Down the Throat of the Mountain

by Jennifer Erickson

  There were a lot of interesting things in that pile: bags of gold dust and nuggets, pocket watches, shiny stones, a music box. He wound up the music box, and the song, so sad to begin with, got slower and sadder as the works ran down. What is the point, he wondered, of anything in this world? Bonesy knew better than to listen again.

  At the bottom of the heap, he came upon an inlaid box. Inside, he found a heavy gold nugget that very much resembled a bear. He could see the teeth, the ears, the round belly, the stubby legs. Someone had scratched on tiny claws and an eye. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, so much more elegant and noble than the rest of that flashy heap. It reminded him of tales his Ute grandmother used to tell. Of how Bear slept underground through the winter. Of how a bear could take different shapes to punish a boy who did not live as he should.

  Charlotte walked in on him as he crouched there, examining the gold bear.

  He tried to hide it behind his back but he was too late. She saw the inlaid box lying on its side in the dirt.

  "Oh, you like that one, do you?"

  He flinched and hurried to fumble it back into the box. It flew out of his fingers and clinked into the wall by her shin.

  Bonesy held his breath.

  "I like it, too." She stooped to pick it up, examined it. " I call it the Golden Bear. It might be cursed, though. You can have it if you want. Really. I'm curious to see what happens."

  She set it on the ground halfway between them.

  "McCoy will tell me if you take anything else."

  Bonesy nodded. He reached slowly for the bear, watching her face to make sure she hadn't changed her mind, and tucked it into his long johns for safekeeping. She rolled her eyes and left.

  When he had finished moving all the treasure the next day, Bonesy huddled in the pile of rags by the vault door. The lock shifted. The flame of Charlotte's teapot lamp preceded her. She turned and dragged in a shovel and pick axe then leaned back on the door. He wondered vaguely if he'd be allowed to leave now. Somehow he doubted it.

  "Bonesy, I'm pleased with your work," she said. "I had a hunch that you'd be different. Why do you think that is? Do you think it has to do with being dumb?"

  Actually, Bonesy wasn't exactly dumb. But the sounds that came out of his mouth had never matched what he intended, so he had long ago learned to keep silent. Bonesy shrugged.

  "And I have another job for you, since my tunnel builders had to be shot. Don't ever believe anyone who says that's easy. I was heartbroken. You understand, don't you? Anyway you always look so sympathetic."

  Did he? Bonesy wondered. He wasn't sure what he thought most of the time. He didn't think sympathy described it.

  "I need you to finish my tunnel project. You remember that stake I showed you?"

  He followed Charlotte through the slot, down the ladder to McCoy's room. She inspected his work, chatted with McCoy.

  "Now, Bonesy, I don't want this stuff just heaped here. I want it organized. Gold over here, jewelry there, coins and so forth." She pointed around the space. "When you've finished that, start digging. Make the hole big enough for a man."

  Bonesy wondered whether he could tackle her, take the key and escape. While he was considering it, she left.

  Chapter 7

  Sometimes, Bonesy felt so lucid it was painful, because then he remembered that he was imprisoned, and the hopelessness and ugliness of his situation. Most times, he drifted, only half aware of what he was doing. Occasionally, though, something wonderful happened: he felt a pull, like a fish hook in his chest, and his breath and his memories and his will whooshed gloriously out through the top of his head, leaving a hole that ached around the edges. Because of the ache, he knew that the whoosh was bad for him, and it was scary to wake up and not know where he was or what he’d done, but it wasn’t like he could control it, and also, it felt so good, at least at first. That first whoosh was like nothing he’d ever experienced before.

  After one of those whooshes, he woke up with Charlotte’s ruffled bloomers in his face. She was ranting and pulling on his arm. Her teapot lamp roared and shot rainbows. Around them was a chamber with marble pillars and walls of snowy white, where icicles of rock hung from the ceiling.

  Later, back in McCoy’s crypt with a pick in his hands, hacking away at the stony ground, Bonesy wondered whether he had imagined that chamber of wonders.

