An Eye for Gold Read online

  “Cool! So carbon forms diamonds and graphite. Does it have any other structures?”

  “Sure. It can link up into tiny spheres, arranged like little soccer balls. They’re called ‘bucky-balls’ after Buckminster Fuller.”

  “Learn something new every day.”

  “Don’cha though.”

  About then, we pulled up next to the hangar where Faye kept her twin, opened the doors, and parked the car. Faye stowed her goodies and hardware and began her pilot’s walk-around, checking the plane for such little problems as chips in the propellors or birds building nests in the air intakes. “So what did you learn about gold?” she asked, when she was about halfway around the plane.

  I glanced around to make sure no one was within earshot of our conversation. Even though I didn’t fancy working with Tom, it wouldn’t be kind to blow his project by blabbing it in front of the world. “Well, like I said yesterday, mostly that it’s a hot springs deposit.”

  Faye popped up from beneath a wing and stared at me. “What?”

  “Or let’s just call it a hydrothermal deposit, so we don’t split hairs.”

  “We sure wouldn’t want to do that,” said Faye acerbically, checking the main landing gear.

  “What’s funny is that all these years I’ve been drilling for oil and thinking that oil’s a shallow deposit, because it’s formed from dead critters that rained down from the surface, and that gold must be a very deep deposit, because it comes from downstairs. But I was wrong.”

  “Imagine that.”

  I barely heard her chiding. So what if I sounded a bit like a gonzo academic? Knowledge feels good, and an “aha!” can be the mental equivalent of an . . . well, you get the idea. “Thing is, gold does come from downstairs, but it only crystallizes out near the surface. Its freezing point is low for a mineral. It crystallizes out at only one thousand sixty-three degrees centigrade.”

  “A household fact, known to any kindergartner and her pet goldfish.”

  “You’re losing it, Faye. Stay with me now, this is earth-shattering. Think of your hydrothermal fluids—hot rock juice—as a super-heated mineral milkshake squirting through the cracks in the earth. At depth, everything’s so hot it’s melted, and there are no cracks, just molten mineral molecules forming a pool as big as a county and a mile or more thick. Then as your wad of molten stuff rises closer to die surface, the different minerals crystallize out into igneous rock. The mineral constituents with the highest freezing points crystallize first, as the wad starts to cool. Then the next highest, the next, and so forth. Well, gold has a high freezing point for an element, but it’s low for a mineral.”

  “Now you lost me.”

  “Most minerals are made up of molecules of more than one kind of atom. Gold is only gold, so it’s both an element and a mineral.”

  “Knock me over with a feather.”

  “Oh, go number pot shards or something.”

  Faye was grinning as she checked the ailerons of the Piper, enjoying the bantering. “So gold is one of the last minerals to crystallize out of the hydrothermal fluids,” Faye said, checking the port wing tank.

  “Yeah, and by that time the main mass of rock has not only crystallized, but also cooled so far that it’s begun to shrink and crack, leaving void spaces. Maybe the whole thing crystallized underground, or maybe it flowed out onto the surface. Either way, you get cracks. Or sometimes there’s also big crustal movement going on, and the crust cracks and the juices leak out through non-igneous rocks. Sandstones or whatever. But anyway, the gold, along with other low-freezing-point minerals like silver and so forth, crystallize out in those cracks.”

  “And you call that a vein.”

  “Exactly. So the neat thing is—”

  “I can’t wait.”

  “The neat thing is that, while gold is very rare, it gets concentrated into these cracks, so we can hope to find some. Of course, sometimes it shows up in other types of deposits, like in sedimentary rocks, but that’s really rare, and—”

  “And you wouldn’t want to completely lose me.”

  “Right.”

  “And you also get gold placers.”

  “Bingo. Gold has the second highest specific gravity of any mineral, right between platinum at the highest and silver at next highest. So they drop right to the bottom of the stream bed, and your old prospector can find them with his trusty gold pan.”

  “Fun in the sun.”

  “Yeah. But the zinger is that gold’s freezing point is so low that gold deposits are only a few hundred, or at most a few thousand feet deep. I’ve drilled for oil at tens of thousands.”

