The Emerald Key - By Christopher Dinsdale Page 0,74
lead them to his brother’s whereabouts … but so far, no sign was forthcoming.
Colin had quickly tired of canvassing. As a gift to his younger companions, Jamie went into town and purchased both Colin and Beth fishing rods. Jamie first showed them how to scavenge for worms under rocks and logs, skewer them on a hook, then how to select a good section of a nearby creek for fishing. The two young travellers quickly found a suitable rock from which they could sit and dangle their lines into the fast-flowing water. With Colin content, Jamie left Beth in charge of the boy while he continued his search for Ryan further up the mountain.
It didn’t take long for Beth and Colin to get the hang of the sport. In no time, they were bringing back pan-sized speckled trout for the evening dinner. Fascinated, Colin watched every gory step while Jamie cleaned the catch with Officer Keates’s pocket knife. Jamie quizzed Colin and Beth on the fish’s internal organs, explaining their function to the children as each organ plopped out from a sliced belly. Beth would then happily pan-fry their catch over the open campfire. A makeshift tent on the other side of the fire was their temporary home.
By the fourth day, Jamie had worked his way up to one of the most impressive feats of engineering he had ever seen. It was a series of twenty-five locks being built one after the other, straight up the steepest part of the mountain. Jamie took the sketch he had kept since Montreal out of his pocket and compared it to the massive construction effort before him. It was a rough match. With growing enthusiasm, Jamie could simply sense that Ryan was nearby, drawn here by the immense engineering challenge of the project. Sending a ship up the side of a mountain would have been an engineering challenge that would have attracted Ryan like a bee to honey.
But that was just the thing … it had been eating away at Jamie ever since he had first found the diagram in Montreal. Why would his brother be here, working on a canal, when he knew how important it was to get back to Ireland and fulfill his obligations to the Brotherhood? Was he in need of money for the return trip? Did he not yet have the energy to make the taxing journey back home? Was he suffering an injury to the head? There was no way for Jamie to know the answer to his nagging questions. He just had to keep his faith that he would soon find Ryan and finally discover the truth.
Halfway up the giant staircase of locks, a group of a dozen workers was setting huge cut stones into the bottom of a lock. The crews were completing the locks from top to bottom. The highest locks were already finished, complete with stone facades and massive wooden doors. The lowest locks of the twenty-five were not much more than naked holes held in shape by wooden retaining walls.
Jamie avoided the crane and crew as they lowered a huge stone into the base of the lock. He stepped closer to the edge until he could clearly see the group of masons busily setting each stone into place. He stood and admired their work until the crew took a short break. Jamie then cupped his mouth and shouted down into the lock.
“Excuse me! Sorry to interrupt.”
The men paused and looked up at the lad high above them.
“How can we help you?” asked the foreman of the group.
“Has an Irish worker arrived in the last few weeks by the name of Ryan Galway? He’s two years older than me, and we look quite similar.”
The older man shook his head. “Haven’t heard of anyone by the name of Galway.”
“He does look something like Patrick, though, doesn’t he?” commented one of the crane operators, listening in on the conversation.
“And didn’t Patrick arrive about three weeks ago?” said another.
“Yes,” agreed the crane operator. “He did arrive three weeks ago but his name is Patrick Kell, not Ryan Galway.”
“And where might I find Patrick Kell?” asked Jamie.
“You can usually find Patrick near the engineering hut at the top of the mountain,” said the crane operator. “We’re glad he arrived when he did. He helped solve a conduit problem that has plagued our construction site for six months. We were just about to start laying off workers when he got us back on track.”