Abandon

SIX

T

hey spent the next hour descending a talus slope, and by two in the afternoon, they had reached the remains of the Godsend, Bartholomew Packer’s mine. The stamp mill looked to be one winter away from collapsing. Boards bowed and splayed out on all sides, and amid the wreckage of the mill stood one of its indomitable cast-iron rock crushers.

They followed an old wagon trail as clouds filed in from the west. Pockets of snow clung high up the canyon walls and snowmelt bled out from them in streams down the rock face and into the ruts of the trail, making their boots squish in the mud.

Ahead lay a grassy lane, lined with rows of weather-beaten structures—all that was left of Abandon. Main Street ran for two hundred yards down the middle of the canyon, and the party walked six abreast between the false-fronted buildings. Many had collapsed. Lawrence pointed to a structure with six little balconies.

“This was Abandon’s red-light district. Those were the cribs. Prostitutes would stand on the balconies and try to entice potential customers who were passing by.”

“How’d this town get its name?” June asked.

“It was originally named Hope by Bart Packer, but as a joke, one of the better-read miners, who was none too fond of this high, remote canyon, started calling the town Abandon. Name stuck.”

“What’s that?” Emmett asked, motioning to a building across the street that had long since collapsed. “See that big metal thing in there?”

Lawrence walked over and peered into the rubble.

“This was the assay office. Assayer would evaluate samples for prospectors and the mine, tell you if your ore was high-or low-grade. That hulk of metal is probably the furnace. Bet if you poked around in there, you’d find some old crucibles, too.”

They passed the blacksmith’s shop, identifiable only by the anvil sitting amid the rotten boards, then the dance hall and the general store, where a faded sign had fallen onto the porch. It read ESPECIAL ATTENTION GIVEN TO THE COMFORT OF LADIES. Lawrence pointed out the drugstore, meat market, bakery, and harness shop, though they resembled little more than board heaps to Abigail.

Midway through Abandon, he stopped them in the street. “Most important place in town.” He gestured to a building whose entire frame slanted to the right. “The saloon,” he said, eyes lighting up. Abigail was thinking how in his element Lawrence was, thrilling people with what had happened in the past. She felt envious of the childlike joy he’d found in his career, wanted a little of that for herself. “I have to tell you about the woman who was tending bar in 1893. Name was Jocelyn Maddox. She was drop-dead gorgeous, sassy, and a black widow.

“By twenty-five, she’d been married three times to rich men, all of whom had died mysteriously. Her last husband’s family got wise, proved she’d slowly poisoned him with arsenic. She fled Arizona, ended up, of all places, here. Made a big impression. Men loved her. She was one of the guys—funny, raucous, horribly profane.

“In November of 1893, someone came prospecting from Arizona, recognized Jocelyn, and reported to Sheriff Curtice that there was a murdering fugitive tending bar in his town. The story checked out and Ezekiel had no choice but to arrest her.

“Everything had been arranged to extradite her back to be hanged, but the snows came. It was decided she’d winter in Abandon, be transported to Arizona in the spring. Since half the town was in love with her, instead of just letting Jocelyn rot in jail, they chained her up in the saloon, with a deputy to keep watch, and let her go on tending bar. Of course, she never had her reckoning in Arizona. Jocelyn vanished with everyone else that Christmas Day.”

They walked to the entrance of town, where the buildings ended. Off in the distance, set up on a slope in the spruce, stood a church. Its roof had caved in everywhere except in front, where a tiny bell tower dangled in the raf ters. Atop the tower, a crooked cross stood silhouetted against the darkening sky.

June stopped.

“Honey?” Emmett said. “What is it?”

“Nothing, just . . . very similar energy to Roanoke Island.”

“What’s that?” Abigail asked.

“The Lost Colony, that settlement that vanished from the North Carolina coast in the late 1500s, where the only thing left behind was CRO carved into a tree. People thought CRO meant the Croatan Indians, that maybe there’d been an attack. We did some work out there a few years ago. Energy’s even stronger here.”

“What kind of energy?” Abigail asked.

June turned toward her, and those eyes that had seemed so kind just the day before at their first meeting in Durango had taken on a disturbing intensity. “Something awful happened in this place.”

Abigail couldn’t stop the smile from escaping.

“What?” June asked.

“I’m sorry.” She chuckled.

“Oh, we have a skeptic.”

“ ’Fraid so. Look, it’s nothing against—”

Emmett said, “No, least you’re up-front about it. I respect that. Most people just patronize us and pretend to play along. But since you are writing an article about what we do, I hope you’ll keep an open mind.”

“You have my word.”

They camped on the edge of town. Abigail climbed into her tent and fell asleep, and when she woke, it was evening and cold. She found a pair of gloves in the top compartment of her pack and crawled outside. Low, dark clouds scudded across the peaks. She saw Scott lying in the grass with the llamas, listening to a radio. Lawrence was sitting in the open doorway of his tent, thumbing through a tattered notebook by the light of his headlamp.

As Jerrod fed a piece of clapboard into the flames, she sat down across from him in the grass.

“Jerrod?” she said. He glanced up. “You think it’s a load of shit?”

“What?”

She cocked her head toward Emmett and June, who were a little ways off, on their knees, facing the ghost town, heads bowed in meditative poses.

“I don’t know. They aren’t quite as kooky as I imagined they’d be.”

Abigail pulled off her gloves and extended her hands toward the flames.

In the distance, the outline of Abandon formed an eerie profile in the dusk.

Scott walked over, followed by Lawrence and the Tozers.

“What’s up?” Jerrod asked.

“I was just listening to the latest report on my weather radio. . . . Doesn’t look good.”

“You’re kidding,” Lawrence said.

“This early-season storm was supposed to plow through New Mexico, and now the track is farther north. Not particularly cold, but it should be all snow above nine thousand feet. As you know, Abandon sits at eleven.”

“How much they predicting?” Lawrence asked.

“One to three feet. Winter storm warnings are already up. Supposed to start late tonight.”

“So what does this mean?” June asked.

“Means we should pack up our shit and make a beeline for the trailhead.”

Jerrod looked up. “You aren’t serious.”

“Actually, I am.”

“Hike back in the dark?”

“Maybe we get only halfway. Be better than postholing all seventeen miles in a meter of powder.”

“You don’t know that it’s gonna be that bad.”

“Don’t know that it isn’t.”

Jerrod looked at Emmett. “You paid a hefty chunk to come out here and shoot this town, have Lawrence give you the rundown—”

“What do you think you’re doing?” Scott asked.

“I’m talking to our client. Maybe he should make the—”

“My client. Don’t know if you forgot, but you work for me, bro.”

Emmett said, “We have to leave?”

“If this storm really winds up,” Scott said, “hiking out will be a bitch. We didn’t bring snowshoes or skis. You ever tried to walk in three feet of snow?”

“Let them decide, Scott,” Jerrod said.

Scott shot him a glare, then turned back to the Tozers.

“Look, I suggest we get the hell out of here, but if you want to stay, see what happens, I guess that’s an option. What do you think, Lawrence?”

“Their dime, their permit, their choice.”

Emmett glanced at his wife, then back at Scott. “This is our last chance to shoot Abandon this year?”

“Yeah, it’s late in the season and a miracle there’s not more snow already. We don’t do it now, you won’t be able to get back here until next June or even July, depending on how bad the winter is. And that’s assuming you get another permit.”

Emmett said, “Honey?”

In the silence, Abigail watched dark billowy clouds spilling over the top of the canyon, sweeping down into the ghost town like an avalanche.

June looked at her husband, nodded.

“We’ll take our chances,” he said as Abandon vanished in the fog.