by Ace Collins
“They’re up there again,” Janie whispered, bringing Lije back to the reality of their danger.
“Can you hear anything else? ” Curtis whispered.
The cave was bathed in an eerie hush as Janie tried to pick up sounds no one else could hear. “I think one of them just asked about a light.”
As the blind woman’s keen ears stayed focused, the other four continued to stare at the bright tiny circle. For what felt like hours, silence ruled, then suddenly Janie became excited. “We better move back, now, fast!”
Janie reached out and found Lije’s hand. He grabbed McGee’s elbow. The chain was almost complete when he reached out for Curtis, but she balked.
“Someone has to keep an eye on the entrance. Besides, they can’t see us, much less get to us, until they get in the cave. We have that advantage, and there’s no use giving it up.”
“Trust me,” Janie pleaded, “we have to move and move now!”
Curtis grumbled something about the blind leading the blind.
“Where is Dr. Cathcart? ” Lije asked.
“I’ve got him,” Janie said.
“I’m right here, Lije,” Cathcart said.
Janie said, “Trust me, and follow me.” As she held onto his hand, the woman confidently pushed forward into the darkness. They were all blind in this cave, but to Janie, that was nothing new. There was nothing tentative about her movements. She led them behind the thick rock wall where the entrance was no longer visible.
“Don’t turn the lights on,” Curtis ordered. “If they do come in, I don’t want them to have a target.”
“They aren’t coming down here,” Janie assured her.
A huge ear-piercing explosion shook the very chamber where they were hiding. As they huddled in the darkness, they heard a low rumble as rocks and huge clods of dirt rolled down the hill above them. A thick layer of dust seeped into their lair. It felt like an earthquake, but this was not a product of nature’s power. This was man-made.
In the pitch blackness, they leaned against the cool stone wall, each sensing the thin line that separates life and death. For Janie, McGee, and Cathcart, this was a new experience, but for Lije, it was beginning to feel like a part of his routine.
An eerie silence ushered in the illusion of peace.
Curtis turned on her flashlight. The beam revealed that the large tunnel-like chamber was dusty, but secure. Taking a few steps to her left, she shined the light back toward the entrance. There was no longer any light. The hole had been filled in when a good portion of the hill had fallen in on itself.
“They blasted the entrance,” Curtis said.
McGee grabbed Lije’s light and aimed it in the same direction. “We won’t be leaving the same way we came in.”
From beside him, Janie calmly chimed in, “Caves are interesting places. In many cases, when an earthquake or some other cataclysmic event closes off one entrance, it opens another. Do you all remember that when we came into this chamber it was deathly silent? Now that has changed. I hear water. So whatever they did to trap us brought something new into this world. As my house father used to say, when one door closes, another opens.”
Water? No one moved. What sound? What had she heard that they had not?
“I hear it,” Cathcart said. “It’s not the river. It’s more a tinkling sound, like raindrops on puddles.”
“Something like that,” Janie replied, “but there’s more water than that involved here. I’d guess more like a small spring or maybe an underground creek.”
Turning and flashing her beam around the chamber, Curtis asked, “Can you tell where it is?”
Janie concentrated for a moment. “I think so.” Pointing with her left hand, she said, “It seems to be down the chamber a ways, to the left.”
“That would take us by the train,” Dr. Cathcart said.
“JUST KEEP WALKING, PROFESSOR,” CURTIS WARNED AS they made their way past the train and down the long corridor.
“Fascinating,” Dr. Cathcart said as the flashlights lit up the sides of the antique wooden cars. “Lije, look at them. They’re all in such remarkable condition. It’s like this train could be fired up and taken for a run today!”
Lije was walking just a few steps ahead of Cathcart. Like the professor, he desperately wanted to stop and explore each and every corner of the relic parked on his left. Yet this was a life-or-death situation, not a school field trip. This cave was rapidly becoming a tomb. And he didn’t want to die. The train could wait.
