Nature has a pleasing symmetry.

Isolated from its source, you can no more tell a root from a vein.

—Galen’s Anatomy

Chapter 2

“I’m not dead, Pandora!” retorted Mrs. Quinn from inside. “I was resting!”

“You looked dead.”

“Well, sometimes that’s what happens when people are ill.”

Jenny wasn’t surprised by this curt exchange. See, most kids learn pretty quickly to fake their opinions. You get used to saying mutton tastes like lamb and parents know best. It’s the quickest route to avoiding trouble. But not Pandora. From the day of her birth, she had never told a lie. If dinner looked like something a dog had done in the corner, Pandora was the first to say it. If pustules were bursting on the tip of Jenny’s nose, she could count on her friend to point it out.

“You’re covered in dirt,” said Pandora, returning her attention to the door.

“I want to come in.”

“Okay,” said Pandora, stepping aside.

Into the room and out of her depth Jenny went. She was used to the smell of the place—the unwashed sheets and the soot from the stove and the whiff of decay—but the sight of Pandora’s mum always set her back a bit. Five years of the wasting disease had stripped her down to skin and bones. When she sat up against a pillow, you could half see through her to the head of the bed.

It wasn’t always like this. I’m old enough to remember a day when Lottie Quinn was prettier than a blooming hyacinth. But the Gold Rush was rarely kind to women, and fate is often tough on hopes. In another time and town, Lottie might have been the educated professional she wished to be. As it was, she was simply exhausted.

“Hello, Jenny.”

“Hello, Mrs. Quinn.”

“You’re getting so tall.”

“She wouldn’t be getting short, Mum,” interrupted Pandora. “Unless she was amputated.”

Mrs. Quinn sighed. She sighed a lot. She sighed when she filled the licorice jars in her shop, and sighed when she blew her nose, and sighed when she listened to others. Her husband had vanished and her daughter was a riddle, so I grant you she had a lot to sigh about.

“You’re out late. I thought you’d be with your dad for supper.”

Jenny frowned. She wasn’t much for talking to mothers. Perhaps that’s because she was lacking the practice. Or maybe she’d decided that ignoring her heartache was as good as treating it.

“He had a job to finish.” Mrs. Quinn appeared to be expecting something more, so Jenny added: “Gentle Annie gives her regards.”

This time around, Mrs. Quinn didn’t sigh. She set her jaw and blinked twice. Then, without another word, she twisted her chin toward the shelves.

“I suppose I could try to find something for you to eat. . . .”

Jenny’s stomach was on the verge of crawling out of her throat, but she punched it back down. “I already ate. Can I talk to Pandora alone?”

Mrs. Quinn visibly brightened. “Oh, would you, Jenny? She’s been pining for company all afternoon.”

“No, I haven’t,” said Pandora.

“Come on,” said Jenny, tugging her friend toward the door. “Remember,” she whispered, “volcano!”

On warm, fine nights, the best place to be in the high country was down by the Arrow. There in the shadows lay the pools and mosses and secrets that grown folk seldom bother to find.

As soon as they were old enough to toddle, Jenny and Pandora had staked their claim to every foot of water from the Crooked Man to the edge of Farmer Wilcock’s property.

The most coveted of their spots was to be found downstream from Eden, shortly after the river crossing for the road to Reed’s Terrace. Tucked into the crook of the bank was an ossified tree. And below it, where a mighty flood had washed the soil from half the roots, was a ready-made hideout.

Jenny liked to call it the Cathedral. Pandora preferred to call it a tree.

“You won’t believe what Dad told me!” said Jenny, swinging past the roots and hurling herself into the sand. “It’s volcano times a hundred!”

“It’s what?”

“Pandora, don’t you remember our warning system?”

“No.”

“It’s a code for saying something bad has happened.”

“Why do we need a code?” asked Pandora. To keep herself occupied, she had begun stacking river pebbles by size and by hue.

“To stop people from poking into our business. ‘Paper cut’ is something that’s sort of bad, like forgetting your lunch. ‘Poison oak’ is worse, like being in trouble with the schoolmaster.”

“We’re always in trouble with the schoolmaster.”

“And ‘volcano’ is the end of the world!” finished Jenny.

Pandora pondered this for a bit. “So you’re telling me it’s the end of the world?”

“Yes!”

“I should have washed my stockings.”

When you think about it, it’s a perfectly acceptable reaction. Who wouldn’t want to be at their most presentable in their final moments? But Jenny didn’t have much patience for laundry.

“It’s not the real end of the world, Pandora. Only Dad told me we have to leave Eden.”

Girls like Pandora don’t make it a habit to cry. It uses up water and attracts the attention of old ladies. Instead, if they’re feeling extremely unhappy, they tend to get still. In that moment, Pandora grew very still indeed.

“He says he’s being sacked,” Jenny added after a long and ticklish pause. “Says he’s no good.”

