Which is?"
"Xiuying."
She laughed again as he tried it out, enunciating carefully but still managing to mangle it until she put a hand out, her fingers pressed gently against his lips.
"Please, call me Grace!"
Dean really liked the way her eyes sparkled. "Yeah, I think you're right. So, does it mean anything? Xiuying?" This time he got it right.
"'Graceful flower,'" she replied. "Like I said, my parents didn't have to be too creative to come up with my American name."
"Were they born in China?"
Grace raised her right hand briefly, as though taking an oath. "Full-blooded American, here; daughter of same. My family has been in the United States for several generations. What about you? Tell me something about yourself, besides the fact that you work for the Weather Service."
He shifted a little on the loveseat, replanting his braced leg so that it was slightly more comfortable. "Also American," he said solemnly, making her laugh one more time. "And 'Dean' is Kansan for 'dashing and handsome.'"
She chuckled, ducking her head, looking up at him almost demurely, and for just a second he was taken by the odd mix of her Old World charm and thoroughly modern confidence.
"Ah. 'Junjei,'" she translated. "It suits you."
"I always thought so." He tried for a grin that was cocky yet humble; wasn't sure he pulled it off, but she didn't seem to mind. "But you're not from around here, right? I mean, a smart girl like you, Rattlesnake doesn't seem like the kind of place that would--"
There was a funny look on her face, then, and he trailed off, not quite sure how he had erred. Or even if he had erred.
Grace set her lips primly. "Would you like to hear something else ironic?"
She rose, brushing past him and moving once more to the wall where the daguerreotype was mounted. Again she tapped the glass with her fingernail, directly atop the figure of the hanging man.
"Quon-Jin Chin was my grandfather, eight times back. After his hanging, and after the race riot that followed Katie Kaheny's murder, our family were the only Chinese who remained in Rattlesnake. It's kind of like I've been here forever."
-:- -:- -:-
Over lunch at the Scotchbroom Café, Sam and Erica discussed the antipodes: history and current events; black holes and deep-sea vents; global warming and the last mini-Ice Age.
To Sam, in some respects it was oddly like breathing again. He savored the mental stimulation, ideas leaping from ideas spontaneously, sparking friendly, lively debate. Sparking a bone-deep thirst in him for intellectual challenge, where the subject had nothing to do with life or death, nothing to do with anything remotely supernatural. Talking with Erica was nothing like talking with Dean—from their father's death to the demon virus to Sam's dark destiny, the conversations with Dean this year had become filled with pitfalls, if the brothers even talked at all. But with Erica, almost everything seemed fair game for discussion.
Inevitably, though, their talk turned to Stanford.
"After sophomore year, I'd see you around campus every once in a while," Erica told him, nibbling on a slice of jalapeno. "Then our paths didn't cross so much. Guess you weren't studying geology or engineering, huh?"
Sam laughed around his last mouthful of sandwich.
"No," he said, swiping a napkin at the mustard on his lower lip, "not so much. I was pre-law."
"Are you in law school, then?"
"Uh, no. This, uh, opportunity came up to work with my brother, so I kinda ended up in the family business."
Stirring a packet of sugar into her iced tea with her straw, Erica raised an inquiring eyebrow at him. "You're in mining?"
It threw him for just a moment, until he remembered that Steve Hartson had introduced him as a cousin, and Sam grinned, a little embarrassed but mostly amused.
"No, Dean and I are security consultants. We're just in town visiting Steve for a couple of days."
Erica leaned forward with interest. "Security consultants. What, like executive protection? Or more like smoke-detector installers?"
"We do a little of everything, actually," he replied casually, hoping his vague response would encourage her to move on to another topic.
If anything, she seemed even more intrigued.
"Are you local? I mean, Bay Area? Central Valley?"
He crumpled the napkin in his fist. "Our work pretty much takes us all over the country—we spend a lot of time on the road."
It didn't feel like a lie—wasn't one, in fact—until Erica asked about their base of operations. He couldn't very well tell her that the Impala was their headquarters, so Sam finally opted for South Dakota, thinking of Bobby Singer's salvage yard and all the time they'd spent there recently. It was as good a place as any.
