Thurston House Page 29

  John Harte was looking quietly at her. “You’re so young to have so much on your back, Miss Thurston. Don’t you ever want to just run away?”

  She looked at him honestly. “Yes. That’s when I come here. You must feel that way too sometimes.” He nodded and smiled at her. His life had been so much longer and fuller than hers. It seemed unfair that she should be trapped at her mines, and how unkind they were to her. He still heard it from his own men, and now and then someone she had fired or had refused to hire came to him. But they always went to the Thurston mines first because she paid so well. She couldn’t afford not to pay them well, they disliked working for her so much. It was nothing personal, but it hurt their dignity to work for a woman, even more so a young girl. As he had felt before, he suddenly wanted to protect her again, yet here she was, in her enormous, lovely house. She had her house in town, her vineyards, she had everything, and yet nothing at all. His little Indian squaw, Spring Moon, had more. She had peace, respect, security, and at least she had him.

  “It’s funny that we should wind up competitors, isn’t it?”

  She smiled and shrugged. “I suppose everything in life is like that. It’s all so coincidental, and so unexpected, and so odd. Like meeting you today.” She smiled.

  “I almost didn’t recognize you, with your hair like that.”

  This time she laughed. “I can’t very well wear it this way at the mines, then they’d really give me a bad time … can you imagine the things they’d say?” She began to laugh even harder then and suddenly he was laughing too. There were times when she was just a very young girl, and no more complicated than that. She was wonderfully unassuming and uncomplicated, very down to earth, and then one realized who she really was, and it was startling. She was a dozen people woven into one, and yet she seemed so simple and so direct. It was confusing and delightful all at the same time, and it enchanted him.

  “You know, I like you like this.” He was smiling at her, and without a second thought, he reached out and touched her hair with his hand. In Napa, he would never have dared to do a thing like that, yet here she was almost a different girl, and there was no harm in it, and for an instant, he even forgot Spring Moon.

  “Thank you.” She blushed as she said the words, and his hand drifted from her hair to her cheek, and then suddenly she pulled back. She wasn’t used to anyone being that close to her, not since her father had died, and it startled her now. She got up to pour him another drink, but his eyes never left her face, and when she returned, he spoke gently to her.

  “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  “It’s all right … I … it doesn’t matter.” She sat down and looked at him earnestly. “It’s difficult to be two people at once. I think I had to harden myself in order to run the mines … I think I forgot that I was ever anyone else … and before that, actually, I was only a child.” She was barely more than that now, and he was aware of it, but on the other hand, he was also aware of something more. And he also suddenly sensed how trusting and foolish she was. He had the vague feeling that there was no one else in the house with them. He saw no evidence of servants anywhere, and on the one hand she was so guarded and so careful, and on the other hand, she had trusted him, which she shouldn’t have done. His brows knit as he looked at her, feeling suddenly fatherly.

  “Do you stay alone in this house, Miss Thurston?”

  She smiled at him. She always had, since her father died. “It doesn’t frighten me. I like coming here alone.” She was a strange, solitary girl, but he thought her foolish here.

  “You’re not in the country here. I think it’s very dangerous.”

  “I can defend myself.” She smiled, but he wasn’t as sure.

  “I wouldn’t depend on that. What if you can’t find your gun?” He remembered hearing about the shot fired at Dan.

  “It’s never very far from me, Mr. Harte.”

  “That’s reassuring.” He smiled at her and she laughed.

  “I’m sorry … I didn’t mean to suggest …”

  “Why not?” His face was serious again. “You shouldn’t have trusted me either, you know.”

  She looked at him very seriously. “I have several times been very angry at you, but you have never behaved improperly toward me, Mr. Harte.” She still remembered his condolence call when her father had died, and he had been nothing but kind to her then. “I think I have a good sense of people by now.”

  “You shouldn’t rely on that. Why don’t you bring your housekeeper with you when you come to town?”

  “She gets seasick on the boat,” she smiled, “and really, I’m perfectly all right here. If I’m safe at the mines alone until almost midnight every night, what can happen to me here?”

  Now he really looked concerned. “Do your men know that?”

  She shrugged. “Some of them. I’ve always worked late, just as my father did. There’s a lot of work to do in a day, and I don’t like to fall behind.” He did the same thing at his own mine, but it was dangerous for her to be alone like that, no wonder Dan had come to bother her. It was fortunate he hadn’t come again, at least Harte didn’t think he had and he didn’t want to ask her now.

  “I just think you should be more careful than that. Bring your work home with you.”

  She smiled, touched at his concern. Other than Hannah, bellowing at her, no one had done that in a long time, and she told him that. “I really am all right though. And I appreciate your concern.”

  “It would be easier for you if you just let me buy you out one day.” A flicker of anger danced across her eyes and he held up a hand. “That was not an offer. It was a statement. It would be easier, and you know it too. But easier doesn’t appear to be what you want.” He stood up then and bowed, as she felt her ire subside. “I bow to your wishes.”

  She grinned at him, suddenly mischievous again. “Too bad you didn’t think of doing that before, Mr. Harte.”