  “What about those African gold miners? They always look pretty overheated in the photographs.”

  “You’re thinking of the Witwatersrand. Sedimentary rocks. Fossil placers.”

  “Fossil placers.”

  “Neat, huh?”

  “You didn’t tell me this was simple, so . . .”

  “But it is simple. It’s how the earth is made. The earth follows rules. This temperature, that amount of pressure, such-and-such set of minerals, a given set of surface conditions, and you get X. The only thing that’s complicated is figuring out what the rules are.”

  Faye didn’t even try to fix a wisecrack on me this time. She just stared at me. Presently, she said, “That’s why any idiot can find gold.”

  I smiled sheepishly. “Any idiot can find gold, or at least the more obvious deposits. Persistence and a strong back are great tools. But finding the tougher stuff by figuring out the rules is a lot tougher.”

  Faye started to climb into the plane.

  I climbed up and stood on the wing while she positioned her shoulder bag, flight bag, and firearms. “Somewhere along the line, someone figured out that you could find gold along stream banks. So every idiot went out digging through the stream bank gravels. Then they ran out of stream gravels, and someone figured out that, all along, the gold had been rotting out of a certain type of rock. Off they went looking for that type of rock. When that type was played out, they stumbled across another producing type, and another. Some geologists call this a ‘search image,’ or a model. It’s only in the last hundred and fifty years or so that we’ve all pooled our knowledge enough to think of new ways of looking for gold, or for any other mineral, for that matter. Oil, for instance. In Pennsylvania, oil was found in seeps in the creek beds, so first everyone looked only in valleys. Then it was discovered that the creeks were following easily eroded rocks which were actually the breached tops of anticlines, which are humped up layers of rock. So then everyone knew to look at anticlines, regardless of whether they formed creek beds or hilltops.”

  Faye was settled in her seat, her eyes wide and pensive. “Maybe I should study geology,” she said sadly. “It sounds like it keeps you interested, and excited.”

  I climbed into the copilot’s seat, sobered by Faye’s longing for a Holy Grail to chase. I had known a lot of people like Faye at prep school, and at college; wealthy people who didn’t have to work. So many of them lacked for purpose. “It can be a formidable pain in the ass to work in this field,” I said, toying to comfort her. “We’re so good at finding things that we keep finding too much, and then there’s no scarcity, and the price of the commodity drops, and we’re out of a job again.” I added, “Much better to be independently wealthy,” not sure I meant it.

  Faye shrugged.

  “And the bosses can be monsters. I can’t imagine staying in some of the jobs I’ve worked if I didn’t have to pay the rent.” There I stopped. I liked Faye, but there were places where she was softly naive. With lack of purpose, certain aspects of character do not form. I glanced at the place where she had stowed her .45. Had Tom Latimer felt moved to protect her, or had she asked for his special training? And was he enabling her to feel falsely confident, setting her up for greater dangers than she currently faced? I shuddered. There were things about their relationship I didn’t want to know.

  It was perhaps another half
a minute before Faye shook herself out of her reverie and put on her headphones. After I had, too, she said, “Leave your door ajar until we’re ready for takeoff. It’s hotter’n a pistol out there.”

  “You can say that again,” I said, but I wasn’t thinking of the temperature of the air.

  20

  WE SPED ACROSS THE SKY, SKIMMING ACROSS THE eastern deserts of Utah and rising up over the high passes of the Rocky Mountains into Colorado. We saw the steep anticline of white Weber Sandstone at Dinosaur National Park, skimmed over the Flat Tops to Kremmling, and passed over the Continental Divide south of Rocky Mountain National Park. Beyond the divide, Faye bled off her altitude and brought the Piper Cheyenne II down into Jefferson County Airport, my old training grounds, northwest of Denver. While Faye went off to rent a car, I stopped in to visit with Peggy, my crusty old flight instructor. When she saw me wandering into the office, she kept her feet up on the edge of the waste-paper basket, but put down her book and gave me her version of a warm greeting: “Well, look what the cat dragged in.”

  “ ‘Lo, Peggy. Keeping the wind underneath your wings?”

  “Beats taking baths. What brings you back here so soon? I thought you were over in Utah with loverboy.”

