Yes, I’ll feel guilty about blaming her, but everyone needs to do their part to keep our town safe.
We’ve plotted out our spy plan with a precision that would make Petra proud. Or, more likely, make her roll her eyes at our clumsy attempts at espionage. We’re taking the route with the shortest walk between neutral ground and the operation. It’s on the opposite side from the camp, which minimizes the chances of being heard. We know that Mark’s original operation was in a streambed. We’re going to come in from the other angle. That also happens to be downwind of where we expect the miners to be. Not that they’ll smell us—they don’t have dogs. But any sound of our approach is less likely to carry upwind and any sound of their camp is more likely to reach us before we need to get too close.
Before we even leave the trail, we can hear them. The murmur of voices. A clang. A laugh. A thud. The sounds of people at work. When we map the trajectory, it seems to be upstream from Mark’s old spot. That would make sense. Whatever they’ve found, they would have exhausted the vein by now and had to go searching for more.
We start making our way toward them, moving carefullythrough the trees. We judge them to be about three hundred feet from the trail, which is perfect. It’s just the right distance that, if we’re spotted, our story about chasing after Storm will make sense. It’s not as if we’ve gone a mile deep into their territory.
Soon we realize we’re actually hearing two sets of voices. One seems to be upstream, and the other is off to the west. We pause and take out our map.
To the west of the original mining site is a canyon. We’ve been there, before the miners arrived. Is that where the second group is?
We spend a few minutes considering. Then we veer northeast to get closer to the stream. Once the voices come clear, I go on ahead while Dalton waits with Storm. I get another ten feet, and then I can see distant shapes. I slip behind a bush and pull out my binoculars.
When I peek, I train the binoculars on the source of the noise. It’s a small group of men. Two guards are standing back, talking, and it’s their voices I hear. They aren’t saying anything useful—they’re comparing stories of concerts they’ve attended.
Four men work the stream. They seem to be doing the same thing Mark was—an updated version of panning for gold. They’re in hip waders and two are literally panning with screens while one watches and the fourth checks a screen set out in the water.
The men work silently. I peer at each. I don’t know what I’m looking for, but they’re exactly what I’d expect from guys doing manual labor. Just average men, the youngest in his early twenties, the oldest in his early forties. Two white, one Black, one brown.
I do check footwear. Both guards wear the same boots, andthere are four pairs of boots lined up on the bank for the workers, all identical steel-toed work wear.
I’m too far to get good pictures, but I snap a few anyway. Then I hunker behind the bush and listen, but nothing changes. Just the guards shooting the shit while the men work in silence.
I take a closer look, trying to assess moods. The guards are relaxed. They’re armed, but the guns are holstered and they’re so chill that I’d hate for a bear to come charging out of the woods.
The miners don’t particularly seem to be enjoying themselves, but they’re working hard, without needing the guards looming over them. It’s manual labor, and I wouldn’t expect too much joviality. It doesn’t seem like backbreaking work, though. Just boring.
I return to Dalton, and we wordlessly head to where we can hear the other team. Again, I approach while he stays with Storm. I’m not getting so close that we need his stealth, and as the one with more “real world” experience, I’ll have a better idea what I’m seeing.
That was the theory, anyway, but having only ever seen Mark’s claim, I’m hardly an expert. At this second site, there are fifty percent more guards and workers. The guards are less relaxed, but they seem mostly bored, two leaning and watching, while the third is writing stuff down… or doing word puzzles, for all I know. Even looking through the binoculars only shows me that he’s intent on writing.
Here, the miners work on the side of the cliff. A few hack with pickaxes and shovels, while others do finer work with smaller tools, digging away at the dirt. Again, I take pictures. Again, I assess moods. The miners here are in higher spirits, with some joking around. I suspect that has a lot to do withgroup dynamics—how well the men know each other, what kind of personalities are at play.
When I’m done, I retreat. Dalton and I head out as quietly as we can, and we don’t speak until we’re on our own territory. Even then, I keep my voice low as I explain what I saw.
“So they’re definitely mining,” he says.
“Yes.”
“Gold in the stream with the original claim. Either gold or something else in the cliffside.”
“Yes.”
He scratches his beard. “They’re doing what they say they’re doing, which means everything should be fine, but it still bothers you.”
“I’m not sure ‘bothers’ is the right word. Theyaremining, and that’s good. I don’t care what they’re taking out of the cliff. I mean, the work could be environmentally damaging, and I care about that, but selfishly, I only care if it exposes Haven’s Rock. What doesn’t seem right is how slick the operation is when it’s so small-scale. I counted fifteen miners. A third of them are working the stream, mostly with screens. That’s penny-ante stuff.” I shrug. “It seems as if it might be financially worthwhile for one guy, which makes it a very secure and well-run operation for…”
“Minimal gain.”
“Right. And it’s very low-tech. Screens and picks and…” I shrug again. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m overthinking it.”
“No, it doesn’t seem as if they’ve hit a mother lode. So, like we speculated earlier, the value might not be in the ground.”
I nod. “It’s in the investors, who expect a slick operation with visible results. Which is what they’d be getting. There might be fraud happening here, and that could explain the spies.”
“Yep. It’s not that the gold vein is so rich people will skulkaround the forest—and maybe kill each other—to get a better look. It’s that investors have started to realize they’re being bilked. They send some people up to get a look while posing as hikers if they’re caught.”
“Except they weren’t caught. Gretchen came tous.”
