It roared just as she’d known it would—the sound of a train. It wasn’t a frightening sound, though. Familiar, really. Took her mind back to other places. Why, it sounded just like the old Monon, the train of her youth.
She walked to the edge of the yard and waited for it, and she couldn’t keep the smile off her face now or the tears off her cheeks. Silly, to stand here and cry as she faced it, but the cloud was just so beautiful. There was magic here, and she’d been allowed to see it.
What more could you ask?
62
CAMPBELL STOOD WITH A lantern in his hand and Shadrach Hunter at his side as the rain poured down around them. The boy worked in a shallow ditch below them, pulling aside broken slabs of limestone.
“See there!” Campbell shouted. “There it is, Shadrach. The spring, just as I promised.”
The lantern light cast a white glow on the shallow, softly bubbling pool that was exposed as the boy removed the rocks. When Campbell held the lantern directly over the top of it, the pool seemed to absorb the light and hide it.
“Boy, get him a bottle of it.”
The boy took a green glass bottle from his coat pocket. He removed the stopper and held it upside down so Shadrach could see that it was empty, and then he knelt and dipped the bottle into the pool. When it was full, he straightened and handed it to Shadrach, who took a drink.
“You tell me,” Campbell said.
“Tastes like honey,” Shadrach Hunter said. His deep voice sounded uneasy. “Like liquid sugar.”
“I know it. This is what the boy’s uncle put into that liquor, and there ain’t never been any other liquor like it. You know that, Shadrach. You know that.”
“Yes,” Shadrach said and returned the bottle to the boy.
Campbell grinned, then shoved the boy with his free hand and said, “Cover it.”
The boy went back down into the ditch and replaced the stones. When he was done, the water could no longer be seen, and scarcely heard.
“Well, there you go,” Campbell said, switching the lantern from one hand to the other. It hissed when rain hit the glass. “You said you wouldn’t give me a dime unless you saw the spot, knew that it was real. You seen it now, haven’t you? It’s real enough.”
“It is, yes.”
Campbell tilted his head back, his face lost to the shadows. “Well, then. My part of the bargain is complete. Yours is not.”
Shadrach shifted, brought a hand out of his coat pocket and wiped it across his face, clearing some of the moisture away.
“Let’s bargain while we walk,” he said. “I want to get out of this rain.”
He started away from the spring without giving Campbell a chance to argue. There was a hill leading away from the spring, and as he walked up it, Campbell and the boy fell in behind him. They walked into the woods.
“What’s your plan?” Shadrach said.
“My plan? You know what it is! There’s a fortune sitting here, a fortune pooling out of the rocks. That old man never made more than a dozen jugs of whiskey at a time. He was a fool. Lacked the ambition to see what could be gained from this, the fortune that was waiting. Well, the boy knows how to make the liquor, too.”
“So you intend to… expand.” Shadrach had his face turned away from Campbell, walking through the woods with a brisk stride.
“Expand?” Campbell stared at Shadrach as if he’d spoken in Greek. “Hell, that’s too soft a word. I’m going to make more money than anybody in this valley ever dreamed of. I’ve got contacts in Chicago—Capone and all the rest of them. The network is there. All we need to do is handle the supply.”
“And you want me as an investor.”
“That’s all you need to be. You’ll get your share returned tenfold by the end of the year. Believe that.”
“Why me?” They’d crested the hill now and were walking along the spine of a wooded ridge. Campbell was on the left, closest to the brink.
“Hell, boy, everybody else is busted! You ain’t figured that out yet? You’re the last man left in the valley with dollars to his name.”
Shadrach Hunter smiled. “You want to see my dollars?”
“I’d like to utilize them, yes.”
Hunter stopped walking. He reached in his jacket and removed a silver money clip. Peeled the bills off and counted them. Fourteen bills—all ones.
“There you go,” he said, replacing the money in the clip and offering it to Campbell. “That’s my stockpile, Bradford.”
Campbell looked at him in disbelief. “What in the hell is the matter with you? I always heard you was cagey smart for a colored. Ruthless. You think I’m making a joke here? There’s a fortune to be made!”
“I believe you,” Shadrach Hunter said. “But I don’t have any money. That’s what I got—fourteen dollars.”
“Bullshit.”
Hunter shrugged and put the money clip back into his pocket. “Ain’t no shit but true shit, Bradford.”
“Everyone knows you been skimming for years. Just sticking it away somewhere. A damned miser, that’s what you are.”
“No, that’s what the gossiping old fools in this valley say I am. Truth is different.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Don’t have to, but refusing to believe ain’t going to line your pockets with dollars that I simply do not have.”
It was silent for a while. Then Campbell said, “You could have told me that days ago, you son of a bitch.”
“Wasn’t going to see the spring if I did that, was I? I wanted to know if there was anything to your talk. Now, look here, we can work on this. Find a way to raise a stake. I’ve tasted that liquor, and I believe what you say—there’s gold to be made from it. I just don’t have the cash you need. But I’ll work with you to see if—”
“Now you know where it is,” Campbell said. His voice had dropped in volume and darkened in tone. He’d turned to face Hunter, and his back was to the drop-off of the ridge now, no more than a few steps away. “You played me for a fool, got me to show you where it is.”
“Yes, and now that I know it’s real, we can try and figure out a way to raise—”
Campbell had to move the lantern again to go for his gun. He’d been holding the lantern in his right hand and he clearly didn’t like to shoot with his left, because he switched the lantern before he drew the weapon. That gave Shadrach Hunter enough time to see what was coming, and he actually fired first.
He shot through his coat pocket, and the gun was caught pointing down. The first bullet drilled Campbell square in the knee and dropped him, and the second went through his left side. Campbell finally cleared his gun then and returned fire from the ground, one shot that caught Shadrach Hunter in the forehead.
Hunter was dead by the time he hit the ground. Campbell’s mistake was in trying to stand. He lurched up but his wounded right leg collapsed beneath him. He gave a howl of pain and then fell backward, hit the ground, and rolled. The gun came free from his hand and then he slid over the lip of the ridge and there was a long rustling of leaves and a cry of pain.
“Damn it, boy, help me!”
The boy walked over to Shadrach Hunter and stared down at him. Then he leaned down and picked up Campbell’s weapon and walked to the crest of the ridge.
“Boy! Get down here and help me!”
The boy wrapped one hand around a thin sapling and leaned out over the edge. Campbell had slid all the way down the slope and into the edge of a wide pool of water, was in water up to his chest. He had one hand wrapped around a hanging root, and now he grunted and tried to heave himself up out of the pool. He couldn’t make it. He slid back down into the water and only the hand on the root kept him from going under. His efforts had placed him only deeper in the pool.