The Spring Between Us

Chapter 58: The Foreman's Secret

We did not go down the shaft that night.

We got as far as the ledge below the shaft head with the lantern and the second key in my hand, and then Cal came down the track at a run with his lantern swinging and his voice going ahead of him.

"Luna. Stop. Do not go down there."

I stopped on the ledge. "What is it?"

"Owen." Cal came to the edge of the shaft and got down on his knees and looked down at us. "Owen is in the yard and he is asking for you and he says he has something to tell you before we go down that road. He says he has been lying to you and he will not go into that yard tomorrow with a lie in his mouth."

Hank and I looked at each other. Then we came up the ladder and went back up the track to the yard.

Owen was standing by the cistern with his cap in his hands and his clipboard under his arm and his face grey in the moonlight. The town was in the yard behind him with the cart and the cask, and the packs were in the yard too, mounted and ready, and the whole yard was waiting.

"Luna," Owen said. "I have to tell you a thing and I have to tell it in front of everyone because I have been carrying it for six years and I am done with it."

"Say it."

"The company." Owen looked at his clipboard and then at me. "The company did not hire me. The company does not know my name. I have been working for the Council for six years and the man I have been working for is the envoy, and the money that pays my wages comes out of the Council's water account." He stopped. "I am not a company foreman, Luna. I am a Council foreman with a company hat on my head and a company clipboard in my hand, and I have been pumping this canyon's water into the town for the Council for six years and telling the town it was the company and telling the company nothing at all."

The yard went quiet.

"The lease," I said. "The south section lease. You signed it as the company's foreman."

"I signed it as the company's foreman because the Council man told me to and because he paid me to and because I have a brother in Colorado who is sick and a wife who needs a doctor and I have been taking Council money for six years and telling myself it was not the same as taking water." Owen's hands were shaking on his cap. "The lease was never a company lease. The Council man wrote it and I signed it and your Beta signed it and it went into a drawer in the Council hall the same day. There is no company in Denver. There is no ore contract. There is no mine extension. It is all a paper the Council man wrote to make the pack think it had sold its land to a company, so that when the Council took the water and the land the pack would blame the company and not the Council."

Sten was off his horse before Owen finished. He came across the yard with his sword half drawn and Berik caught his arm.

"Six years," Sten said. "Six years of water going down that road and a Beta hanged and a warrior poisoned and a Luna's mother in the ground, and you have been pumping it."

"I have." Owen did not step back. "And I am telling you now because I am not going to stand in that yard tomorrow and let the Council man say I am a company man and watch you all believe him."

Sten's sword came out of the sheath. Berik had his arm around him and two more warriors got between them.

"Sten," I said. "Put it up."

"Luna."

"Put it up." I came down the porch steps and stood between Sten and Owen. "He is the only man in this canyon who has seen the inside of the Council's water ledger and who can read the pump logs and who has been in the chamber under that quarry. He is going to stand in that yard tomorrow and say what he has just said and then he is going to say the rest of it. And you are not going to kill him in my yard the night before he does it."

Sten's sword went back into the sheath. He turned and walked away to his horse and did not look at me.

I turned to Owen. "The rest of it. What else is there?"

Owen put his cap on. "There is the pump. The Council's pump that was in the chamber under the pump house and that was moved east three nights ago. I know where it is because I helped move it." He looked at me. "It is in the old assay shed at the eastern edge of the company land. There is a pipe that comes out of the rock there and the pump sits on it and it pumps the deep line east to the town. And there is a thing in that shed that is not a pump and not a pipe, and I have been told not to look at it, and I have looked at it." He stopped. "Luna. There is a second pump in that shed and a tank beside it and the tank has a lead lid on it and there is a sign on the tank with a trefoil on it. I do not know what is in it. But the men who work the assay shed wear a badge on their coats that says the company and the badge has the same trefoil on it, and none of them will go near that tank."

Hank was beside me. "A trefoil. That is the mark they put on the radium crates. I have seen it on the ore wagons from the north."

"A radium crate under a lead lid in an assay shed at the edge of the company land," I said. "And the Council man has been coming to this canyon three times a year for nine years and he has been paying to move water and he has been paying to move something else."

Owen nodded. "The ore from this pit has never been only uranium. There is a seam in the north face that the company does not write down and the Council man has been taking the ore out of that seam and putting it in the assay shed and shipping it out in the water wagons. That is what the second pump is for. The water goes east and the ore goes with it and the Council man has been selling both."

The yard was silent.

"Then we do not go to the hall tomorrow with a water case," I said. "We go with a water case and a radium case and a pump and a shed and a foreman who will say it in front of the whole canyon."

Owen took his cap off again. "I will say it. And then I will go to Colorado and I will not come back, because after I say it the Council will have my name on a list."

"You will go to Colorado with a pack escort and a letter from me to the Council at the autumn gathering," I said. "And if the Council puts your name on a list I will put the Council's name on a longer one." I turned to the yard. "Change of plan. We do not go down the ore track tonight. At first light we go east to the assay shed and we take the pump and the tank and the ore and we bring them down to the Council hall on the cart and we put them in the yard in front of the Council man and the town and both packs."

Hank looked at me. "The assay shed will have men in it and a guard and a lock."

"Then we take the lock off." I looked at Sten. "Beta. I want twenty warriors and no swords and no blood. We are going to take a shed and a pump and a tank and we are going to do it quietly, and then we are going to walk into that yard at noon with a radium tank on a cart and see what the Council man has to say about it."

Sten came back across the yard and put his hand on his sword and said, "Twenty warriors and no swords. At first light."

At first light we went east.