  “I am.”

  “So I’m seeing things.”

  “No, no, just playing hooky. A friend came in for the day, so I rode along to see if I could learn something.”

  “Must be a hot little set of wings to make it over here for lunch.”

  “Piper Cheyenne Two. Lotsa horsepower. Love dem flying hosses.”

  Peggy whistled. “That’s a half-million-dollar airplane, used.”

  I think I blushed. I didn’t like Peggy thinking I traveled in pricey crowds. It clashed with my cowgirl self-image.

  Peggy grinned. “You’re gone one week and you’re so bored you’re already hanging out at the airport?”

  I smiled at the irony. Faye and I had something in common after all. Boredom. “Well, you know how it is. Loverboy used up all his leave coming over to see me, so when I got there all I could do is spend evenings and weekends with him. At least he isn’t working graveyards.”

  “So what’s your twin pilot look like?” Peggy wiggled her eyebrows. “Pretty fast work, Em.”

  I put one hand to my chest in feigned indignation. “He’s a she. And I met her yesterday whilst serving our nation.”

  Peggy brayed with laughter. “Yeah, make this good.”

  “No shit I was working. Well, not for pay, but my old FBI contact, Tom Latimer, asked me to fly out to Nevada and look into some case about an endangered kangaroo mouse.”

  Peggy tipped her head back and guffawed.

  “What’s so funny?” I demanded.

  She pulled herself together and picked up the book she’d been reading when I came in. “Oh, it’s nothing. I just been reading Seven Arrows.”

  “Sure,” I said, rather sarcastically. “You read cereal boxes, Peggy.”

  “Come on, get some culture. I read bodice rippers and murder mysteries, like the rest of the educated world. Finished the new Sharon McCone mystery an hour ago and this was all I could find to read while I wait for my next student. Someone left it here. It’s a book about the Cheyenne medicine wheel.”.

  “Oh.” I knew very little about Native American religions. I had seen a medicine wheel on the side of the Big Horn Mountains in Wyoming. It was very ancient, and was made of stones laid out like spokes radiating from a hub, with an outer ring of stones connecting the spokes.

  “It’s pretty interesting, actually. All about the symbolism of the medicine wheel and an Indian’s-eye-view of the coming of the white man.”

  “And that cracks you up,” I said drily. Peggy and I know each other well enough to give each other shit.

  Peggy inelegantly flipped me off and said, “No, dear heart, I’m just laughing because . . . well, let me explain.” She opened the book and flipped pages until she found the illustration she was looking for, a diagram of the wheel. “The cardinal compass points have symbolic meanings, see. The Four Great Powers, or medicines. East is Illumination, the eagle. ‘The place of Illumination, where we see things clearly far and wide.’ Like when we’re up flying, right? The big perspective, just like the eagle. It’s part of why we fly.”

  “You’re getting lofty on me, Peggy.” But I knew what she meant Much as I loved the earth, and in fact spent my professional life studying it, I felt more at ease high above it, where I could see a long way. “So fine, I’m an eagle. But what got you going was the mouse. I suppose that’s another spoke on the wheel.”

  Peggy pursed her lips. “Right. South, which is Innocence, or Trust. Symbolized by guess what?”

  “A mouse.”

  “Yeah, exactly. ‘The South is the place of Innocence and Trust, and of perceiving closely our nature of heart. And there’s a whole story in here about ibis jumping mouse.” She flipped the pages of the book again. “And also a nice one about the eagle. Damned thing eats too many mice and it weighs too much and can’t take off again.”

  “Nice symbolism, indeed,” I said acerbically.

  Peggy put a hand to her breast and gave me a supercilious smile. “You flew east today to see me. In a Cheyenne, no less. Illumination, just as I said.”

  “Sure, sure. But yesterday I flew west. What’s that?”

  She read, “ ‘West is Looks-Within place, which speaks of the Introspective nature of man.’ It’s symbolized by the bear.” She looked at me and began to laugh again. “Yeah, that fits, too. You are the master of introspection; you think entirely too much, and it makes you as cranky as a bear.”