Somehow, his old classmate still seemed extremely impressed. "Wow. I'll bet you can't tell me about any of your jobs, either, can you?" she asked. "Confidentiality and all that? Your life sounds very cloak-and-dagger."
"You have no idea."
Erica beamed at him for a moment from across the table. "I'm glad we ran into one another, Sam," she said.
"Yeah," he replied, returning the smile. "Yeah, me, too."
And he meant it.
-:- -:- -:-
There was an awkward moment when the check arrived, both of them throwing startled looks at the waitress and then at one another.
"I'm sorry," Erica said, turning again to the waitress. "Could you bring us separate tabs?"
Sam blinked, ready to protest until he suddenly realized that he had a five and some ones on him, but that was it. Dean had most of the cash, and they were both pretty broke, depending on the North Cedar job to ease their current financial straits.
"I'm sorry," Erica apologized again, this time to Sam. "I can get reimbursed for my lunch, but I need a receipt."
"Well…no. No, that's fine. But did you want dessert or something?" he asked, trying to save face. "How about some ice cream, on me?"
She brightened at the suggestion, and the awkwardness of the lunch tab was on its way to being forgotten.
They paid their separate checks, Sam ordering a couple of ice cream cones and adding two dollars to the little pile of bills he handed the waitress. Then, while Erica hit the ladies' room, he wandered out onto the sidewalk, leisurely eating his vanilla cone from one hand while holding Erica's chocolate one in the other. When his cell rang, Sam stuffed the last of his dessert into his mouth and fished the phone out of his pocket, swallowing hurriedly before answering.
"Never gonna keep your girlish figure, you eat both of those," Dean said without preamble.
Chocolate ice cream began to dribble down his fingers as Sam scanned the sidewalks on either side of the street. Tourists and locals ambled casually past the knick-knack shops and drugstore, past the bar and the museum and some kind of historical landmark, but there was no sign of his brother.
"Hey," he replied, still chewing, unable to keep the color from rising in his cheeks. "Where are you?"
"Seriously, man. Nice ass."
"What?"
"Not yours, you moron—hers!"
Erica appeared at his side suddenly, laughing as she took the dripping cone from him.
"Sorry!" she said.
"Dude, make her lick it off your fingers."
"No! Uh, no, Erica—it's no probl…uh…"
Sam was immediately distracted as he watched her lap the chocolate mess off the cone with her tongue, Dean's voice in his ear.
"Now that's what I'm talking about, Sammy!"
Sam shook himself mentally. "See this?" he growled, turning away from Erica and shifting his grip on the phone slightly to extend his middle finger. "Where are you?"
Dean ignored the finger and the question. "Who is she?"
"The state mine inspector, Erica Holbrook."
"Uh-huh. So, what—you two giving one another private inspections?"
Sam reddened further as he looked up and down the sidewalks, still unable to spot his brother anywhere.
"I know her from school, Dean," he said impatiently. "We went to lunch so we could catch up. What are you doing?"
"I'm researchin', Sammy, like I'm supposed to be doin'."
Over the phone, Sam could hear the faint murmur of a young woman's voice and Dean's muffled reply about 'little brother.'
"Researching, right. Who's that with you?" he asked.
"Wave, Sammy."
Sam turned sharply, looking across Eureka Street at the bar and the museum, but the glare on the windows prevented him from seeing inside either one. "Dude, what the hell are you—"
"Wave!" his brother barked, and Sam offered a half-hearted salute, which he quickly turned into an awkward one-armed stretch as Erica looked up at him curiously.
"Hey, Steve's up at the North Cedar—everything went okay with that, uh, project, so I'm going with Erica out into the field this afternoon, to see a couple other mines."
"Have her in by midnight, and be sure to treat her like a lady."
Dean chuckled lewdly, and Sam's brows knit in aggravation. "The mines are local, Dean—we'll be done in a few hours."
"Jesus, Sammy, have I taught you nothing? And I meant my car, you moron…you can treat your girlfriend there however she wants you to treat her, although knowing you, you'll be done in five minutes, no matter what. Speaking of which, what kind of protection you got?"
