Maren’s hands would not stop shaking. It was not the biting cold of the mountain air or the way the wind ripped through her thin coat. It was the weight of the rifle. She had been a Pinkerton once, the kind of woman who could stare down a train robber without blinking. But that was before she got kicked out for a mistake that cost a man his life. Now, she was just a disgraced guard with a bad reputation and a heavy secret: she actually cared what happened to the people she was paid to protect.
She looked at Jade. Jade was the leader of the crew of Chinese workers who had spent months digging into the hard, gray rock of the Sierra Nevada. They had found it. A vein of gold so thick it looked like the mountain was bleeding yellow. But word had gotten out to the town down below. A town full of men like Benny, who thought gold only belonged to people who looked like them. Maren could hear the boots hitting the gravel. There were fifty of them coming up the trail, and she only had six bullets left in her belt.
Her chest felt tight, like a cold hand was squeezing her lungs. She looked at the workers. They were huddled near the mine entrance, holding shovels and pickaxes. They didn’t have guns. They only had Maren. If she failed today, it wasn’t just her name that was gone. It was their lives. She felt a sudden, sharp sting in her eyes. It was the first time she realized that being a hero felt a lot like being a coward who just ran out of places to hide.
The first shot cracked the silence of the morning. It hit the wooden beam right next to Maren’s head, sending splinters into her cheek. The pain was hot and sudden. She didn’t think. She just fired back. The rifle kicked into her shoulder, a familiar bruise forming instantly. She saw a man in a red shirt tumble down the scree.
“Get inside!” Maren screamed at Jade. “Get behind the ore carts!”
Benny’s voice drifted up from the rocks below. It was a wet, nasty sound. “Give us the mine, Maren! You’re a wash-out! The Pinkertons don’t want you, and we don’t want to kill a woman! Just move aside!”
Maren spat blood onto the dirt. She hated that he was right about her being a wash-out. She had spent her whole life trying to be as tough as the men, only to end up guarding a hole in the ground for people the law didn’t even recognize as citizens. But when she looked at Jade, she saw a person. Not a worker. Not a job. A person who had shared her tea and her bread when Maren had nothing.
“Come and get it, Benny!” she yelled. Her voice broke on the last word, but she didn’t care.
The mountain turned into a meat grinder. The miners rushed the slope, their faces twisted with greed. Maren fired, cocked the lever, and fired again. The smell of sulfur filled her nose until she felt like she was choking on it. Every time she pulled the trigger, her heart did a frantic little dance in her ribs. It was a messy, loud, and terrifying scramble.
A bullet grazed her thigh. It felt like a hot iron being pressed against her skin. She fell to one knee, her breath coming in short, ragged gasps. The miners were almost at the entrance. She saw Benny’s face now. He looked like a dog that had finally cornered a rabbit. He was laughing. He thought he had already won.
Jade appeared from the darkness of the mine. She wasn’t holding a shovel. She was holding a crate of blasting caps they used for the rock. Her face was pale, but her hands were steady. She didn’t say a word. She just looked at Maren. There was a quiet kindness in her eyes that made Maren want to sob. Jade knew what was about to happen.
“No!” Maren shouted.
But Jade had already lit the short fuse. She didn’t throw it at the men. She threw it at the overhang of the mine entrance.
The world went white. The sound wasn’t even a sound: it was a physical blow that knocked the air out of Maren’s body. Her ears started ringing, a high, sharp whistle that drowned out the screaming. Rocks the size of horses came crashing down from the peak. The entrance to the gold vein vanished under a mountain of shale and dust.
Maren lay on her back, staring up at the blue sky. She couldn’t feel her legs. For a second, she thought she was dead. Then, she felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Jade. She was covered in gray dust, looking like a ghost, but she was alive. The gold was gone, buried under a million tons of rock. The miners were gone, too: either buried or running back to town, terrified by the mountain’s roar.
Maren tried to laugh, but it turned into a cough that tasted like copper. She had lost the job. She had lost the gold. She was still a disgrace. But as Jade helped her sit up, Maren realized she didn’t feel like a wash-out anymore. The weight in her chest was gone.
They sat there on the edge of the cliff as the dust settled. The silence was heavy and thick. Maren looked at her empty rifle and then at the path leading away from the mountain. She knew the law wouldn’t come to help them. She knew the town would still be full of hungry men. But for the first time in her life, she wasn’t looking for a badge to tell her she was good. She just looked at the blood on her hands and felt, for once, like it belonged there.