  “Now, now, Miss Thurston. I had to try after all. And now, I withdraw.” But she still wasn’t sure she trusted him. “Maybe now we can be friends.”

  “That would be very nice.” She smiled at him and he looked at her with something serious in his eyes. This was the man whose child had died in her father’s arms, she reminded herself. He was not just a greedy miner trying to buy her out. And her father had thought well of him, perhaps he had even been worthy of that. She wasn’t sure about him now, except that she respected him. He was intelligent, and he ran his business decently and well.

  “I would like to be your friend, Miss Thurston.” She nodded, looking sadly at him. She had never had a friend, other than the little girls she had gone to school with in St. Helena. But they were all married now, and had children of their own, and they no longer spoke to her. She was far too outrageous now that she ran her father’s mines. She needed a friend, someone to talk things over with. She wondered how his Indian girl would feel if she rode over to the Harte mines to talk to him from time to time. She was weighing it in her mind as he watched her face and then she looked at him with cautious eyes.

  “I’d like that, Mr. Harte. I wonder if that would be possible once we’re back at our respective mines.”

  “We could try it sometime, I’ll come and visit you. Would that be all right?” There was no one else to ask. No mother, father, aunt, or chaperone. And he was actually asking her something she didn’t understand. He wasn’t even sure he understood it himself, but he had seen her walking along the street, and she had taken his breath away, and now they had sat there for two hours like two people who had never met before, and he found himself so taken with her that he didn’t want to lose her again, no matter who she became when she went back to the mine. He knew that this girl would be hidden there somewhere, and he didn’t want to forget what she had been like tonight. She had said nothing unusual to him at all, but the look in her eyes had touched him to his very core. Matilda had looked a little like that, but she hadn’t been nearly as beautiful, nor as intelligent. And now th
at he was sitting there with her, it struck him how remarkable it was that at twenty-one, this girl ran one of the country’s greatest mines. She was rare in a thousand different ways, all of which struck him now, and he had to tear himself away when he left, and as she closed the door, and listened to his car drive away, she felt a stirring in her soul that she had never felt before. She kept remembering the look in his eyes, or something he had said to her, and he haunted her as she sat in the garden the next day, thinking of him. She was taking the steamer back to Napa that night, and it was ridiculous that she should be so taken with him. She had seen him dozens of other times, even as a child, and for three years she had detested him, and yet suddenly … she could barely force him from her mind. There was a quiet subtle strength to him, a force, and yet a warmth, one felt totally safe whenever he was around. And she was aware now that she had felt that about him before, but she had been too busy being angry at him to pay much attention to him. But it was ridiculous that she should think of him so constantly now. He bothered her all afternoon, and again on the boat going north, and again as she drove home, and as she rode to the mines the next day, she was still thinking of him, just as he was thinking of her. And when he reached his mine, he heard the news from Dan that she discovered as she walked in her office door. The toll was written on the chalkboard sitting on her desk, and she suddenly realized that she should have noticed it the instant she arrived. There had been an explosion deep in the mine, and the damage to the shaft had been minimal, but more than thirty men had died. Thirty-one, to be exact, as she told John Harte when he came to visit her the next day, and she looked at him with grim eyes.

  “They could at least have sent me a telegram. Instead, they said nothing at all, and there I sat with flowers in my hair.…” Her eyes were red-rimmed and she was furious at herself.

  “You have a right to more than just this in your life, you know. They go home too at night. They have children and wives and they get drunk. What the hell do you do?” He was angry at her for being so hard on herself.

  “I’m responsible for all of them.” She shouted the words at him and he grabbed her arm.

  “You’re responsible for yourself too, God damn it, Sabrina.” It was the first time he had called her by her first name, and she liked the sound of it on his lips. “You owe yourself a lot more than just this pile of dirt. Don’t you understand that, you damn thickheaded bitch?” And as he said the words, she smiled at him. Something strange had happened to them as they sat in Thurston House. After all these years, they had become friends.

  And then her eyes looked sad again. “I understand that thirty-one of my men are dead. And I wasn’t here.”

  “Would that have changed anything?”

  “It might have changed the way the others felt.” But she knew that wasn’t true. Nothing would ever change that, and rather than tell her that, he only shook his head.

  “You’ve given them enough. You’ve given them three years of your life, which is more than anyone has a right to ask from you, for God’s sake. I’ve done the same damn thing at my mine, and they won’t thank you for it. When you die, they won’t even care.” But Sabrina knew that wasn’t true. She remembered the men lined up five deep when her father died and she brought him home.

  She spoke in a sad soft voice. “They remember it.”

  His eyes met hers and held. “It’s too late then. Who cares? Your father didn’t care.” He remembered it too. “It meant nothing to him. You know what mattered most to him? You. Maybe that’s something you’d better think about. You are what meant everything to him”—John Harte felt a lump rise in his throat—“just as my children meant everything to me.”

  She looked at him and felt for his pain. “Is that why you never married again? Because of them?”