To Lije’s side, her arm wrapped around his, walked Janie Davies. “Stop,” she said. The shuffling feet came to a halt and four sets of eyes turned her way. She stood there, still, her head tilted to the right. She listened intently for a few moments. “It’s kind of muffled, but the water is somewhere to our right.”
Curtis turned and shined her light against the wall. Her beam revealed a number of small rocks and a boulder the size of one that had served as their fort a short time before. Walking over to get a better look, she shined her flashlight into an area between the large hunk of sandstone and the interior wall. There, caught in the beam, was an opening, not more than a yard high. The way the rocks sat around it, it looked as if the entrance had just been uncovered. Janie had been right, a new door had opened. Curtis squeezed through the hole and disappeared.
McGee took Lije’s flashlight and wandered ahead. The other three waited in the dark. The darkness was more than a little unnerving for Lije and Dr. Cathcart as the void engulfed them. A minute went by, then another, finally it was five.
“Is she trapped or lost? ” Cathcart asked.
“No, I hear her walking around,” Janie replied.
Amazing! All Lije could hear was McGee stumbling around in the big chamber.
“She’s coming out now.”
If he could have seen the professor’s face, Lije was sure Cathcart would have looked as confounded as he felt. How had she heard that?
McGee’s light bounced into view.
Curtis appeared and flashed a quick smile. “We’re not going to die of thirst. On the other side of that wall, there’s a small spring. The bad news is that the room is no more than a couple of hundred square feet and, except for where the water disappears into the far wall, there is no exit. The good news is that we have a source of water. And the better news is that there might be something we haven’t found in this chamber yet.”
“Don’t think so,” McGee announced. Caught in Curtis’s beam, McGee’s face looked as bleak as his voice sounded. “While you were exploring, I did a quick survey of my own. I just walked to the front of the train. The locomotive’s cowcatcher ends at a rock wall. It’s resting up against it. The wall is solid. No obvious breaks, not even as you look up toward the ceiling. This chamber’s huge, but it evidently leads nowhere.”
A hush fell over the party as the news sank in. With no way to remove the tons of debris now covering the entrance, there appeared to be no light at the end of any of the tunnels.
Turning around, Lije found himself standing beside the baggage car, about in the middle of the train. After studying the wooden-sided boxcar, he walked over to the steps leading up to the platform. Bathed in the beam from Curtis’s flashlight, he jumped up on the car and twisted the doorknob. The door was unlocked, and he took a step inside.
Backing out on the platform, he waved toward the party. “Diana, give me your light. It’s time we did a bit of exploring.” As she jogged over to the train, Lije glanced back at the professor. “What kind of things would have been on a car like this?”
“Dry goods, farm supplies, tools, maybe clothing or even wallpaper. It varied from run to run. Think of it as a UPS truck from another century.”
Lije grabbed the light. “So, if I get your drift, maybe there’ll be something in here that might make our stay more pleasant or give us a way to tunnel our way out. Dr. Cathcart, would you like to join me?”
“I’d love to,” he answered. He scrambled up the steps and followed Li
je through the door and into an area crowded with a variety of crates and boxes. The space was filled with supplies.
“Look at that, professor—candles. And over there we have a box of lanterns.”
“Lije, here’s a barrel of whale oil and another marked kerosene.”
“Would it still be good?”
“The barrel is sealed. The cave has been dry for years. Doubt if there’s been any water in here until the wall broke a few minutes ago and exposed the spring. Now if we can find matches …”
“Diana,” Lije called toward the door, “do you have a lighter in your kit?”
“Sure. I have several.”
“Well, go get one. We’ve now got a way to better light up our world.”
Soon a dozen lanterns were sitting along the right side of the old train. Three more were illuminating the baggage car. In the more widely spread light, Lije made a quick inventory of everything in the old boxcar.
The contents of the car would be great for a costume party but weren’t much good in a rescue. Lots of clothes and shoes and paper, but no digging tools, TNT, or gunpowder. Nothing to use that would allow them to blow their way out of this hole.
