Slowly, the people began to return to their duties, but Kane’s mind was on the deaths that had been caused by Jacob Fenton. In spite of what he’d said to Pam, he wouldn’t allow Zach to travel on any wagon to the site of the mine disaster until he was ready to drive one himself.
It was nearly sundown when Kane climbed into a seat and started the trip up to the Little Pamela mine. Zach was beside him, and the boy didn’t speak until they were well on their way.
“Did my grandfather really kill the people? Was it really his fault?”
Kane started to tell his son just what he thought of Fenton, of how the man wanted money so badly that he had cheated Kane out of what was his, but something inside him made him stop. Whatever else the old man was, he was Zachary’s grandfather, and the boy had every right to love him.
“I think sometimes that people get confused about money. They think that money can give them everything that they want in life, and so they go after it any way that they can. It doesn’t matter whether they have to cheat or steal to get it, or even that they may take the money away from someone else, they think that gettin’ the money is worth all they have to do.”
“My mother said that you’re richer than my grandfather. Does that mean that you stole it, too? Did you cheat people?”
“No,” Kane answered softly. “I guess I was lucky. All I had to do was give up my life to get the money.”
They were quiet as they travelled the rest of the way to the mine, and Kane experienced again the horror of first entering the scene of the explosion.
By the mouth of the mine lay eight bodies, undraped, before they were taken away to the machine shop where Blair, another female doctor, and two male doctors were working.
Houston, her hair straggling about her cheeks, her dress soiled, came to the back of the wagon as Kane let down the board.
“This is wonderful of you,” she began, as she lifted a case of condensed milk and started to hand it to a waiting woman. “You really have no part in this. You—.”
Kane took the heavy case from her. “I live here too, and in a way these mines belong to me. Maybe if I’d collected on Fenton, I could have prevented this from happening. Houston, you look tired. Why don’t you take the wagon back
and go home and rest?”
“They need everyone. The rescuers are succumbing to the gas and they’re having difficulty reaching the men.”
“Here! Give me a drink of that,” said a familiar voice behind them, and Kane turned to see his uncle Rafe downing a mug of water.
Houston was sure that she’d never seen Kane’s smile so big or showing so much gladness before. He thumped his uncle on the back so hard that the mug went flying across the ground. Rafe said a few well chosen words about Kane’s exuberance, but Kane just stood and grinned until Rafe stopped cursing and winked at Houston before he went back to the mine mouth.
Kane went to the mine where he saw Leander, blackened from the smoke of the explosion, just coming up from the inside. He handed Lee a dipper of water. “Many more?”
Lee drank the water greedily. “Too many.” He held up his hands and looked at them in the fading light. “The bodies are burned and, when you touch them, the skin comes off on your hands.”
There was nothing Kane could say, but his thoughts went to the man who was responsible for all this.
“Thanks for the food,” Lee was saying. “It’s been more help than you know. Tomorrow, more people will be here, the press, relatives, the mine inspectors, government people, and the curious. Food is something that sometimes gets overlooked. I better get back now,” he said, turning away.
Kane made his way through the growing number of people, found Houston and his son and put them on one of the empty freight wagons. “We’re going to organize the rest of the food,” was all he said as he started down the hill. When Houston’s head nodded against his shoulder, he put his arm around her and held her so she could sleep the rest of the way into Chandler.
Houston and Zach slept for a few hours in the back of the wagon while Edan and Kane wakened townspeople and purchased goods to be taken to the mine. In the morning, they went to the high school and asked that the children be dismissed for the day so they could help gather the needed goods.
The students purchased vegetables, jam, fruit; they talked their mothers into cooking the food and boiling hundreds of eggs. They collected clothes, dishes, firewood, and carried everything to receiving stations.
And all day, the news came down from the mountain: twenty-two bodies found so far, so burned, bloated, and mutilated as to make identification almost impossible. Twenty-five more bodies were expected to be found by the rescuers who were working in two shifts. So far, one rescuer had died.
At midday, Kane drove a heavily laden wagon to the mine and, as he unloaded bundles of blankets and hundreds of diapers, he saw the rescuers coming to the surface and more than one of them vomited on the ground.
“It’s the smell,” said a man beside Kane. “The bodies down there smell so bad the men can’t stand it.”
For a moment, Kane stood there staring, then he grabbed someone’s saddled horse and tore down the mountainside—heading for Jacob Fenton’s house with all the speed he could muster.
He hadn’t been up the drive to that house since he’d left years before, but the familiarity was so strong that he felt that he’d never been away. He didn’t wait to knock on the door but rammed his foot through the leaded-glass panel and walked through the door that barely stayed on its hinges.
“Fenton!” he bellowed as servants came running from every part of the house, two footmen grabbing his shoulders to restrain him, but he shrugged them off as if they weighed nothing. He knew the arrangement of the downstairs of the house well enough and soon found the dining room, where Jacob sat eating alone, at the head of the table.
They looked at each other for a moment, Kane’s face red with his rage, his body heaving.