The Thunder Keeper(54)
The realization left him feeling empty and dissatisfied, as if he’d conjured up a vision of what should be, only to find that it was incomplete, untrue. He’d have another talk with the Provincial. Ask him again to agree to a settlement.
He made a right onto Federal and turned onto the cement apron of a gas station. At the inside phone, he dialed the mission and tapped into his messages. Three from parishioners checking about upcoming meetings. None from Eddie or Vicky.
He pushed more quarters into the slot and dialed Vicky’s law office. After two rings, Laola’s voice: “Sorry, Father. Vicky’s in Laramie. I knew she wouldn’t be able to stay away from Wyoming.” A laugh floated down the line, then: “We’re still waiting to hear from the secretary of state’s office on the mining companies. Vicky’ll get back to you soon as she knows anything.”
He thanked her and hung up, conscious of a vague disappointment that Vicky wasn’t in. And something more: he had no part in her life now.
He slid back into the Toyota and melded into the light stream of traffic—a couple of pickups, a sedan—and headed north to the Riverton Library.
The redbrick building squatted in the middle of a parklike lawn that had turned emerald green in the rains. Inside was the familiar hush that reminded Father John of the neighborhood library in Boston when he was a kid, and all the libraries he’d ever done research in. Even the sense of anticipation was familiar: this was where the secrets would unfold.
He walked past the stacks set at various angles on the green carpet, past the reading tables where two elderly men curled over opened newspapers. Seated at an L-shaped desk was an attractive woman who might have been forty, with shoulder-length auburn hair framing a triangular face. She raised her eyebrows as he approached. “Haven’t seen you for a while, Father.”
“I believe I owe you a fine,” he said, remembering the Plains Indians on his desk. He pulled the twenty-dollar-bill out of his pocket and laid it down.
The librarian tapped at the computer keyboard, then pushed the bill toward him. “Keep your money for the Indian kids,” she said, a mischievous light in her blue eyes. “Why do I get the feeling you aren’t here to pay fines?”
“What do you have on diamonds in Wyoming?” he said.
“A new interest of yours, Father? Diamonds?”
“You might say so.”
She tapped the keyboard again. “Somehow I expected you to request another history book or something on theology or spirituality. But diamonds?”
“Maybe they’re related,” he said. Bear Lake was a sacred, spiritual place.
“Diamonds and spirituality.” She gave him a sideways look, still tapping. “How right you are. I never felt more spiritual than when I got this.” She lifted her left hand and waved it in the air a moment, allowing the diamond ring on her third finger to catch the light.
“Ah, here we go.” Leaning toward the computer screen now, where columns of black type scrolled downward. The scrolling stopped. She jotted three titles on a notepad, tore off the page, and handed it to him.
“You can find these in the natural history section”—a nod toward the bookshelves—“while I get you a monograph.”
In a couple of minutes he’d found three books that looked promising and settled at one of the nearby tables. He opened the book titled Wyoming Minerals, written twenty years ago by a man with numerous letters after his name. He located “diamonds” in the index and turned to a page with a full-color map of Wyoming. Clusters of tiny white arrows pointed to the locations of diamond mines. None in central Wyoming.
He opened the next book and read a brief chapter on diamonds found in Wyoming. Superior crystals, including a faceted fifteen-point-six-carat gemstone cut from a twenty-nine-carat rough stone, the largest diamond mined in North America. More than one hundred and thirty thousand other diamonds produced. Deposits found in kimberlite pipes—columns of igneous rock injected into the earth’s crust four hundred million years ago, bringing up diamonds from depths of one hundred and fifty to two hundred kilometers. Other minerals could also be found in the pipes—pyrope almondine garnet, olivine, sapphire, chromium diopside, picroilmenite, chromite. Hundreds of acres in Wyoming contained kimberlite pipes, most running along the southern border. Only a few pipes in the west and north. Whole mountain ranges ran between the nearest known pipes and central Wyoming.
In the last book, Father John scanned through the chapter titled “The Great Diamond Hoax.” Diamonds discovered in southwestern Wyoming in 1872. Eastern financiers enticed to invest in America’s largest diamond mine. Couple of prospectors salt the area with valuable gemstones—the only gemstone-quality crystals in the deposit. Financiers too embarrassed to press charges. One of the swindlers was from Kentucky where he became a folk hero for “out—Yankeeing the Yankees.”