“Not much help here,” Cathcart said. “Maybe in one of the other cars we’ll find something more useful. As for me, I’m just happy to have some light. And judging from the number of lamps and candles and those three barrels of oil we found, we can light up our world for a long time.”
Cathcart and Lije dropped down out of the boxcar, and they all walked back toward the caboose. After they’d walked past another boxcar and reached the rear of the car in front of the caboose, Cathcart stopped and just stared at it. “This is the private car that belonged to Godfrey Payens,” he said. “Who knows what we’ll find in there.”
“Only one way to find out,” Lije said. “Janie, you want me to lead the way?”
“No,” she replied, “I think I’ll just sit down and rest here and wait for you to give me the blow by blow.”
Curtis looked over at McGee. “Save the flashlight battery. Each one of us can grab a lantern. Professor, this has long been your quest. You lead the way.”
Cathcart mounted the steps at the rear of the car and put his hand on the doorknob and slowly turned it. The old wooden door groaned as it swung open. Holding his antique light in front of him, he stepped into a simpler time, no doubt expecting a dynamic look into a preserved exhibit of finery from the gilded age.
Instead, he entered a horror show.
LIJE STEPPED INTO THE PRIVATE RAILROAD CAR, following right behind the professor.
Sitting at a wooden table were five men. It would have appeared that they were engaged in a meal or a discussion if not for the gruesome disfigurement of their faces. It reminded Lije of a display in a haunted house he had visited when he was ten. His fear then had been tempered because he knew the scene was fake. This was real.
Each mummified man’s hands were bound behind him, tying him to the chair. Pushing past Lije, Curtis set her lantern on the table and took a quick look at the bodies. Glancing back toward McGee, who had just entered the car, she said, “Get my kit.” McGee nodded, hurrying out the door and returning quickly with the case. Curtis pulled out a pair of gloves—probably out of habit—slipped them on, and began examining the closest body.
“Amazingly well preserved,” she noted as she studied the skin. “The dry conditions in the cave mummified them. Now if, a century ago, that wall had been opened, allowing the spring water and its humidity in this chamber, these men would look much different. Professor, do you know who they are?”
Cathcart cleared his throat. “I can make a good guess. The one nearest me has to be the engineer or brakeman. The man you are examining is the conductor. The clothes give him away. The one on my left may be the fireman. The man to your right again is either the engineer or the brakeman—their clothes are similar enough to make it difficult to guess without proper identification. And the final man in the nice suit at the end of the table would have to be the Canadian who owned this car and the next.”
Curtis moved over one chair to her right. Reaching into the top pocket of the man’s bib overalls, she pulled on a gold chain, lifting out a watch. Turning it over she held the back toward the lantern’s light. “James Forbes, Engineer.”
“Can you tell how they died, or has it been too long? ” McGee asked.
Lije looked over at McGee. If the scene shocked him, he didn’t show it. He appeared interested, but not horrified. As a defense attorney who had once worked with the attorney general’s office, he’d probably seen much worse than this.
“They were each shot,” Curtis explained. “The action was deliberate and straightforward. One bullet entered the back of each of their skulls. This is an execution scene.”
Curtis was now on her hands and knees at the base of the table. She’d evidently found something else.
“If you’ll look toward the floor, you’ll see that all five men’s trouser legs and shoes are covered with dried mud. They wouldn’t have gotten that way in the cave. Wonder why that happened?” She studied the anomaly for a few more moments and posed another question. “Professor, do you know if there was anyone else on this train?”
“The postman should have been on board.”
“Well,” Curtis said, “at this point he’d probably be our chief suspect. If he masterminded this operation, he was probably gone before the entrance was covered. And if he was thirty when it happened and lived another fifty years, he would have died before anyone here was born. When we find our way out, I don’t think I’ll need to put out a warrant for him.”
