Cowboy Christmas Guardian

by Dana Mentink

  “I didn’t ask for your opinion.”

  “I’m providing it free of charge.”

  She ignored him, dragging the ladder over to the edge of the crevasse. He followed, issuing a steady stream of discouragement, which she disregarded. “Can you put weight on this end and keep it from angling downward? I’m going to slide it out and see if it will reach the other side.”

  “This is a...”

  “Bad idea, I know,” she said, straining all her muscles to slide the ladder out into the darkness. Inch by inch she pushed it forward, Barrett weighing the other end down to keep it horizontal. He grunted with pain but he did not slow his efforts. Sweat dripped down her face as the metal grated against the rock on the other side.

  “It worked,” she said, wiping her hands on her jeans. One end of the ladder rested on the lip of the tunnel, the other on the sandy floor of the cavern. Hope flickered to life.

  Barrett watched her, arms folded. “So you think that ladder is stable enough to support a human body?”

  “Yes,” she said with certainty.

  “And you figure the tunnel edge isn’t going to give way as soon as we put any more weight on it?”

  “Pretty sure, yes.” Was she? There was no way to be certain that the lip of rock would hold. A lump formed in her throat and she longed for a deep drink of ice-cold water. Seconds ticked by accompanied by an incessant dripping from somewhere in the cavern, mocking her thirst.

  He finally shook his head. “Shelby Arroyo, there is no way on this planet I am letting you crawl across that ladder.”

  Her chin went up. “You can’t stop me.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  He stepped forward, towering over her. She feared he was going to put her over his shoulder, injured ribs or no injured ribs. Instead, he stepped around her, blocking her from the ladder.

  “What are you doing?”

  He rolled up the sleeves of his jacket. “I’m going to cross and then I’ll get help.”

  She tried to edge in front of him, but he moved her aside. “You’re in no condition to do this, Barrett.”

  “The only condition a person needs to be in to do this is to be out of his mind, and I reckon I fit the bill.”

  “Barrett, no.” She grabbed his arm. “You’re heavier than I am, you’re injured. I got you into this mess. I should go.”

  “I walked into the mess of my own accord. Eyes wide open.”

  “No. This is my fault and I am going to get us out of this.”

  He took hold of her hands and held them to his chest. Though the darkness dulled the hue, she imagined the intense blue of his gaze riveted on her face.

  “Shelby, I cannot watch you risk your life. I am going to cross first because it’s the right thing to do.”

  Tears gathered in her eyes and she whacked a palm against his chest, making him wince. “That makes no sense, it’s just dumb cowboy chivalry.”

  “Maybe, but it doesn’t change my decision.”

  “I can’t let you do this.” Her voice shook. “You’ve been in trouble since the moment we met.”

  “That is true,” he said, something wistful in his voice.

  “And I don’t want you to sacrifice yourself for me, do you hear me, Barrett Thorn?” The tears trickled down and he put his mouth to her forehead. She held him close, fiercely, ignoring the pain it might cause him, trying to squeeze some sense into him.

  “My dumb cowboy chivalry says a man needs to do what he can in this world,” he murmured in her ear. “I’ve disappointed you and myself. I can’t be the kind of man you deserve, but I can do this and I’m gonna.”

  “I won’t let you.”

  “It’s not your decision to make.” He pulled away, kissed her on the temple and then on the cheek. She found her head tipping up to meet his mouth and for a split second it felt as if her heart reached out and joined with his.

  Sparks tripped across her senses, and she grasped the nape of his neck, holding him close, kissing him. He released her and trailed a hand through her hair. Desperately, she tried to think of something that would change his mind.

  Bending, he picked up his hard hat and put it on her head. “It’s going to be okay.”

  But what if it wasn’t? What if he fell? What if...?

