by Scott Connor
‘Patrick’s still searching,’ Nathan called. ‘He’s found a way to the end of the tunnel, but it’s hard to negotiate. Tucker and Clay didn’t bring his tools. It’d help if you—’
‘No. We’re not leaving here on no errands.’
Nathan shrugged as his attempt to split them up failed, but when they settled down, they did so in a more contented mood, their confidence growing as the men outside became more agitated.
Foley paced up and down the tunnel, his travels coming closer to their hole while Wallace stayed at the entrance looking out, presumably awaiting Sherman’s return.
Foley called out when twenty minutes were left, and then called out at five-minute intervals, but if the countdown was meant to worry them it failed as his voice became more strained every time he spoke.
The ten-minute deadline had passed when Nathan gathered the others closer.
‘Now’s the time to act,’ he whispered.
‘They’ll be more worried in another five minutes,’ Patrick said.
‘They will, but we need to get away, too.’
‘Agreed,’ Patrick said.
Nathan turned round to kneel beside the hole. He still hadn’t formulated a plan that he was confident would work, so his only hope was to create a situation and then seize any opportunity that came along.
He took the bundle off Patrick and deposited it on the ground before the hole.
‘Let’s hope for some luck,’ he whispered. Then he raised his voice. ‘You two, Patrick is coming back down the tunnel.’
‘Has he got the gold?’ Foley said, coming closer.
Nathan caught the desperation and tension in his voice. Then footfalls sounded as Wallace came over from the entrance and joined Foley.
‘Patience. He’s coming out now. He has something with him.’
Patrick obliged by grunting and then crawling across the tunnel.
‘Is it the gold?’ Wallace asked.
Nathan looked out through the hole to see that the two men had stopped three paces away and were bending over to peer through the hole.
‘It is,’ Nathan said, putting a suitable amount of awe into his tone before he moved back out of view.
‘Show us.’
Nathan opened the rolled-up jacket to expose some of the nugget. Then he placed it on the bottom of the hole. Sharp intakes of breath sounded.
‘Step away and you’ll live.’
‘We’d prefer a different deal,’ Nathan said, moving the bundle away.
‘It’s the only deal you’ll get unless you want to start dodging lead.’
Nathan gnawed on his lip searching for an angle that might give them a chance. Then, in a sudden decision, he put the bundle down and shrugged out of his jacket.
He scooped up a rock that was broadly the same size as the nugget and wrapped it in his jacket. Then he placed the new bundle on the ledge, an object that in the low light should look the same as the other one had.
‘In that case I’ll bring it out,’ he said. He laid a hand on his jacket as if he were reluctant to let the contents out of his grasp.
‘Just leave it there,’ Foley said.
Nathan ignored him. He pushed the bundle to the side of the hole and ducked to slip through. On the other side he straightened up and clutched the rock to his chest.
Jeff quickly followed him out and stood to his side while Patrick held his hands out through the hole.
‘Any tricks and I’ll take it back,’ Patrick said. ‘Then I’ll make sure you never find it.’
‘We won’t trick you,’ Wallace said, keeping his gun trained on them. ‘All we want is the gold. Hand it over and we’ll leave.’
Nathan considered his opponents. Wallace had his back to the wall and Foley stood in the middle of the tunnel.
Both men were being cautious and they would be able to deal easily with any duplicity. Despite that, the only action Nathan could think of was to play out his trick and see where it led.
He lowered himself to one knee and held out the bundle. Both men leaned forward in eagerness giving him hope that he might catch them off-guard.
He took a deep breath before he placed the rock on the ground, but before he could raise his hands from it, a voice spoke up from behind them.
‘Don’t leave it there. Bring it to me.’
Nathan looked past Foley to see Tucker standing in the entrance. He was rubbing his forehead and he stood awkwardly as if he had yet to recover from the fall down the slope. Foley turned round to consider him and sneered.
‘You’re unarmed, Tucker. You don’t give the orders here.’