“He isn’t,” said Pandora.

“I know!” shouted Jenny. “But I am! And he’s my dad, so . . .”

Pandora pondered this conundrum for a while. Finally, she asked, “But why do you want to stay?”

“What?”

“You don’t own much. You hate lessons. Everyone at school avoids you.” Pandora added a pebble to her stack. “Why do you want to stay?”

Jenny hadn’t considered it from this angle. It was true, to be sure, that she was as poor as dirt; her sum of belongings consisted of a bird’s nest and three crimson marbles. And there was seldom a day in the year when kids weren’t muttering about her mum or her dad or the tint of her skin.

But Jenny was accustomed to all that. Sometime over the course of her twelve years, she had decided that survival meant remaining outside of things, like the husk on a sunflower or frost on a fence. Everyone else in school could worry on names and appearances. She stood apart.

With one exception.

“Well, you’re here,” said Jenny.

“You’ll forget me,” said Pandora.

“I’d never. And people will call me names and talk about me in a new town.”

“You always say you don’t care what people think,” noted Pandora.

Jenny’s frustration erupted in a shout.

“Fine! Then it’s because I’m part of the mountains!”

“You’re made of rock?” asked Pandora.

“No. Yes. It’s hard to explain.” Jenny rested her chin on her hand and stared at the river. How could she spell out to her friend that home doesn’t just mean a roof and a wage and the thing men call security? “I suppose it’s a bit like when you’re lying down on the side of the rise near Lake Snow, and you’re watching clouds tumble into the water. And the rain makes the grass smell like clover, and the air taste like chance, and the earth feel like rest. And you think to yourself, if I shut my eyes, I’ll be the mountain, too.”

Pandora frowned. “I don’t get you.”

Jenny grinned. “It’s okay. You don’t have to understand. Except the part,” she said, “where I want to stay in Eden.”

Here, to Pandora’s relief, were words spoke plain. Poetry may be a salve to the soul, but it sure made a mess of vocabulary. “Then you need money,” she said.

“Not a lot,” countered Jenny. “But it would be nice if Dad could buy his own sheep and a few acres. That way we wouldn’t have to worry about him losing his job all the time.”

As she spoke, Jenny began to picture it. Old Randolph Scott’s place up on Reed’s Terrace was for sale, the government desperate to offload the land. She could shore up the foundations on the villa, patch the chimney, build a new shed. There was an orchard in the back—she often picked peaches there in the spring—and a serviceable well. A few months would put it into working order.

“Do you want to rob a bank?” asked her friend.

“What?”

“That’s the quickest way to get a lot of money,” said Pandora. “We could rob the one in town. I’ll need a gun, though.”

It took the prime of Jenny’s might to stop herself from laughing. The thought of the pair of them, armed to the back teeth and charging up the stairs of the Bank of Eden, was better than a tonic. It made the whole world feel lighter.

“Best not,” said Jenny. “We’re sure to get caught. But I like the direction you’re thinking. We could try gambling—”

“Mum says she’ll kill me if I put a foot in the door of King Louis’s saloon. Says it’s the seventh circle of hell and she burned there for five years. Which makes no sense, because the Bible says you can’t get out of hell.”

“Okay, then we could try gold mining . . . ,” hazarded Jenny.

“Mum says that mining is no better than losing your mind or dying from fever. Says she’s seen too many men go mad trying to suck riches from stone. Which also doesn’t make any sense.”

But Jenny’s ear had caught on a word. “What did your mum say about gold mining?”

“She says too many men go mad—”

“That’s it, Pandora!”

“What?”

If Jenny has a vice—and she has a fair few—it’s impetuousness. She’s not one to wait for the world to turn.

“I have to talk to Dad,” she said.

“About what?”

“To see if I remembered something correct!” shouted Jenny.

“What does that have to do with anything?” asked Pandora.

“Tell you about it tomorrow!”

Night was coming on strong as Jenny ran back toward the sheep station. Owls hooted and fence wire hummed in the wind. In the pool of the Milky Way, the tops of the Wise Women rose black as pitch and jagged as sharks’ teeth.

Judging by the light in the lower part of the woolshed, Jenny knew her father was working.

“Dad! Dad!!”

“Oh, lordy, lordy, Jenny. Where have you been?”

“Out,” said Jenny, her eyes catching the gleam from the shears. A whetstone and an oily rag told her that some long-overdue maintenance was taking place.

“Heaven, spare a prayer for the friendless man and the motherless child.”

Since this was an oft-repeated plea, Jenny didn’t bother to acknowledge it. “Dad, do you remember a story you told me when I was seven or eight, about a miner named Mike Magee?”

“Sure enough,” said Hapless.

Jenny slapped her hand on the bench. “Tell it again.”

“Jenny, I’m working.”

“I’m sure it’ll keep.” It was her father’s favorite phrase, and Jenny knew it.