  Before she could rally another argument, he got on his knees and crept out onto the first few rungs of the ladder. The metal creaked, twanging her nerves. Time ground to a halt and even her shallow breaths seemed loud to her frazzled senses. Two more rungs out and he was well away from the side, perched on the rickety ladder, hovering over a drop that would certainly kill him.

  She could make out the white gleam of his hands, a flicker of his cheek, ashen in the darkness. Twisting her hands together, she realized they had not prayed together before he put his life on the line.

  “Lord God,” she breathed. Another creak of the ladder made her stop, pulse slamming in her throat.

  Light. He needed more light than the glow from her headlamp and the flashlight. With clumsy fingers, she pulled out a glow stick from her backpack. “Barrett, I’m going to throw a light stick over to the far side to help you see, okay?”

  “Fire away,” he said.

  She activated the chemicals and launched the stick across the chasm. It arced through the black, a whirling pinwheel of green, landing on the lip of the rock.

  “Good shot,” he called. “I can see where I’m going now.”

  Inch by painful inch, he crept forward. Each movement had to be tugging on his ribs, but he made no complaint. She kept the flashlight trained as best she could to make out his progress and help light his way. Only three feet to go as he inched closer to the luminescent green marker. She blew out a breath to relieve the excruciating tension.

  With a smack of flesh on iron, his right hand slipped off the rung and he fell heavily against the ladder, grunting as his torso impacted the metal. She screamed, body stiff with terror. He clung there for a minute. It hurt to breathe, her every muscle taut as steel wire as the seconds ticked by.

  Barrett, please don’t fall. Please...

  With excruciating slowness, he got into a crawling position again.

  Finally able to draw breath, she felt like laughing and crying all at the same time.

  You’re going to make it, Barrett.

  He had only a few feet to go now. The insane plan was actually working. Barrett was gradually creeping across to safety. She realized her hands were balled into fists and she forced her fingers to relax.

  Wishing she’d thought to urge him to carry his pack with some food and water, she considered his next steps. The tracks would take him to the surface. They had to, or at least close enough that he could yell for help. Her lungs began to return to a seminormal rhythm as he eased along the rusted iron rungs.

  She could practically hear him now saying, “That was all kinds of crazy.”

  It would be a story to tell his family, for sure.

  The smile died on her face as the ladder snapped in two with a shriek of metal.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Barrett felt the ladder give way underneath him. He clung to the metal with all the strength he could muster, his knees and elbows scraping against the rock wall as the ladder ricocheted off the rocks, plummeting downward. The spiraling movement and the rain of debris dizzied his senses.

  He managed to hook an arm over the end of the twisted rail that jutted out over the chasm. The sudden stop in momentum jarred every nerve into an avalanche of pain. Hanging there by one arm, the pieces of the ladder fell away beneath him until they made a distant splash as they plunged into the water far below. Shelby’s screams ricocheted off the cavern walls.

  He knew he could not hold on for long. His ribs sent ribbons of fire through his body as he wriggled to get his
other arm around the rail. The metal was cold and damp, like something long dead, but at the moment it was his best friend. Hanging there cost him every bit of effort but it was not enough. His only hope was to hook a leg up over the rail, which would give him enough leverage to shimmy his way out of the chasm. Muscles tensed to the breaking point, he tried to heave his leg over, but he could not manage it. Panting, he allowed himself to rest a moment.

  “Barrett,” Shelby screamed again into the darkness. She appeared to be lying on her stomach staring down. Her voice was brittle as glass, edged with hysteria.

  “I’m okay,” he shouted up, but he was not sure it was enough to carry back to her. Knowing she was up there, frantic, perhaps thinking him dead, fueled him to try again and he swung his leg up a second time, managing to curl just the heel of his boot over the edge of the beam. He’d done it, but he was too depleted to do anything more. His muscles were hard-pressed even to hold him there, growing weaker by the moment.

  “Move, move,” he ordered his aching limbs, but he did not have the strength.

  The weight of his failure pressed in on him. If he did not succeed, who knew how long it would be before help arrived for Shelby.