‘I do,’ Tucker said, smirking. ‘Clay’s found the dynamite. If we don’t get the gold, he’ll blow you all to hell.’
Chapter Fifteen
While Foley backed away to the wall to join Wallace, Nathan clutched the bundle to his chest. He stood up and joined Jeff. Patrick stayed on the other side of the hole with the real nugget.
‘If Clay lights the fuse, he’ll kill you, too,’ Foley said, raising his gun to sight Tucker’s chest.
Tucker rubbed his jaw ruefully, presumably remembering the beating he’d suffered.
‘He won’t. We’ve cut the fuses so they’re just long enough for us to get away.’ Tucker laughed and flexed a leg. ‘After all, we know how long it takes to get down to the bottom of the slope. So, do we see if you can be as fast as we were, or do we get the gold?’
Foley glanced at Nathan, clearly judging how long it’d take to wrest the gold off him and run to the entrance, but Nathan pre-empted his decision by setting off walking down the tunnel.
‘Stop!’ Foley said.
‘Let me do this,’ Nathan said. ‘Then we can all take our chances.’
Foley narrowed his eyes, but then he flashed a smile, acknowledging that he had understood Nathan’s warning that he was planning something. He stepped aside and Nathan carried on past him.
‘Keep on moving,’ Tucker said from the entrance.
Pace by pace Nathan approached him. He was ten paces away and around the same distance from the back of the tunnel when Foley spoke up.
‘No further,’ he said.
As he’d planned to stop before he reached Tucker, Nathan did as ordered.
Tucker considered the armed Foley and Wallace at the back of the tunnel. Then, with a short gesture to Clay outside, he took three slow paces into the tunnel.
‘Put it down and then back away,’ he said with an audible gulp that revealed the tension he was feeling.
Nathan followed the orders, placing the bundle at his feet and then taking a pace backwards. Tucker signified that he should get further away and so he backed away to the wall where he could see the entrance and the far end of the tunnel.
Tucker shuffled towards the bundle while darting his gaze from man to man, looking out for duplicity. Closer to he crouched and thrust out his hands ready to scoop up the rock and run.
Slowly his questing fingertips closed on a trailing sleeve. Then, with a roll of his shoulders that gathered his confidence, he slapped a hand on the top.
Nobody else moved as he exhaled noisily. Then he swung back the top layer of the jacket to reveal the rock beneath. He moved to lift it out of the jacket, but then he stopped and peered at the smooth rock.
‘I’ve never seen a gold nugget before, but this doesn’t look like one to me,’ he said.
‘It’s not,’ Foley said, moving off down the tunnel.
‘What kind of trick is this?’ Tucker stood up while still peering at the rock in bemusement.
Foley continued to advance, but then a cry of alarm went up. Nathan turned to see that Jeff had taken advantage of the distraction to jump Wallace. He’d grabbed his gun hand and had thrust it high.
Foley slid to a halt and peered one way and then the other, unsure which problem to deal with first, but Tucker had no problem in making his decision. He hurried to the entrance.
‘It’s a trap, Clay,’ he shouted.
With Tucker sl
ipping out of his sight, Nathan hurried to the rock and hurled it at Foley. The rock was heavy and he couldn’t give it much momentum. It looped up in the air on a trajectory that would fall short.
Foley still flinched away, but even before the rock had dropped short of his boots Nathan was running towards him. With alarming speed Foley got his wits about him and while side-stepping away from the rolling rock he trained his gun on him.
‘What did you do with the gold?’ he demanded.
Nathan slid to a halt four feet from him and seeing no choice, he raised his hands.
‘The gold?’ Nathan murmured, playing for time.
Down the tunnel Jeff was still struggling with Wallace and Patrick was peering out through the hole. Then a cry went up from outside the tunnel that concentrated all their thoughts.
‘You shouldn’t have played us for fools,’ Tucker shouted. ‘The fuses are lit. You’re all dead men!’