Dead or not didn’t matter to Lije. He was curious about where that long-forgotten trail would lead. Could the man have done all this and gotten off scot-free? And why? And would his actions have haunted him all the way to the grave?
Lije turned his attention to the forward section of the old coach, shining his lantern as he moved past the dead men. He noted carefully crafted wood furniture, fancy brass light fixtures, and ornate wall coverings. He placed his lamp on an ancient roll top desk, eased down into a creaky swivel chair, and slid the desktop open. In the tiny cubicles so common to rolltops was everything from unopened bottles of ink to penny postage stamps and even letters. A Memphis newspaper was open to the right of the work surface. The paper had a front-page editoral questioning if moving pictures, such as the one shown at the National Federation of Women’s Clubs convention, would ever generate any real financial returns. Another story gave a round-by-round description of the sixty-one round heavyweight title bout between Jim Corbett and Peter Jackson that ended in a draw. Kingman won the Kentucky Derby, but the paper was picking Foxford in the upcoming Belmont Stakes.
Lost in the past, reading ancient news as if it had just happened, Lije all but forgot about the cave and the bodies resting in anything but peaceful slumber just a few feet away. He was about to turn to page two to catch up on Memphis news when something even more interesting caught his eye. Underneath where the paper had been was some kind of journal.
Opening the green leather cover, Lije encountered an unfamiliar name—Andrew Farnsworth. “December 24, 1890. The last of it came out of the well today. While the others continue to search on the far side of the island, I was able finally to decrypt the stone tablet and realize the pit was naught but a ruse. The clues I was given led to a dry well and just a few feet below the bottom, I found a king’s ransom. But the cache contained only gold, silver, and jewelry. The sacred relics were not there. Did the Knights never have them? Was this just a legend? I guess I will never know.
“January 1, 1891. After much prayer I have decided to use the treasure in the American West. Though the land is rich, many who have sought to uncover its wealth have found little but pain and misery. Many areas are immersed in poverty. I am going to secure a private railcar and make my way to the area. My only fear is that the one man who knows of my find, my brother Jacob, will follow me. He constantly dreams of weal
th and his greed probably puts my life in jeopardy. I have given him a great deal already, but I fear it will not be enough to fully satisfy his own desires. Thus from this day forward I will no longer be Andrew Farnsworth. Henceforth I will be known as Godfrey Payens.”
Lije skimmed through several more pages, noting the days and times until he finally came to the final entry of June 5, 1891. “I believe I spotted my brother in Memphis. A railroad official informed me a man had been inquiring about my private cars. I did not see him when I left the city, and I may be safe, but I wonder. As I made these connections and finalized the contracts more than a month ago, I fear he might know the route I am now taking. Tonight, as I read the Scripture and as I said my prayers, I felt real fear for the first time in months. My fear is not for my life—that is in God’s hands—but I hate to think that the treasure, given by believers centuries ago, will be used for the pursuit of worldly pleasures. It was probably not Jacob, and still my faith is weak.”
Incredible! Maybe it wasn’t the postman but someone much closer to Payens, or Farnsworth. Lije closed the journal and walked back to the rear end of the car. He handed the book to Cathcart. “Professor, this’ll answer many of your questions about what happened here and what this wild ride was all about. I’m going to move forward to the next car.”
“I didn’t see a door to Payens’ private boxcar on the side where we found the spring,” Cathcart said. “So I suggest we grab our lanterns and exit toward the other wall of the cave.”
“Well, not really much we can do here,” Curtis noted. “We’re a few years too late. Kent, why don’t you get Janie. I want her on the same side of the train as we are.”
McGee left by way of the steps at the rear of the car, and the three others moved forward to the steps at the front. Lije stepped down from the private car. He was followed by Curtis. Neither had to hold their lanterns very high to see that they’d been beaten to the prize.
Curtis shook her head. “Someone has blown this place wide open. The door’s gone and the boards on each side of it are badly splintered.”