  Arms trembling, he focused on breathing, despair permeating his bones like the relentless cold. Shelby, he wanted to call out, this isn’t your fault. His sweaty palms began to lose their grip on the clammy metal.

  “Lord, save her,” he breathed. “Don’t let her die here alone.”

  Seconds ticked into minutes. He became aware of shouting from somewhere above him, low voices, deep and masculine. His mind wanted to consider that strange fact but he could not bring his mental powers into focus.

  Something thudded against his shoulder and still he clung, sweat rolling down his face.

  “Barrett.”

  Then Jack was somehow next to him, tethered to a rope.

  “How...?”

  “Not important. Hold on.” Jack wrapped a rope around his middle and grabbed him up in an enormous bear hug. “Ready,” he shouted.

  From somewhere above, the rope was hauled up, cinching around his middle and squeezing until he thought he would pass out from the pain.

  “Shelby,” he murmured. “You’ve got to get her out.”

  “One rescue at a time,” Jack said. Moments later, they were lifted out into the tunnel by Owen and his father. Oscar was right behind him, standing ready with a sturdy twenty-foot aluminum ladder.

  His father gripped Barrett’s arm after Jack lowered him onto the floor. “That was not a sight I ever want to see again.”

  “Me neither, sir. How are we going to get her out?”

  “Keegan is setting that up right now,” Jack said.

  Keegan. Good. If there was anyone skilled at cheating death, it was his youngest brother. Once Barrett quieted his breathing, he could hear Keegan, along with Owen, shouting directions across the gorge to Shelby. He watched as Owen and Keegan used the same procedure he and Shelby had with their sturdy ladder, easing it out across the chasm, a rope looped through one of the rungs.

  “Tie the rope around your waist,” Keegan shouted to Shelby.

  “Her hands are numb with cold. The ground is unstable,” Barrett said. “The rope might not be enough. I need to cross over to her.”

  They ignored him.

  “Hey,” he said, earning a look from Keegan, “this isn’t safe.”

  Keegan cocked his head. “Considering Oscar’s entrance is covered under three tons of rock, this is the only option. Besides,” he said with a grin, “I’ve done stuff like this plenty of times. It’ll be fun and she’ll have a great story to tell afterward.”

  Barrett opened his mouth to retort, but his father stopped him. “There is a rescue crew on its way, but I think we are her best chance just now.”

  Barrett tried to breathe his way to some sense of calm. “How did you find us?”

  “Heard the explosion. Couldn’t get through the rockfall so we let ourselves onto Hatcher’s property.”

  “He allowed you into the mine?”

  His father shook his head. “He wasn’t home so we let ourselves in.”

  “You trespassed?”

  He shrugged, a mischievous twist to his mouth. “Not going to let my boy and his girl die, am I?”

  She’s not my girl, he wanted to say, but right then the group grew silent as Keegan and Owen steadied the ladder. Barrett struggled to his feet.

  “Stay put,” Jack said.

  “I need to be there,” he hissed through gritted teeth. His brothers had brought lanterns that illuminated the chasm much better than their meager flashlights. Vast, silent and unforgiving, the tomb of stone had been left undisturbed for years. He paid attention only to the small figure on hands and knees, making her way across the sturdy aluminum slats.

  “That’s it,” Keegan said. Owen, Jack and his father had all taken hold of the other end of Shelby’s safety rope, legs braced in case she fell. Barrett’s stomach was a tight knot.

  Her face, ashen and scrunched in concentration, swam closer and closer. He could hardly hold himself back from scrambling across that ladder to retrieve her. Metal creaking, an icy wind blowing through the pitch-black, he gritted his teeth and waited.

  “You got this,” Keegan said. “Piece of cake.”

  Another five seconds of agony and she was across.

  When she was safely past the rock lip, Barrett could not wait any longer, grabbing her up in a hug that sent pain through his side.

