The Princess Club / Family Secrets / Mountain Madness (2 page)

“Come on, Ruby Mae,” Clara urged. “It's gettin' late. And I need to take Prince Egbert home and find a place to keep him till school tomorrow.”

Ruby Mae bent down. The bottom of her dress was soaking wet. The icy water swirled around her legs.

She scooped up the shiny
things into her hand. For a long time, she just stared at the handful of rocks.

“Confound it, Ruby Mae,” Bessie whined in her high-pitched voice, “what
are
you a-starin' at?”

“Rocks,” Ruby Mae whispered.

“Well, toss 'em, already. My papa'll whop me good if'n I'm late again for supper.”

Slowly Ruby Mae smiled at her friends. “You don't understand. These here ain't just rocks. These is the most beautiful, purtiest, shiniest, amazin' rocks in the history of rocks!”

She held out her hand. The rocks glistened like tiny pieces of sun.

“Fiddlesticks, Ruby Mae,” Bessie said. “Them's just creek rocks.”

“That's where you're wrong,” Ruby Mae whispered. She could feel her heart leaping inside her like a kitten in a burlap sack. “These is creek rocks made of
gold!
”

For a moment, nobody spoke. The only sound was the musical babble of the creek.

Clara finally broke the silence. “Come here, Ruby Mae,” she said. “Let me see those.”

Ruby Mae waded over and held out her hand. Bessie and Clara bent close. Bessie held one of the golden stones between her fingers. Her mouth was hanging open.

“Sakes alive,” she whispered, “I do believe this here is real gold!”

“But where did it come from?” Clara whispered. “I ain't never heard of no gold in these mountains. Coal and such, sure. But
gold?
”

“Who cares where it came from?” Ruby Mae felt like her smile might just be too big for her face. “Do you know what this means?”

Bessie nodded, eyes wide. “Means we found us some cash-money.”

“Wrong, Bessie,” Ruby Mae said. “It means we're rich! It means we don't have to kiss us a frog to become princesses!”

Two

M
iz Christy! Miz Christy! The most amazin' and fantastic thing has happened!”

Christy Huddleston watched from the porch of the mission house as Ruby Mae, Bessie, and Clara sprinted across the field at high speed.

“What's gotten into them, I wonder?” Christy asked Doctor Neil MacNeill, who was staying for supper.

Doctor MacNeill ran his fingers through his unruly auburn hair. He was a big man, with a big grin to match. “With Ruby Mae and her gang, sometimes I'm afraid to ask.”

The girls rushed up the wooden steps, panting for air. They were grinning from ear to ear.

“What on earth happened to you three?” Christy demanded. “You're all wet! And your hands are covered with mud! Do you realize you were supposed to be here half an hour ago to help set the table, Ruby Mae?”

“Yes'm, and I'm right sorry, but wait'll you hear what happened! It all started with—”

“R-R-R-I-B-B-I-T!”

Doctor MacNeill laughed. “Sounds to me like you have a classic case of indigestion, Clara.”

“Ain't my stomach a-growlin', Doc,” she said, reaching into her pocket. She pulled out a fat, green frog. “It's Prince Egbert. I got him for you to learn us science with, Miz Christy!”

Gingerly, Christy gave the frog a pat. She'd been living here in the Great Smoky Mountains for several months now, but she was still getting used to the wild creatures her students befriended. “That was very thoughtful, Clara. And a prince, no less!”

“And we,” Ruby Mae added proudly, “are real, live princesses!”

“Well, you need to head inside, Your Royal Highness, and set the royal table,” Christy said. “And Clara and Bessie, you two had better head for home before your parents start to worry. It's getting late.”

Ruby Mae winked at her friends. “Don't need to set no table,” she said. “From now on, I aim to just hire me a maid for doin' my chores.”

“A maid?” Christy repeated, shaking her head.

Ruby Mae glanced over her shoulder. With a sly smile, she held out her fist and slowly opened her fingers. “And here's how I aim to pay her!”

Christy and Doctor MacNeill exchanged a glance. Several small, damp yellow stones glistened in Ruby Mae's palm.

“That isn't . . .” Christy began. “I mean, it couldn't be . . .”