While still keeping his gun on Nathan, Foley looked down the tunnel at Jeff and Wallace who had both gone rigid, their tussle forgotten.
‘How long?’ Nathan snapped.
‘We gave ourselves two minutes to get away,’ Foley said, his tone no longer confrontational, ‘but if Clay’s shortened the fuses. . . .’
Foley left the thought uncompleted, but his sudden sprint towards the entrance provided all the answers Nathan needed. Wallace tore himself away from Jeff’s grip and set off after him.
On the run he cast Nathan a rueful glare and swung his gun towards him, making Nathan turn and double-over in a desperate attempt to avoid the shot, but he didn’t fire.
When Nathan looked up Wallace had joined Foley in the entrance and was looking down the slope in frozen horror. While Wallace looked for a way down, Foley leapt forward.
He went tumbling down the slope in the same manner as Tucker and Clay had done earlier. Wallace left in a more cautious manner.
Nathan waved overhead. ‘Hurry up, you two. It’ll blow at any moment!’
Jeff had already set off, but then skidded to a halt and hurried back to help Patrick out through the hole. The bundle containing the real gold nugget was thrust under an arm.
‘I’ve got it!’ Patrick shouted as Jeff grabbed his free arm and hurried him down the tunnel.
‘Let’s hope we get to enjoy it for longer than the next five seconds,’ Nathan said as he broke into a run.
‘We will,’ Patrick said as he pounded along. ‘Go left and get behind the boulder twenty yards away. That’ll protect us.’
‘But you don’t know where they planted the dynamite,’ Jeff said.
Patrick merely shrugged and so they all concentrated on running. Nathan reached the entrance and glanced down.
Clay and Tucker had already reached the bottom and were scurrying into the gully. Wallace wasn’t in view while Foley was skidding down the slope on his back.
He couldn’t see the dynamite nor any sign of lit fuses, but he judged that as a bad sign. He turned to the left.
The huge boulder did appear big enough to protect them, but it was also further away than the twenty yards Patrick had promised. With a sinking feeling in his guts Nathan set off.
At every pace he expected the explosion, but he halved the distance in a few seconds without mishap. He glanced over his shoulder. Patrick and Jeff were at his heels, Patrick having sensibly handed the heavy rock to Jeff.
With his friends having as much chance of survival as he had, Nathan put his head down and sprinted. He pounded over the sloping ground, aiming for the highest side of the boulder.
On the run he reached the side, clambered over loose rocks, and threw himself to the ground. He rolled twice fetching up on his side behind the sheer mass of the boulder. He breathed a sigh of relief and then moved to hurry the others into safety with him.
Patrick emerged around the corner first with relief etched into his face. Then Jeff appeared, looking over his shoulder.
Nathan presumed he was worried about the imminent explosion and he shouted at him to hurry up, but then Wallace appeared at his heels. Wallace leapt on his back, one hand clawing at Jeff’s face, the other reaching for the gold. . . .
A deafening roar sounded.
The next Nathan knew he was lying on his back. His ears were ringing and a great weight was pressing down on his chest. He looked down expecting that something had landed on him, but there was nothing there.
He tried to sit up, but instead he succeeded only in rolling over on to his side. He lay, bemused and shocked, but he still felt as if a weight was on him.
A distracted part of his mind put the feeling down to numbness after the blast. Dust swirled and then parted to let him see Patrick shuffling along, bent over.
‘I’m here,’ Nathan croaked.
Patrick carried on along the same path and disappeared from view.
Nathan took a deep breath and again tried to move. This time he rolled to his knees where he gathered his breath before standing and following Patrick.
He found him shuffling in a circle. He shouted his name twice without him hearing him. Only when he slapped a hand on his shoulder did he turn.
Patrick said something, but Nathan couldn’t hear it, so he patted the side of his head. With a pop, his hearing returned.
‘I can’t find him,’ Patrick was saying.
Nathan smiled. Now that he’d got his hearing back he could hear Jeff calling out from probably only a few yards away.
