each had to get into our life-slips, we scattered like the baby quail Kenny showed me the other day. And only a few life-slips managed to stay together. Oh, I wish I knew!” She closed her wet eyes, her trembling chin lifting. “If only I knew whether or not Timmy is in the Presence!”
I did all that I could to comfort her. My all was just being there.
“I keep silent Festival tonight,” she said finally, “trusting in the Power-“
“This is a solemn night for us, too,” I said. “We will start packing tomorrow. Nils thinks he can find a job nearer the Valley-” I sighed. “This would have been such a nice place to watch grow up. All it lacked was a running stream, and now we’re even getting that. Oh, well-such is Life in the wild and woolly West!”
And the next morning, she was gone. On her pillow was a piece of paper that merely said, “Wait.”
What could we do? Where could we look? Footprints were impossible on the rocky slopes. And for a Marnie, there could well be no footprints at all, even if the surroundings were pure sand. I looked helplessly at Nils.
“Three days,” he said, tightly angry. “The traditional three days before a funeral. If she isn’t back by then, we leave.”
By the end of the second day of waiting in the echoless ghostliness of the dead town, I had tears enough dammed up in me to rival the new little stream that was cutting deeper and deeper into its channel. Nils was up at the mine entrance watching the waters gush out from where they had oozed at first. I was hunched over the stream where it made the corner by the empty foundation blocks of the mine office, when I heard-or felt-or perceived-a presence. My innards lurched and I turned cautiously. It was Marnie.
“Where have you been?” I asked flatly.
“Looking for another mine,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Another mine?” My shaking hands pulled her down to me and we wordlessly hugged the breath out of each other. Then I let her go.
“I spoiled the other one,” she went on as though uninterrupted. “I have found another, but I’m not sure you will want it.”
“Another? Not want it?” My mind wasn’t functioning on a very high level, so I stood up and screamed, “Nils!”
His figure popped out from behind a boulder and, after hesitating long enough to see there were two of us, he made it down the slope in massive leaps and stood panting, looking at Marnie. Then he was hugging the breath out of her and I was weeping over the two of them, finding my tears considerably fewer than I had thought. We finally all shared my apron to dry our faces and sat happily shaken on the edge of our front porch, our feet dangling.
“It’s over on the other side of the flat,” said Marnie. “In a little canyon there. It’s close enough so Margin can grow again here in the same place, only now with a running stream.”
“But a new mine! What do you know about mining?” asked Nils, hope, against his better judgment, lightening his face.
“Nothing,” admitted Marnie. “But I can identify and I took these-” She held out her hands. “A penny for copper. Your little locket,” she nodded at me apologetically, “for gold. A dollar-” she turned it on her palm, “for silver. By the identity of these I can find other metals like them. Copper-there is not as much as in the old mine, but there is some in the new one. There is quite a bit of gold. It feels like much more than in the old mine, and,” she faltered, “I’m sorry, but mostly there is only silver. Much, much more than copper. Maybe if I looked farther-“
“But, Marnie,” I cried, “silver is better! Silver is better!”
“Are you serious?” asked Nils, the planes of his face stark and bony in the sunlight. “Do you really think you have found a possible mine?”
“I don’t know about mines,” repeated Marnie, “but I know these metals are there. I can feel them tangling all over in the mountainside and up and down as the ground goes. Much of it is mixed with other matter, but it’s like the ore they used to send out of Margin in the wagons with the high wheels. Only some of it is penny and locket and dollar feeling. I didn’t know it could come that way in the ground.”
“Native silver,” I murmured, “native copper and gold.”
“I-I could try to open the hill for you so you could see,” suggested Marnie timidly to Nils’s still face.
“No,” I said hastily. “No, Marnie. Nils, couldn’t we at least take a look?”
So we went, squeezing our way through the underbrush and through a narrow entrance into a box canyon beyond the far side of the flat. Pausing to catch my breath, almost pinned between two towering slabs of tawny orange granite, I glanced up to the segment of blue sky overhead. A white cloud edged into sight and suddenly the movement wasn’t in the cloud, but in the mountain of granite. It reeled and leaned and seemed to be toppling. I snatched my eyes away from the sky with a gasp and wiggled on through, following Marnie and followed by Nils.
Nils looked around the canyon wonderingly. “Didn’t even know this was here,” he said. “No one’s filed on this area. It’s ours-if it’s worth filing on. Our own mine-“
Marnie knelt at the base of the cliff that formed one side of the canyon. “Here is the most,” she said, rubbing her hand over the crumbling stone. “It is all through the mountain, but there is some silver very close here.” She looked up at Nils and read his skepticism.
“Well,” she sighed. “Well-” And she sank down with the pool of her skirts around her on the sandy ground. She clasped her hands and stared down at them. I could see her shoulders tighten and felt something move-or change- or begin. Then, about shoulder high on the face of the rock wall, there was a coloring and a crumbling. Then a thin, bright trickle came from the rock and ran molten down to the sand, spreading flowerlike into a palm-sized disk of pure silver!
“There,” said Marnie, her shoulders relaxing. “That was close to the outside-“
“Nils!” I cried. “Look!” and snatching up the still-hot metallic blossom, I dropped it again, the bright blood flowing across the ball of my thumb from the gashing of the sharp silver edge.
It doesn’t take long for a town to grow. Not if there’s a productive mine and an ideal flat for straight, wide business streets. And hills and trees and a running stream for residential areas. The three of us watch with delighted wonder the miracle of Margin growing and expanding. Only occasionally does Marnie stand at the window in the dark and