"Dean!"
"Have fun!" Laughing, Dean broke off.
"Your brother?" Erica asked, biting into the cone now that she'd worked her way through the mound of melting chocolate.
"Yeah, my jerk of a brother." Sam made another visual sweep of the sidewalk, but wherever Dean was, he was still out of view.
Sighing, Sam pocketed the cell, realizing suddenly that his other hand was still sticky with ice cream. Then he caught sight of the brown smear across Erica's chin and smiled.
"I'll get some napkins—then let's hit the road."
-:- -:- -:-
Dean watched bemusedly as Sam came back out of the café with a handful of napkins. He and the girl exchanged more words and smiles while she wiped off her chin before scrabbling in her purse, coming up with what looked like a small bottle of hand sanitizer. Whatever it was, she poured it liberally into Sam's massive palm, then into her own.
Dean rolled his eyes as the two made a little show of slapping hands to spread the sanitizer, the girl laughing and Sam's smile so wide his dimples were apparent all the way across the street. Then they climbed into a giant white Yukon with state tags, Sam on the passenger side, and disappeared down Eureka toward the east end of Rattlesnake.
Jesus, Dean thought, what the hell was going on in this town?
The fan circled lazily overhead as he made his way toward the back of the museum, sitting down again at the old roll-top desk where he'd been culling through stacks of folders, old books with broken spines and faded lettering, newspapers crackling with age. With a sigh, he picked up a heavy leather volume containing fifty years' worth of the local historical society's newsletter and began leafing through it, looking for anything that might give him a lead on who or what had attacked Sam and Steve at the North Cedar Mine.
If Grace was curious about what someone from the Weather Service wanted with Rattlesnake's old news, she kept it to herself, leaving Dean to his business while she went about hers.
Initially it was hard not to be distracted by her. She moved economically through the museum, dusting and polishing, seeing that everything was in order before turning to her paperwork. Every movement was—well, graceful, Dean thought, before yanking his eyes back to the task at hand until the next time he caught himself watching her. Finally, however, he settled down to business.
Records regarding accidents at the North Cedar Mine were scattered few and far between. Maybe it had been an incredibly safe operation; more likely, the bad press had been kept to a minimum in deference to one of the area's richest families and principal employer. It was frustrating as hell, though, finding nothing Dean could reasonably relate to what had happened to Sammy and Steve down in the second drift.
C'mon, Casper, he thought, grabbing another volume of newsletters and opening it with a silent groan. Where you hiding?
By the end of two hours of ass-numbing research, Dean had a list of three names that matched those Sam had written down in the Founders Cemetery, and four more fatalities dating from the 1930s. He'd also found a little blurb about an explosion that had buried three "celestials" in an ancillary shaft in 1853. There were no names given for the Chinese miners, and no effort had been made to save them; presumably, their bodies were still somewhere in the North Cedar.
He'd made other discoveries, as well. For one, as soon as she had arrived in town, Agnes Markham had formed a Ladies Society determined to save Rattlesnake from "heathens and Chinamen." And the reason why Grace's family had stayed in town after their patriarch had been lynched? It seemed that Quon-Jin's widow had ultimately taken over Delilah Reardon's job as local madam, running an active stable of 'singsong girls' who serviced the nearby mining camps. Interesting that Grace hadn't shared that little tidbit with him, Dean thought.
An assortment of loose pages had been stuffed into an old envelope in one of the folders, and he laid the papers out on the desk, just to be thorough. Several were stuck together, and Dean carefully peeled off a small news clipping adhered to the back of another document, a faint line forming between his brows as he read. Barely more than an inch high and regarding the accidental death of a toddler, the squib was dated January, 1854, the same year Katie Kaheny had died. The child, three-year-old Wren Markham, had choked to death in her crib at The Baron Hotel while her mother napped nearby.
Dean frowned, thinking back to the morning's visit to the Founders Cemetery, picturing the Markhams' gravesite, when suddenly Grace called out a warning.
"Prepare yourself!"