‘Your hearing’s gone,’ he said, turning him in the direction of Jeff’s calling and giving him a push.
‘What?’ Patrick said, as Nathan moved him on through the dust. Only when the dim form of Jeff came into view did he hurry on to join him.
‘We survived,’ Jeff said, feeling his arms and legs as if he hardly believed it himself.
‘And I can hear now,’ Patrick said, receiving a relieved grunt from Nathan. He looked around. ‘Where’s the gold?’
The relief on everyone’s faces at having survived the explosion fled.
They all looked around at the ground until Jeff turned on his heel and hurried out of view. They followed him until they found him stood over the broken form of Wallace, his limbs bent at awkward angles.
‘He saved my life, not that he’d planned to,’ he said.
He knelt and rolled his body aside to reveal Nathan’s rolled-up jacket.
‘At least he got his hands on the gold before he died,’ Patrick said.
They gathered around as he opened the jacket to prove they did actually have the nugget. Then they treated each other to a round of backslaps before turning their minds to what they did next.
The dust was clearing, letting them see the boulder that had protected them. Patrick directed them to go in the other direction.
Nathan and Jeff stood back to let him lead and he picked a route along the slope that would presumably get them to the ridge, although that remained out of sight.
Nathan heard nothing other than their feet crunching on the rock making him feel that they were the only ones to have survived the explosion, and when they reached the ridge and he looked back, that seemed likely.
The dust cloud had dissipated enough to let him see a devastating scene that made him gulp.
Beyond the boulder none of the tunnels had survived. The former outcrop was now a flattened area, the mass of rock having slid down into the cauldron where it would provide work for the miners for some time to come.
It was hard to believe anyone below could have survived, but most shocking was the boulder, which hung over a precipice with the ground having fallen away around it leaving just the small area where they’d hid.
‘Lucky,’ Jeff said, joining him in looking back.
‘I prefer to think that I used good judgment in directing us there,’ Patrick said.
Both men smiled and then invited him to lead on down the ridge.
‘Let’s hope that luck holds out some more,’ Nathan said as he slipped over the top.
‘I reckon we’
ve used up all our luck,’ Jeff said. ‘I’d prefer a good plan.’
‘In that case we retrieve our horses,’ Patrick said. ‘Then we get out of here, unless you’re minded to continue being miners.’
‘We’ve had enough of that,’ Jeff said. ‘Now it’s time to enjoy being rich.’
With everyone agreeing with that sentiment, they clambered down the ridge. They reached the flattened area in a few minutes and then carried on down the railtracks towards Copper Town.
Ahead a commotion was in progress. Nathan presumed it was as a result of the explosion, but when they were closer to the station he saw that a train had arrived.
New workers had stepped out on to the short platform and they were looking up at the former outcrop where the spreading cloud now masked the devastation. Sherman was on the platform overseeing the process of booking them in, so he wouldn’t be investigating the outcrop for a while.
Confident now that they should be able to reach their horses and slip away unseen, they left the tracks to head for the mine. They’d covered only fifty yards when Patrick grunted with irritation and drew them to a halt.
‘What’s wrong?’ Jeff asked.
Patrick pointed, drawing their attention to a man standing between them and the mine: Foley Steele.
Worse, Foley had already seen them and was now walking purposefully on, his gun drawn and held low.
Chapter Sixteen
The three men hurried back to the railtracks.
With the route to the mine blocked, they had no choice but to seek refuge in Copper Town. The diversion at the station was still ongoing and so they slipped past the train and reached the buildings without drawing attention upon themselves.
Not that anyone should be bothered about them, as aside from carrying the large bundle they weren’t doing anything to concern anyone. At the saloon where they’d first met Wallace and Foley, they looked back.
Foley was advancing on them, maintaining a determined pace that would reach them in no time.
‘Where?’ Jeff asked, looking around the town, which in early afternoon was deserted other than the people congregating at the station.