  Charlotte appeared with his crackers and beer (sometimes she could be kind). She was disappointed in his work, she said. He’d managed to dig several shallow pits, all of them in the wrong places.

  “I’ll give you another day,” she said. Her voice was understanding. “But I can’t keep you around just because I like you. Don’t try to sneak off again.”

  She didn’t say so, but Bonesy knew that if he couldn’t finish in time, she would kill him. Maybe she’d tip him into one of the hollows he’d dug or bury him under her flashy heap of treasure, like the Golden Bear.

  He thought that she would leave, then, but it seemed there was something else on her mind. She dusted gravel off a tooled leather accordion case and sat on it. Inspected him while he guzzled his beer and broke off chunks of cracker with numb fingers.

  “Before you go back to work, I want you to take me to the place where I found you yesterday.”

  Bonesy swallowed wrong, choked and coughed, sprayed Charlotte with beer and soggy crackers.

  How could he find it again? He hadn’t even been sure it existed.

  Charlotte swiped the beer mug from him and threw the dregs in his face.

  “Try to concentrate.”

  Bonesy licked the beer from his dripping beard while he strained to remember the previous day. Then he got to his feet, climbed the ladder, and headed down the tunnel with Charlotte behind him. He had no idea where he was going. He hoped that maybe luck would be with him, and it was, because when he neared a certain cleft in the rock wall, Charlotte slowed. He just glimpsed it out of the corner of his eye. He hesitated and she nodded him in.

  In that moment, Bonesy realized that Charlotte already knew where they were going. He focused all of his intention on reading her body language. When she shifted her body, he turned, and so on.

  And then she was still. She seemed to be waiting for him to make a decision.

  Bonesy looked around him. Charlotte’s teapot lamp flickered and spit. Shattered limestone pressed from all sides.

  There was no chamber of wonders. No pillars.

  He stepped one way, then the other, but everywhere was ugly broken rock. Bonesy started to panic. He was doomed. She would shoot him right there, he was sure of it. She’d think that he’d led her purposely astray.

  Then, a miracle occurred.

  Charlotte said, "Yes, this is where I thought it was, too. But maybe it's not a place, not really."

  Bonesy shifted so he could see her better.

  “Do you think that’s possible?” she asked.

  Bonesy nodded enthusiastically. Anything to live until tomorrow.

  Something had shifted in Bonesy the moment he realized that he would die in the cavern below the Long Shot Hotel.

  He thought of his children back in Missouri, growing up in that mirthless house with their disappointed mother and her parents, who were never satisfied, whatever he did. He'd never return with sacks of gold to liberate them, to give them the happiness and security they deserved. They'd think he'd deserted them, and who could blame them? They'd think he'd run away, and they'd grow up sure that their father had never loved them.

  Bonesy's father-in-law had never approved of the match. How could a man who couldn't speak provide for his family? But Gretchen had seen something in him. At least at first. And then the years had passed, and her eyes had grown hard, and her encouragement had turned to nagging. And Bonesy's (or Luke, as he was known in that other life) confidence had ebbed with every failure.

  Early one morning, he woke his son and his daughter, snuggled under the quilt in the bed in the corner, and he looked into their sl
eepy eyes and tried to give them a message: "I love you more than anything in the world, so I am going off across the prairie to the mountains to strike it rich, and when I return, I will buy you everything you ever wanted." But he got it wrong. Instead of understanding, they just looked frightened, and Emily called for her mommy, so Bonesy had run out of the house, scowling. That was what his babies would remember of him: that he fled like a bandit.

  Bonesy wondered how his children had grown in the past year. Was Jake running around in the road with the other children? Was he speaking in full sentences, prattling on like his sister? Bonesy was so proud of her many words.

  How long did Bonesy have these thoughts? It was impossible to tell in the cavern, where time was so fickle.

  Chapter 8

  Bonesy leaned on his pick next to a shallow hole he'd dug. Madam Charlotte would be returning any minute to check on his progress. She would not be pleased. He tried to think of a way to escape, but his mind refused to focus. He could clobber her with the pick if he could catch her, but it seemed like she moved at twice the speed he did. He hoped McCoy couldn't read his thoughts. Yes, he knew McCoy was dead, but still...Bonesy gazed unseeing at the jumble of treasure from Charlotte's vault.