Smiling, Hapless leaned back in his chair, took a heel of bread from the box beside him, and handed it to his daughter. “You make yourself comfortable while I marshal the details.” He squeezed his hands to his skull. “There now, got it.”

Jenny pulled up a seat in the lee of the kerosene lamp and held her breath.

“I first heard of Mike Magee on the day I rode into Eden. I had a nasty sore on my backside and I was hoping to see a medical man about it. You can’t be too careful with sores. I had another on my—”

“Dad. The story?”

“Oh, yes. So, I asked around town and everyone said to go see Doc Magee. Mad as a hatter, they told me, but plenty educated. Did his training in a famous medical university overseas, they said. Had a lot of fancy certificates and diplomas on the wall to prove it.”

Hapless smiled wistfully. The closest he had ever come to education was his sixth-grade graduation.

“Anyway, I took myself off to his business on Poplar Street and knocked on the door. Nobody there. Went the next day. Nobody there. And my backside was fair aching.” With an absence of mind, Hapless patted the spot in question. “So I asked around again. That’s when I heard that Mad Doc Magee was a demon gold miner. He and his partner, Silent Jack, had built a place up Moonlight Creek, near the head of the Sleeping Girl. And whenever the weather was favorable, that’s where he’d be. Doctoring was something he did to pass the time.”

Jenny grinned. She, too, was of the opinion that a day spent roaming the hills with your best friend was a lot more productive than being trapped in an office.

Hapless grimaced. “I tell you, my rear was fair killing me—”

“Dad!”

“So, a few days after I arrive, this rider rolls into Eden and bursts into the Last Chance Saloon. ‘Mad Doc’s found the largest gold nugget you’ve ever seen!’ he cries. ‘Bigger than a cowbell and ten times as heavy! It’s going to bust the Rush wide open.’”

The Last Chance Saloon figured more often than not in Hapless’s stories. Jenny had long ceased to wonder why.

“You’ve never seen a room empty faster. Sixty men went charging for their horses and tools. By nightfall, Moonlight Creek looked like an overturned anthill. I was there myself. A lot of fun if you don’t mind the shooting pain in your britches.”

“That’s fine, Dad, but what happened to Doc Magee?” interrupted Jenny. “And the nugget?”

“Ah, now, that’s the real mystery. Because he and his fortune couldn’t be found. Any man worth his salt would be over at the saloon celebrating his discovery. But Magee had pulled up stakes and vanished. Along with Silent Jack.”

“You mean they both left town? Just like that?” asked Jenny.

“That was the rumor,” said Hapless. “Makes sense, I suppose. You wouldn’t want to hang around Eden with a treasure like that in your pocket.”

This was the point where Hapless’s story had originally ended. But Jenny wasn’t about to let a sleeping doc lie.

“I don’t believe it,” said Jenny. “Someone must have seen Magee leave Eden. Or been in the bank when he exchanged the nugget for money. People can’t vanish completely.” Revelation arrived as she leaned into the light. “Maybe he was murdered.”

Hapless winked. “It’s funny you should say that, because about nine months after this hullabaloo, a crate arrived in Eden, addressed to the doctor. And when the postman got nosey and opened it, what do you think he found?”

“A body?”

“Near enough,” said Hapless. “A human skeleton. To help with the study of anatomy. At least, that’s what the note said. Nobody could figure out if the order was late or someone was playing a trick on the town. It was a bona fide riddle.”

“What did the postman do with it?” asked Jenny.

“He stored it in Mad Doc’s office,” answered Hapless.

“Why?”

“’Cause by rights the bones still belonged to the doctor. Granted, it’s been a decade or more since he vanished, but there’s no one to say that he’s actually dead. He might come back.”

“Does that mean the skeleton is lying in his office?” demanded Jenny. “Nobody’s moved it?”

A speck of guilt became lodged in Hapless’s eye.

“Well, you see, most of us had already scoured the place from top to bottom before the postman arrived, wondering if Magee had left anything of value there. We didn’t find much but books. Why? What were you thinking?”

What Jenny was thinking was what Pandora would say. When a skeleton arrives on the doorstep of an eccentric medical man, there’s more to the story than a study of anatomy. There was a mystery attached to Magee’s disappearance—that she was sure of, deep down in her spine—and this box of bones had something to do with it.

“I wasn’t thinking anything, Dad. Except that it sounds puzzling.”

“You never said a truer word.” Hapless rose from his seat and extinguished the lamp. “Now, then, we’d best to bed.”

Jenny was willing to oblige. The sooner she slept, the sooner she could determine the next stage of planning with Pandora. Tomorrow was figuring to be interesting.

“Okay, but you didn’t tell me the end of your story.”

“I didn’t?”

“How did you heal the sore on your butt?”

“Oh, that.” Hapless grinned. “I rubbed earwax on it. Amazing what the body can do.”