Doctor MacNeill picked up one of the stones. He held it between his thumb and index finger, squinting at it carefully.

“My, my,” he murmured. “Where exactly did you find this, if you don't mind my asking?”

Clara cleared her throat. “Nothin' personal, Doctor,” she answered, “but we all sort of agreed we'd keep that a secret between the three of us. You understand.”

Just then, Miss Alice appeared in the doorway. “Ruby Mae!” she said sternly. “It's about time, young lady!”

Ruby Mae jumped at the sound of her name. Christy tried not to smile. Alice Henderson, a Quaker mission worker who had helped start the school, definitely had a way of commanding attention.

“Miz Alice,” Ruby Mae said quickly, “you got to understand, somethin' mighty important's happened.”

“I'm listening,” said Miss Alice, tapping her foot.

“Me and Bessie and Clara is goin' to be richer than the king of England hisself!”

Miss Alice barely hid her smile. “You don't say?” Her eyes fell to the gold stone in the doctor's hand. She joined them on the porch.

“Neil? What's this all about?”

“Well, it seems our three little prospectors may just have found themselves some actual gold.”

“So it
is
gold?” Clara asked. “Real, live, for-sure gold?”

The doctor shrugged. “I can't say absolutely, Clara. I've never actually held a gold nugget in my hand. But judging from the weight and color, I'd say—”

“We're rich!” Ruby screamed.

“We're a-goin' to be princesses!” Bessie cried.

“Who's a princess?” called David Grantland, the young minister at the mission, as he rode up to the house on Prince.

Ruby Mae ran over to greet the preacher and Prince. “We are,” she announced.

Clara groaned. “Now, that does it for sure. Nobody else can know about the gold, 'ceptin' the people right here. Understand?” She glared at Ruby Mae.

“How come you're lookin' at me?” Ruby Mae demanded.

“Could be 'cause you got the biggest mouth this side o' Coldsprings Mountain,” Bessie suggested.

“'Tain't true!” Ruby Mae cried.

Bessie rolled her eyes. “'Tis so.”

“Ladies,” David interrupted as he dismounted. “For the moment, let's set aside the question of Ruby Mae's communication skills. What's all this about?”

“The girls
have discovered some very interesting rocks,” Christy answered. “Neil thinks they might actually be gold nuggets.”

The doctor passed the gold rock he'd been examining to David. “What do you think, Reverend?”

“Hmm. I had an uncle who was a collector of minerals and such. This definitely isn't ‘fool's gold.' Pyrite's lighter and more brittle.”

“I thought gold deposits were mostly out west,” Christy said, “in California or Colorado— but Tennessee?”

“Gold has never been found in these parts before,” said Miss Alice. “That's definitely a story I would have heard by now,” she smiled, “a hundred times.”

“Just 'cause it ain't been found here before don't mean this ain't gold,” Ruby Mae said, sounding a bit worried.

David shook his head in disbelief. “I don't know how it got here, but this is gold, all right, Ruby Mae. As hard as it is for me to believe.”

“Now that we know for certain, nobody more's got to know about this,” Clara told her friends. “The preacher and the doc and Miz Christy and Miz Alice, well, they're the kind of folks can keep their mouths shut. But that's all can know.”

“And Prince,” Bessie added. “And Prince Egbert.”

Clara nodded. “And our mas and pas. But that's it. Final. Right, Ruby Mae? That's what we promised each other on the way here.”

Ruby Mae shrugged. “Don't see why we can't tell a
few
folks. Lordamercy, what's the point in bein' rich if'n you can't let folks know it?”

“I think Clara's right,” Miss Alice said. “When the word gets out about this, this mountain cove is going to change overnight.”

“Just like us,” Bessie said dreamily. “Like plain ol' frogs turned into beautiful princesses.”

“I fear it won't be anything quite that magical,” Miss Alice said.

Christy could hear the concern in her voice. “What are you worried about, Miss Alice?”

“The same thing these mountains have seen way too much of. Feuds. Pain. Greed. Even death.”

Ruby Mae held out her hand. The gold nuggets glistened like a wonderful promise. “Ain't no bad goin' to come from these,” she said confidently. “We're havin' ourselves our very own fairy tale.”