  He felt the Golden Bear in the fabric of his long johns. It had worked its way down the front to his crotch, then had dropped down his leg. It was now lodged somewhere around his knee. The Golden Bear was his future. If he ever made it out of here, he would sell it for some fertile farmland with a little house. New boots for Jake and Emily. A beaver stole for his wife Gretchen.

  Then he heard voices, voices so faint it was like they came from another world. They seemed to come from his left, so he tiptoed that way and placed his ear to the rock. The voices stopped, and all he heard was his own breath. Bonesy stepped back, stumbled to another spot and listened again. Now the voices were behind him, and above.

  He gazed toward the ceiling, where shadows shifted with the sway of the lantern in his hand. One spot in particular seemed to be more than just shadow.

  Bonesy lapsed into indecision. Perhaps it was something. Perhaps it was nothing. Would he be better off digging Madam Charlotte's hole than investigating disembodied voices? How would he even reach that high? He put a tentative foot on a sack of gold dust. If he climbed up higher, would he be able to see the ceiling better? Still undecided, he flopped over the top of the pile on his stomach. When he tried to stand, he tripped and crumpled to his knees. The lantern swung wildly in his hand and the chamber's ladder seemed to dance in his vision.

  Bonesy stared at the ladder, trying to decipher what it was telling him. All at once, it came to him. He found himself wrenching at the ladder, dancing with it as he tried to rock it from leg to leg across the floor. It was floppy and reluctant, and the shafts kept getting hung up on the ceiling. It reeled and almost toppled with him, but somehow he kept it upright. Bonesy, who had always been too shy to dance, was leading this waltz.

  He dragged it up on top of the treasure pile, got one shaft wedged in the dark spot in the ceiling, picked up the lantern, stepped up as the ladder wobbled with his shifting weight.

  At the top, he held the lantern in his trembling hand up into an inky gash, and heard a voice from far away say, "Yes!".

  Bonesy was so taken aback that he lost his footing and toppled off the ladder. The lantern crashed to the ground. But he had heard all he needed. He felt around, grabbed a leather pouch and stood, jammed his hand in and brought out fistfuls of gold dust. The air glittered in the guttering lantern light as he shoved as much as he could into his pockets. Then he heard Charlotte call to him, "Bonesy!"

  Bonesy scrambled up the ladder, heaved himself up into the ceiling, and in his exertions, kicked down the ladder, which collapsed onto the lantern. The lantern flared brightly and died.

  He felt the Golden Bear slip down to his ankle, but there was no time to retrieve it. He prayed that his boot top would keep it from falling out.

  Bonesy threw himself forward into a winding crevice.

  His breath echoed. He could hear his own heartbeat, as though the cavern breathed and lived with him, through him.

  The crevice guided him upward. When he stopped and held very still, he thought he could hear the voices.

  Then, he saw a faint flicker of a flame, heard the voices almost beside him.

  "What's that?" said one voice.

  "It looks like a light," the other replied.

  Bonesy shrank back, confused. The lantern had been smashed. How could they see him? Did he glow? Did his eyes shine? He squeezed them shut.

  Then, ever so faintly, he heard Madam Charlotte's angry yell. Was she coming after him? Had she sent the men with the voices to find him? If so, he was trapped between the two. Was there no escape?

  The men moved off. Bonesy heard them argue. Rocks clattered.

  No. Whatever was happening had nothing to do with him. Bonesy held his breath, leaned forward to peer around the corner and came face-to-face with another man, backlit by a prick of light. Bonesy froze. The other man yelped and took off running. Bonesy watched for a moment, astonished.

  Madam Charlotte must be coming! Bonesy bolted after him, saw two men clamber up and out through a ray of sunlight, grasping at ledges in the rock.

  Blinking and gasping, Bonesy popped out of a hole in the ground above timberline. The two men in front of him bounded away like deer.

