The Topaz

By Nicholas McAuliff

Scott Sunderson is not a superstitious man. So when other miners flee from the forsaken Valley of the Moon, the construction worker sees an opportunity.

Tired of just getting by and still healing from old wounds, Scott scouts for new areas to stake his claim. After digging up nothing but gravel and quartz for most of the summer, Scott races against time before the first frost seals the dirt, and all the glittering treasure underneath. Appraisers in town are buying up stones at a premium, and one collector is looking for something very particular. The eccentric gem collector of old Savajo City knows where the best stones are - but he also knows why they remain undisturbed. Keeping his homeless brother afloat and hoping to strike it rich, Scott follows the rubble from an old mining claim toward one area that the old-timers warn to steer clear of.

But despite his stoicism, the last words of the gem collector ring in Scott's mind...

All that lusters comes with a heavy price.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nicholas McAuliff
• Release date: Jun 8, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227582928

Nicholas McAuliff

Nicholas McAuliff is the author of the Heracles series. The author lives in the heart of the rockies and he enjoys prospecting and fishing and gardening whenever there is a lull in his work. 

Book preview

I

It seemed as though the sun shone only upon the men. As if its rays were honed down through a magnifier in order to ignore all other manner of life about the valley and test the two who lumbered through that valley on two legs. Enveloping the valley were pegmatite cliffs cascading skyward such that Scott Sunderson thought they may lead right up into the sea of blue and white. Where a trove of wealth may lie in wait, should the team find none under the ground. He wondered if that pegmatite road would lead to a cavern of crystals which beckoned with twilight blues and sherry reds. A heavenly cache like that which was said to be atop where the king of the Mongols slept now, under river networks which no longer ran wet. Perhaps guarded by a cat the same color as these cliffs, crouched low on his haunches, with sunset eyes glimmering down onto unsuspecting robbers who would violate sleeping dragons.

Says rain Scotty, the black bearded one said. Yet the hum of the man's transistor radio sounded only like static. He turned the dial.

'Showers expected throughout the front range until two A.M,' came a voice that sounded to Scott like Walter Cronkite.

Damn! shouted the black bearded one.

Atop the ridgeline, the sky was now a lurid sheet of crimson and the lightning danced over the far Rockies, apparently illuminating half the great west. Two silhouettes surveyed that scene, where gliding shadows smothered Pinyon Junipers, and Scott felt as if he were indeed over that bridge of lights now and following some golden hoard to that hidden chamber. As if the audacity of the elements dared hide it from them but could hide no more from the prospectors’ shovels and picks and rock hammers.

He was the taller man; gaunt, yet blessed with the corded endurance of the westerner, his eyes sharpened in suspicion at all times. He brushed his sandy hair from those eyes, and on his forearm was a white run of scar that would never dirty, like the rest of him seemed to be in perpetuity.

They looked at one another. Behind them, the long dark shadows of night rolled like a fog over the fields of tumbleweed and clay. They made camp and though the horizon looked like the skies over an infinite sea, the rain never did come. Distant thunder clapped through the night and Scott stirred in his sleep. In that sleep all was green: gems, though they were not emeralds. The land, tufts of verdant grass where acrid plains of the southwest should be. And mostly, the green fire. Sprouting like weeds from the clouds and floating outwards in the sky like a parade of Chinese lanterns. Last there was a great cougar smothering him and he wrangled with the thing desperately and he awoke and jolted upright like a dead man were to stand. It was always hulking in the dream. Its eyes fiercer.

In the waning cool of morning, they followed the pocket together, that which sank deep as they both stood. They dug around dead and dying aspens and hit a patch of quartz.

Smokey quartz, said the black bearded man.

Don’t proclaim it like it’s a find, Rick, growled Scott. Nose to the grindstone, don’t settle.

Quartz is quartz.

That’s exactly what it is, Scott snapped.

Come hell or high water, we’re walking out of this here valley with some stones in hand, Scott.

Nose to the grindstone, Rick.

Hell or high water, Scott.

He let the black bearded one have the last word.

For another day the two dug as if hell were on their heels. They dug as such until the area was excavated and turned over in full, like a prospector's garden that would never be sown by seed. Baby trees of unknown genus and broken prickly pairs lay flopped over. Scattered piles of misshapen quartz lay forgotten and discarded, shining a dull tawny under the Colorado sun.

Now evening, Scott heard Rick’s morning proclamation and he felt cheated in the realization that it was true. On the great heavy oaken chest sat a pile of smokey quartz. They looked like a pile of one-thousand pennies, that which was undeniably one thousand dollars. Though it felt cheap to acknowledge it. There was something not right about the victory.

Have a whiskey, said Rick as he poured one himself with shaking hands. He drank proudly, for he kept his word. It was as if he were half-asleep all the time. His demeanor and stature the same.

I'm OK.

You sure? It's cold.

I'm good Rick.

Whatever, replied Rick. He shot down the cup of Jim Bean, then filled it again. You gotta learn to relax, he whispered and pursed his lips.

Scott lay on the wilted leather couch and listened to the rain pelt the roof. It was a tough leather, that sort that was too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. That sort that stuck to your skin.

He eyed the tiny loft and thought to climb up there to escape his companion, yet his legs would not allow that climb. He stared at that vaulted ceiling and in his mind came the image of Rick and Diane moving in and overstaying their welcome and You-gotta-learn-to-relax over and over again despite the aforementioned relaxing being on Scott’s dime. Those dimes which had run short on account of long nights of SKATE OR DIE and Ninja Gaiden marathons on the Nintendo which scarcely worked. That was three years back now.

With his tiredness setting in he suddenly resented the magical thinking that had cajoled him to chase gemstones in the muck, now short a week’s wages, splurged on gas and Bacardi rum and Jim Bean whiskey from Jack’s EZ Liquors on the corner of Appleton and Walnut Avenue. That where Rick had always a meager sum to spend despite his inability to house himself at thirty-eight years of age.

As if matching the tempo of Scott’s thoughts, the rain fell in torrents outside the cabin. The wind sang eerily through skeletal trees and branches bounced outside the one tiny porthole. Two cans of Dinty Moore stew sat opened and a loaf of french bread was torn apart as if wild hogs had a go at it.

My bones ache, Scott. How bout we take it easy tomorrow. Go back out Friday. Nothin wrong with laying up here for a day.

I didn’t come out here to get trashed. I got work Saturday.

Rick