“The hook on this line wasn’t planted deeply enough to hold us both.”
In an instant, I knew what I needed to do. I had to get off the rope. I began shimmying down it, which was slightly easier than going up but still required great care. When I reached the bottom of the rope, I felt the whole thing shift again, but it continued to hold. I couldn’t reach the spikes I’d used to climb up to the rope. The distance from where I was to the ground wouldn’t kill me, but it would probably hurt. Cedric falling from his height would be much worse.
Without hesitation, I let go of the rope and jumped to the ground. I’d feared I’d break my leg or ankle, but I managed to land in a way so that my hip struck the ground first. It was a jolting, teeth-rattling landing, but at worst, I thought I’d have only a bad bruise on that hip tomorrow. Freed of my weight, the rope held as Cedric quickly scrambled down. He made the same jump I had, and his greater height gave him less distance to cover.
“Are you okay?” he asked, helping me to stand.
“I think so.” But as I spoke, I looked at my hands and winced at what I saw. Broken skin and blood. I’d ignored them in my frantic attempt to come down, but now the pain hit me full force.
Cedric held my hands gently. I could see small cuts and scrapes on him as well. “Oh, Adelaide. You shouldn’t have done that.”
“And leave you up there? No way. What happened? You seemed to be doing so well.”
“I thought so too,” he said, leading me away. The clouds were increasing and growing darker, which seemed fitting given the turn the day had made. When we reached the shanty, he helped me wash and wrap my hands in clean cloths. “Mistress Marshall will have some kind of salve for you. I’ll take you back now.” He began unbuckling the harness and started to toss it aside.
“Wait, let me look,” I said, reaching for it. Cedric might be an amateur at a lot of these frontier tasks, but I knew he hadn’t been careless with the harness or disregarded the directions he’d been given. This mishap wasn’t his doing. I turned the harness over and examined each part, with a feeling of dread in my stomach that intensified when I found what I’d feared. I pointed to a small metal loop. “Look.”
It was one of two that the rope had fed through, wrapping around so that it kept him secured while still letting him move. The loops were made of a single strand that had been bent so the ends met to close the circle. One loop’s ends were brought together tightly, leaving no space between them. But the one I indicated had bent ends that appeared to have been strained to a point where they pulled apart and released the rope.
Cedric leaned forward. “It looks like the ends were never attached properly . . . or they were pried apart.”
We both sat there quietly as those words hung between us. “Maybe it was an accident,” I said at last. “But if it wasn’t . . . why? It’s in their best interest to know what’s in there. Warren’s fortune is at stake too.”
“He’s out of town,” Cedric reminded me. “Maybe this was all Elias’s doing. He’s a petty man. I can see him being vindictive. And he’s never liked us.”
“But this is all speculation,” I said. “Maybe it was an accident.”
“Right. Maybe it was an accident.”
But I knew neither of us believed that. Trust each other, Aiana had said. But no one else.
I pulled out the gold nugget, which I’d tucked into a pocket before my climb. Its glitter was hypnotic. “I don’t think we should wait for Warren to get back to get this gold out.”
“Agreed,” said Cedric. “Tomorrow we’re taking matters into our own hands.”
Chapter 26
We made our plans while riding back to the Marshall place that evening. About two-thirds of the way, we ran into Mister Marshall coming toward us. By that point, the sky was a sickly greenish-gray marked by occasional flashes of lightning jumping between the clouds. The wind rose and fell like someone’s breath, as though the world were waiting for something big to happen.
“I was coming to fetch you if you weren’t already on your way,” Mister Marshall said. “Come on—be quick. This one’s going to be bad.”
The rain had just begun when we reached the cabin. Mister Marshall urged Cedric to stay the night and put Lizzie in the barn with the other restless animals. “You don’t know what these storms are like. I saw a couple when I first came to survey this place. They roll in off the ocean, big swirling beasts that grow and grow, with winds that can flatten houses. They’re worse closer to the water, but we’ll still catch some of it here inland before it breaks up.”
I immediately thought of my friends back at Wisteria Hollow. “Will it hit Cape Triumph? It’s right on the water.”