Dean jerked his head up from the clipping, reaching quickly behind him for the grip of his hand-gun. Then the museum door opened with a bang and a flood of schoolchildren spilled in, accompanied by a trail of harried-looking adults Dean assumed were teachers and parent volunteers.
The two dozen seven- and eight-year-olds moved like a wave upon sand, rushing fluidly through the display cases and around the antique furnishings until half of them dashed up against Grace in her colorful costume and the other half against him. Then the flow stopped abruptly, wide eyes taking each of them in, weighing them against known quantities in the real world, finding them both decidedly out of place.
One of the women clapped her hands sharply, her voice strident. "Attention, please! Boys and girls, I'd like you to say good afternoon to Miss Xiuying, who runs the Rattlesnake Museum."
There was a dutiful chorus of greetings with a lot of unique pronunciations of Grace's Chinese name, and then Dean listened with interest to Grace's smooth five-minute spiel about Gold Rush history. The kids listened, too—there was no reason they shouldn't. In her silk pajamas, Grace was entrancing, exotic and beautiful as she told them about life in an 1850s mining town. Whether or not the kids took in what she was saying, most of them couldn't take their eyes off her, nor could Dean. Warm and soft-spoken, she was an elegant butterfly flitting from one display case to another as she showed the children the museum's ancient treasures. He thought she was simply amazing.
As she wound down, however, several of the children closest to Dean began to fidget impatiently, watching him from the corners of their eyes, whispering amongst themselves.
When Grace's talk ended, they turned on him with avid curiosity.
"Are you a zibbit?" one little girl piped, and Dean wet his lower lip.
"A zibbit? Uh, no, I don't think so," he replied uncertainly.
The girl nudged a boy standing next to her. "See? I didn't think he was a dummy," she said with a sniff. "He's not wearing the right clothes."
Ah, Dean thought. 'Exhibit.' It had been a long time since he'd spoken second-grader.
"Who are you?" the boy challenged Dean at once. "You're not with our school, and if you're not a dummy, I don't think you're supposed to be here."
Dean let his eyebrows crawl up his forehead. Cocky little bastard, for somebody so short.
"Listen, squirt, I'm not a zibbit, and I'm not a dummy, and—" He caught the amused remonstrance in Grace's eye from across the room, and backed off at once. "I'm a friend of Miss Xiuying," he finished lamely.
"You're her boyfriend!" another little girl shrilled excitedly, and suddenly everyone was anxious to see the man who had captured the exotic Miss Xiuying's heart.
"Do you kiss her?"
"What's that metal thing on your leg?"
"Are you Chinese, too?"
"Are you a miner?"
"Did you discover gold?"
"What's your name?"
The questions came in a flurry as the children clamored around him, examining him so closely it was Dean's turn to squirm.
"Help!" he called to Grace good-naturedly. "I'm a zibbit!"
She pulled herself out of her conversation with the teacher, moving easily through the displays to the children surrounding Dean, dropping to their level, smiling warmly as she put her arms around their shoulders.
"You found Junjei!" she told them with delight. "I'll tell you a little secret—he's one of my favorite parts of the entire museum."
"He's cute," a girl with curly red locks said solemnly, and Dean couldn't help but preen when several little heads nodded vigorously. "Are you gonna marry him?"
Grace caught his eye and winked. "Not this week, but maybe someday. I like to keep my options open."
Then the teacher clapped her hands again, announcing it was time to move along and to please not get any more fingerprints on the display cases. The tide of small bodies ebbed back toward the front of the museum.
"You were awesome, Miss Xiuying," Dean told Grace with a grin. "Best zibbit in the whole damn town."
She pressed a finger to his mouth, a mock scowl on her face. "Language, Junjei! There are children present!"
In fact, there was one child still with them, a little girl Dean hadn't noticed before, tugging gently but insistently at Grace's long, silk sleeve.
"Who's that man?" she asked, pointing, and Grace smiled again into Dean's eyes.
"I thought you all decided that he was my boyfriend," she said.
"Not that man," the child replied, her tone chastising, the hand with which she pointed moving slightly. "That man!"
Dean whirled to look, his hackles rising, but there was no one there to see.
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TBC. Thanks for reading! Comments are welcomed.