“I hope you're right, Ruby Mae,” Christy said softly.

Three

T
hat evening, Christy ran a brush through her sun-streaked hair and slipped into bed. She retrieved her diary and her fountain pen from her nightstand. Slowly she thumbed through the pages of the little leather-bound book.

She smiled wistfully when she looked at the very first entry:

. . . I have begun my great adventure this day, and although things have not gone exactly as I had hoped, I am still committed to my dream of teaching at the mission. . . .

Farther down the page she read:

The truth is, I have not been this afraid before, or felt this alone and homesick. Leaving everyone I love was harder than I thought it would be. But I must be strong. I am at the start of a great adventure. And great adventures are sometimes scary.

She'd been right about one thing, that frosty day in January when she'd started her diary. Coming here had certainly turned out to be an adventure. Teaching at this desperately poor mission had been a challenge and a joy beyond anything she'd imagined. It had helped her discover strengths in herself she hadn't known were there.

She'd discovered love, too. Love for the beauty of these rugged, ageless mountains. Love for her friends and her students. And even the love of two very special men—Neil MacNeill and David Grantland.

But tonight, as she glanced over the pages filled with her careful writing, she felt strangely troubled. Christy looked across the room to her big trunk. Tucked inside of it was a little wooden jewelry box her mother had given her. And inside the box was a handful of stones. Golden, glittering, precious stones.

After some discussion, Ruby Mae, Bessie, and Clara had decided that their gold should stay at the mission house for safekeeping. Christy had offered to lock the stones up in her trunk until the gold could be deposited at the bank in El Pano.

Since the mountain road leading there had been blocked by a recent rockslide, it could be awhile before anyone could get to the bank.

In the meantime, her wooden trunk was the closest thing the mission had to a safe. After all, everyone here was poor, and that included the staff at the mission. And this wasn't like Asheville, Christy's former home. In Cutter Gap, nobody locked their doors. Some people didn't even
have
a door.

Christy opened her diary to a fresh page.

I can't help but feel uneasy tonight. In a place as needy as Cutter Gap, the discovery of gold should be a wonderful blessing. But as Miss Alice pointed out, greed and envy can make people do strange things. I keep wondering how this will affect the children. I still remember how they looked at me that first day of school. Me, in my fancy patent leather shoes, when almost all the children were barefoot! “Silly, silly shoes,” David called them. He was right, of course.

A soft knock at the door startled Christy from her writing.

“Come in,” she called.

Ruby Mae, who lived at the mission, poked her head in the door. She was wearing her blue cotton nightgown. Her wild red hair was tied back with a ribbon Christy had given her. “Can I come in, Miz Christy?”

“It's late. You should be asleep, Ruby Mae. Tomorrow's a school day.”

Ruby Mae leapt onto Christy's bed. “Can't sleep. I'm too excited about gettin' rich. I tried countin' sheep, but they kept turning into gold nuggets.” She gazed at Christy's trunk longingly. “Can I see 'em one more time?”

“Ruby Mae . . .”

“Just a peek, I promise. I know it's crazy, but I keep fearin' they'll up and disappear. I mean, don't get me wrong, Miz Christy, I trust
you
and all. But it's like the only way I can believe in 'em is to look right at 'em with my own two eyes, you know?”

Christy set aside her diary. “All right. Just this once. But I'm not going to have a daily show for you and your friends. Understood?”

“Oh, no'm. Bessie and Clara won't let me tell anyone no how. My lips is glued tighter than a bear paw to a honey hive.”

Christy retrieved the key to the trunk from her nightstand drawer. She opened the trunk, pulled out the small cedar jewelry box, and sat down on the bed next to Ruby Mae.

When Christy opened the box, Ruby Mae gasped. “Oh, my! They're even more beautiful than I remembered!”

“You just saw these gold nuggets a couple hours ago, Ruby Mae.”

Ruby Mae picked up one of the stones. “It's like these tiny little rocks have magic power. More than one of Granny O'Teale's herb potions, even. More than all the doc's medicines. This rock can make me into anything I want to be.”

Christy started to argue that money couldn't buy happiness. That what mattered was that Ruby Mae be happy on the inside. That material things didn't matter.