  He didn’t deny it to her. He wanted to be honest with her. He liked her too much not to be. “That’s right.” He knew that she must have heard about Spring Moon, but he didn’t want to discuss that with her. There was too much impropriety involved, and he respected her. “I didn’t ever want to care that much again. I just wanted to be comfortable. But I couldn’t bear to feel that way again, to lose someone I loved.” His eyes filled at the memory, and it had been twenty-three years since Matilda and Jane and Barnaby died.

  “I think that’s how my father felt about his first fiancée. That’s what Hannah says. He didn’t want to get married again for another eighteen years.”

  “And I don’t think I ever will”—he looked hard at her—“but at least I had that once. You never have, and you never will, if you lock yourself up here.”

  She looked angrily at him again. “You’re trying to talk me out of the mine again, aren’t you?”

  “No, I’m not, dammit. But I’m trying to tell you something that’s important for you, or at least it should be. Don’t give these people everything you’ve got, Sabrina. They’ll never give it back to you. Give it to someone who deserves it.…” He felt a lump catch in his throat again and he wasn’t sure why. “Give it to someone you love … find someone you care about. Go enjoy your beautiful house in San Francisco, live your life. Don’t just waste it here. Your father couldn’t have wanted that for you, little one. It just isn’t fair.” She was touched as much by the look in his eye as by his words, and she nodded slowly at him, and then she went to see about her men with his words ringing in her ears.

  24

  The worst fire in more than fifty years of mining history swept the Harte mines in August of 1909. The ravages of the fire almost defied description as the inferno continued to burn and blaze underground for five days. Men were dragged out burned to a crisp and there was almost no way to rescue them. The gas fires burned so hot that the rescue teams were forced back each time they attempted to reach the trapped miners. But for five days, John Harte struggled to do what he could. He burned both arms badly, and his back as well, but he saved more than twenty of them himself, and by the end of the second day, Sabrina Thurston was there. She worked along with his men, with rescue teams from other towns, with doctors who came from as far away as Napa to help, and Spring Moon who applied salves and herbs to burns. It was a gruesome, endless, agonizing five days, and when the last flames were finally put out, they were all staggering from lack of sleep, and the food lines for the rescue teams began to pack up. The last of the wounded men had been taken away, and the dead had been removed as well. Sabrina sat on a charred log, her face smeared with soot, one hand badly burned from helping to put out the flames on a miner’s back, and she looked exhaustedly at John Harte as he came toward her. Her eyes were so red she could barely see, but she saw him smile at her, his own face as filthy as hers.

  “I can’t thank you enough for what you did.”

  “You would have done the same for me, John, wouldn’t you?” He nodded. They both knew he would. And she had sent for hundreds of her men to help as well. There had been no grumbling and no protests from her men. They were always willing to help their brothers in desperate times, and they had instantly answered Sabrina’s call to them. They had come in droves, and now along with the rest, they were packing up.

  “Your men were wonderful.” And so had been Spring Moon. She had a gentle, knowing way with the men, and she had caught Sabrina’s eye more than once as she moved from one wounded man to the next. And she had seen something more as well, something growing between Sabrina and John, which they didn’t understand yet themselves. But she had seen how they looked at each other more than once, with a compassion and tenderness that Spring Moon recognized as the first seedling of love, and she wondered how long it would take for the seed to grow. And it was not of Spring Moon that John was thinking now. He turned to Sabrina with concern in his eyes. “Go home and get some rest, little one. I’ll come to see you later on. I want to make sure that hand is all right.” He glanced at it again and she smiled tiredly at him. He seemed to have endless drive. He hadn’t rested in five days. She herself had gone home once to change, she had been so filt
hy from the soot and the ashes and the fumes of the mines. Even now it had pervaded everything she wore, everything that touched her flesh, her hair reeked of it, and she was anxious to get home and take a bath. The prospect of stretching out between the clean sheets on her bed was more than she could resist. She could barely stay awake as she rode her roan mare home. But all the way home she thought of him again, and what a remarkable man he was. He was forty-nine years old, and one of the most handsome men she had ever seen. And as she crawled into her bed that afternoon, she suddenly envied Spring Moon. She was still dreaming about him after sunset that night, when Hannah knocked hard on her door. Sabrina sat up in her bed, her hair tumbled about her face, and squinted at the elderly housekeeper.

  “Did the fire come up again?” She had been dreaming of the fire and John Harte and Spring Moon and all the wounded men, but Hannah shook her head. She still looked tired too. She had been cooking for the men for days, and sleeping not at all as she rode back and forth to the Harte mines.

  “John Harte’s downstairs. He says he came to see how your hand is. I told him you were asleep and he wanted me to come have a look.” She glanced at Sabrina’s hand, but it looked all right to her. It seemed funny to her too that he was worried about such a small burn. His own looked a lot worse, and suddenly Hannah began to wonder about him. She didn’t think much of him. Hell, he’d been living with that Indian girl for years. And he wasn’t going to throw Sabrina in with her, not if she had anything to say about it. But it was probably just another ploy to make Sabrina sell her mines. “You want me to just tell him you’re all right?” Sabrina shook her head and hopped out of bed, grabbing her dressing gown from a chair, and she ran swiftly downstairs to where he stood in the front room. He looked absolutely exhausted, but he smiled when he saw her.