  She was shivering, breathing shallow. Jack wrapped a blanket around her back. Owen pressed a water bottle into her hand but she was shaking so badly she could not open it.

  Barrett uncapped the bottle for her and held it to her lips while she drank. With a sudden roar, the ground trembled under them as the lip of rock gave way and the ladder spiraled into the depths.

  Keegan let out a low whistle. “Gonna have to get ourselves a new ladder.”

  Barrett laughed and held Shelby close.

  * * *

  Shelby did her best to keep up with the Thorn family and Barrett as they crept through the tunnel. If she showed the slightest signs of faltering, they would pick her up, and she could not allow that.

  They’d moved a safe distance away from the collapsing rock and given her time to get her body working again, but her limbs still shook as they walked back to Hatcher’s property. It was a small comfort to know that she had been right; the passages did connect.

  She stopped, fished a bag out of her back pocket and collected a sample of rock, stowing it in her backpack along with the other.

  Jack and Owen looked on in astonishment.

  “Still on the job?” Owen asked. Even in the dim light, she could read the distrust on his face. She couldn’t exactly blame him. Her bullheaded dedication to her job had almost cost their brother’s life. Instead of answering, she pushed ahead, filled with a burning desire to get out of the rocky tomb.

  When they finally exited the mine into the moonlit night, she thought she’d never experienced air so pure and precious. Barrett must have felt the same, too. He stood with his face tipped toward the sky, pulling in deep breaths, one hand pressed to his side. Evie Thorn greeted them, squeezing them both into a joyous embrace, her face stark with emotion.

  Hatcher was there, too, arms crossed, glowering, Emmaline peeping over his shoulder. “Cut through my lock,” he grumbled. “Destroyed my property.”

  “And as I told you, we will reimburse you in full for the replacement of that lock,” Evie said. “And you won’t raise a fuss, because if it was your daughter in the same predicament, you would have trespassed on our property without a second thought, wouldn’t you?”

  He looked at his boots.

  “Wouldn’t you?” she repeated.

  His m
outh twisted. “Yeah, I’d do most anything for Emmaline.”

  Shelby was astonished with Evie Thorn’s powers of persuasion as the woman turned her attention to Barrett. “You’re going to the clinic,” she told her son.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Shelby thought he must be in significant discomfort to have agreed without a word of argument.

  “You, too,” she said to Shelby.

  “I’m not hurt.”

  “Your jacket sleeve is torn and I can see blood through the tear. You’re both dehydrated at the very least. We’ll let the doctors clean you up.” With that, she marched to the truck and opened the passenger door, waiting while Shelby meekly shouldered her pack. She passed Barrett on the way.

  “Don’t worry,” he whispered. “Even Keegan does what Mama says when she takes that tone.”

  “I heard that, Barrett,” Evie said. “It’s a twenty-minute drive to the clinic and you’re both shivering, so quit talking and get into your brother’s truck.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  Shelby slid into the front seat of the other vehicle between Tom and Evie. When the heater fired up to high, she felt the delicious warmth bringing her limbs back to life and every scrape and bruise made itself known with a throb. Evie made sure Shelby’s lap was draped with another blanket. Then she sat, hands clasped in her lap while Shelby told her about the body they’d found. Tom’s forehead creased as he listened. Evie gasped.

  “Was it that poor boy who stayed at Oscar’s inn?”

  “I think so. He might have died accidentally, but someone tried to hide his body.”

  Evie stared at her. “Shelby,” she said quietly, “this has got to stop. Whatever is going on with this mine has created too many close shaves. You were both almost killed today. Please tell me you’re not going back into that mine. Not again.”

  “I don’t have any plans to.” She wanted to stop there, but she owed these good people the truth. “Unless I need another sample.”

  “No,” Evie repeated firmly. “That’s not good enough. I want to hear you say you won’t go back down there, not with my son.”

  “Evie...” Tom started.