  Chapter 9

  When Charlotte stepped through the vault door with her teapot lantern and her pearl handled pistol at the ready, the odor of sweat seemed diminished. She sniffed the air. He was around somewhere, but not near. Something was wrong.

  "Yoo-hoo! Bonesy?"

  Silence, then a clatter that set her hair on end.

  She wormed through the gap toward McCoy's crypt, knelt down and peered inside. The ladder had collapsed. Bonesy was gone.

  "Where did he go, McCoy?" she asked. He had to be somewhere in the warren of tunnels ahead. She continued down the passage, turned and squirmed through a cleft in the fractured tunnel wall. At the spot where she had found Bonesy the last time, she paused. But the chamber draped in liquid marble was still not there. She took up the chase again, deeper into the mountain. The cleft sloped mostly upward and through a tight constriction. Then downward she wriggled by the flame of her teapot lamp, through sweating rocks until she realized that she could stand. Slowly, she straightened and looked around her.

  Water seeped from seams in the walls and dripped into puddles. Ploink...ploink.

  Then, she heard something else: the murmur of voices.

  Charlotte froze. Fear and dismay washed through her, then indignation. Who was trespassing in her cave? How dare they?

  She clambered up a pile of boulders and into a stone gullet. Slipped and heaved her way up. Poked her head out at the base of what seemed to be a deep shaft.

  A sound like rain preceded a shower of pebbles.

  "Damn." Charlotte heard that word clearly, then more murmuring. Then, "What's that?"

  "It looks like a light."

  Rage stood on Charlotte's chest. "Who. The hell. Are you?"

  The two voices overlapped in quick, questioning tones. They seemed to be arguing. Then a rock whistled out of nowhere and clattered off the wall by Charlotte's head.

  She ducked back into her hole, crab walked back down, tumbled to the ground. Crawling back to McCoy, she almost cried with frustration when she got hung up at the tight spot. The miner's lamp sagged to the side and set fire to a loose tendril of hair. She freed a hand and slapped at it, fought her way through. Stumbling upright, she ripped the lamp from her hat, and ran back to McCoy. Over the opening to his crypt she paused, the flaming lamp gripped in gloved fingers.

  "He got away," said McCoy.

  "Yes, but I found something more important." Charlotte inhaled a lungful of sweet air. "There's another way into my cave."

  The next night, one of Charlotte's bartenders sauntered Charlotte's way and murmured, "See the two bo
ys standing down near the end of the bar, I think they're the ones you're looking for. They said they discovered a haunted cave yesterday."

  She whispered to a gaunt man slouched at a card table. He wandered over and struck up a conversation, then followed the boys out when they left.

  Dawn had just lighted the ridge top and stained the sky a bloody red. By sunrise the boys were gone. By noon, no one remembered them.

  Chapter 10

  Leaving Long Shot was easier than Bonesy expected. It was as though no one saw him. Perhaps they saw right through him, like a ghost, he was so pale and thin.

  But the gold dust sifting through Bonesy's pockets made things happen. It bought him a ride on an ox cart to Boulder, where he pulled down his sock and stuck his hand up the leg of his long johns only to confirm what he had suspected all along: the Golden Bear was gone, dropped somewhere along that twisting crevice he'd followed to flee from Miss Charlotte. It was a severe blow. He would have to make do with whatever he'd managed to cram into his pockets as he escaped.

  At the side of his in-laws' home in Missouri, Bonesy fell off the pony he'd bought in Boulder and staggered to the kitchen door. Before he could knock, his wife Gretchen opened it, face as blank as the prairie. Bonesy put out his hand, uncurled his fingers, and there, in his grimy palm lay three small gold nuggets, enough to buy, perhaps, a little farm of their own.

  She sighed and turned away, but she left the door open for him.

  Weeks later, after he'd cleaned up and eaten, and his ghostly face had gained some color, Bonesy took a pen, and in the back of the family Bible, he wrote in his childish hand an account of his experiences in Pike's Peak Territory. Gretchen pored over it, passed it to her father and mother. It was hard to decipher the spiky script and the erratic spelling, but they understood enough. Enough to call him a liar, a thief, a loony.