  “Thanks a lot,” I said. “It’s nice to be so accurately perceived. So tell me in what way I’m an idiot when I’m facing north.”

  Peggy opened the book again. “Let’s see. North is Wisdom. The buffalo. Aw, hell, we already killed all of them critters. No wonder we’re in such a world of hurt!”

  I shook my head, beginning to feel annoyed. “Speak for yourself, Peggy. You’ve been sitting on the ground too long.”

  Peggy’s laughter dribbled down to a small chuckle. “Yeah, you’re right.” She flipped the book back and forth. “But still, it’s kind of interesting. The whole idea is that the symbolism of your actions and perceptions forms a mirror to your soul. Kind of a nice thought.” She looked me straight in the eye, her expression now totally sober. “You might want to give a careful read to this story about the jumping mouse. Make sure you got all the spokes to your wheel.”

  Peggy always was a good teacher.

  WE CRUISED DOWN the highway toward downtown Denver, a cluster of spires sticking out of a bowl full of smog. We turned off at Speer Boulevard and found our way up Lawrence Street to a spiffy new brick building. We parked the car and got on the elevator. When the doors opened on the fifth floor, we stepped out into a small, tastefully deco-rated waiting room. Aside from a nicely framed antique watercolor of a Colorado mountainscape, which immediately drew my eye, there was very little in the room other than a pair of understated, but choicely comfy-looking waiting chairs. The floor was covered with deliciously soft carpeting, and the recessed lighting delicately reflected off walls covered with raw silk in a subdued shade of gold. I felt as if I’d been gift-wrapped. The room had a rich, yet peaceful feeling to it, as if waiting was a God-like thing to do.

  There was a second door, emblazoned with an elaborate letter R in red-gold leaf. Beside the door was a buzzer button. Faye pressed it

  “Hi, love,” said a deep, sonorous voice.

  I spun around, trying to figure out where the voice had sounded from.

  “The speaker’s recessed, up there with the fighting and the security system,” Faye said softly. “Smile nice for the camera.” Then, much louder, she said, “Buzz us in, asshole.”

  The door lock clicked. Faye pulled it open. We stepped into a second softly decorated room, this one with a small Louis XTV writing table and three chairs.

  A tall, globu
lar man with Santa Claus cheeks and lascivious eyes emerged from a side room, setting a jeweler’s loupe and a box of glittering stones on the table as he did so. The door clicked shut behind him. He said, “Faye, sweetie. You got the rocks?” He began tugging at her shoulder bag even as he gave her a peck and a squeeze hello.

  Faye swatted him across one cheek with the back of her hand. “Back off, Atilla. Em, this is Rudolf. Rudolf, unhand me.

  Rudolf gave me a playful wink and swept his hand across Faye’s waist. Detecting her hidden pistol, he let go of snatching her bag for a moment and groped at her back, fascinated, his eyes rolling erotically. “Oh, I just love women who pack iron. Where’d you get this, sweet cheeks? That bang-bang boyfriend of yours?”

  She swung her shoulder bag at him. “Here’s your ice, tiger, now cool off.”

  Rudolf grinned at me. “I just love to get it on with girls like Faye. It makes me feel real masc.”

  Faye glanced over her shoulder at me. “Watch out for him. He’s more omnivorous than he likes you to think.”

  Rudolf let out a rich giggle. “The old ladies like to think that big bad Rudy only bites the boys.”

  “So you’re more wolf than reindeer,” I said. “I’m Em Hansen.” I offered him a hand. “Shake that please, but don’t eat it,” I added, figuring that outrageous is a game that any number can play.

  Rudolf enclosed my hand in one gigantic mitt, turned it over, and kissed the inside of my wrist. “Emmmmmm. Nice of you to keep Faye-Faye company. Welcome to my little kingdom.”

  “You reset diamonds here?” I asked, retrieving my hand.

  “No, no, no, no. Back there. Come.” He removed a card key from his pocket and put it in a slot by the inner door. It opened into a slightly larger room in which sat two men and a woman, each of whom were bent over jeweler’s workbenches, hard at work. They sat on high stools, and wore special visors with magnification loupes. The woman turned around and said, “Oh, the shipment? Let me see!”