Alexei’s head jerked up. “What?”
“The vein running through the canyon was clear as day, a metallic strip surrounded by milky white rock—quartz, I assume. The others were so shaken up by the time they crossed the canyon that I don’t think anyone else noticed it.”
Yuri straightened. “Is it a good vein?”
“Yes. It runs on both sides of the canyon, and it looks amazingly rich. But I don’t know what to do about it. Should I file a claim? And if I do, will people think I pushed Richard off the bridge to get the gold?”
“That would be nothing more than a lie.” Kate’s eyes flashed. “There’s no way you would kill a man over gold.”
“But a lot of people would, darling.” Nathan came up behind Kate and settled his hands on her shoulders. “That’s the problem.”
“One of us could file the claim,” Sacha said. “Then it would be harder for people to draw the connection between the discovery of the vein and where Richard died.”
“Perhaps,” Mikhail muttered.
“I haven’t heard any rumors about a new vein being discovered.” Alexei rubbed his chin. “If it’s as good as you say, and someone filed a claim, there would be talk.”
“I can go to the land office and ask if any new claims were filed yesterday or this morning,” Evelina offered. “That will tell us if someone else from the expedition figured it out.”
“No,” Alexei snapped. “If we start asking questions, people will suspect that Mikhail found gold somewhere on his expedition.”
“So what do you want to do?” Mikhail crossed to the window where Alexei stood. Was it just him, or was the room growing more stifling by the minute? “File the claim ourselves and start mining? You know what I think of mining.”
Alexei stroked a hand over his jaw. “If we don’t file a claim, someone else will eventually discover it and stake a claim for themselves.”
“We could always file the claim and sit on it until we figure out what we want to do,” Sacha suggested.
“I know.” Yuri snapped his fingers, his face brightening. “Let’s file a claim down in Seattle. There’s a federal land office there, and if we file it that far away, it will take a while for people in Alaska to learn of it.”
Mikhail leaned his shoulder against the side of the window and stared out at the mountains rising from the sound. The view was so beautiful. So pristine. What if gold were discovered in one of those mountains? The company that owned the mine would cut down trees and tear the mountain apart. Their chlorination plants and stamp mills would forever change the place he’d grown up.
“Mining takes everything that’s beautiful and good about Alaska and destroys it.” He turned to face his family. “I don’t want anything to do with it.”
“Mining makes people ridiculously wealthy,” Yuri shot back. He’d left his chair at some point but was still nursing his cup of coffee.
“We don’t know how much gold is there.” This from Nathan, who’d been silent the entire time, but just like Alexei, the silence only meant he was thinking. “It could be only that one vein. There would probably be enough there to double your family’s coffers, but there might not be more than that.”
“I’m already working on doubling our coffers.” Alexei slid a paper with a sketch of a ship across his desk. “There’s a damaged barge in San Francisco that I want to buy. It will give us access to a steel-hulled ship like the larger shipping companies are using. We might not be able to build them in our shipyard, but there’s nothing preventing us from owning one—if we can get it at the right price.”
“A ship?” Mikhail studied the drawing. “Can we afford something like this?”
Alexei winced. “It will make things tighter than I’d like, but if we’re careful with our money over the next two years, then yes. We can not only afford it, but it will put us in a solid financial position.”
“Bet there’s enough gold in that vein to at least pay for a ship, right Mikhail?” Yuri slung an arm around his shoulder.
Mikhail shrugged it off, but his little brother wasn’t wrong. “Yes, there’s probably enough gold for that, though as soon as you start mining it, everyone in Alaska will figure out what we’ve discovered.”
“I vote we do as Yuri suggested and file the claim down in Seattle,” Kate said. “We won’t be able to do anything with it until the snow melts anyway. Then a couple of us can go there and scout it out, see if we want to try mining it.”
Mikhail looked around the room. He’d be gone on an expedition by that time of year and wouldn’t be able to take his family to the canyon, but that didn’t really matter. They might not be as experienced as he was in the wilderness, but they were savvy enough.
And as much as he wanted to ignore the gold vein and keep it hidden from the world, Alexei was right about someone else finding it eventually.
He might as well claim it for his family first.
31
Bryony held the dainty teacup to her lips and took another sip, ignoring the book in her lap as she stared out the library window. Mountains and water filled the large, west-facing glass. It was a view she’d never tire of—and one she would sorely miss once she was back in Washington, DC.
