Too Far Down

by Mary Connealy

  From upstairs, with an angle on the coach that missed the team pulling it, Sadie opened fire until she splintered one of the wagon wheels. The coach slewed sideways as the horses veered away.

  Mel drew a bead on the cracked wheel and fired. The coach twisted, and the wheel collapsed. The harnesses snapped, scattering the horses in different directions. Tipped onto its side with a loud crash, the coach skidded toward the house. Mel saw the attacking men rush out from behind the barn in the wake of the crash.

  The coach finally came to a stop just twenty feet from the back door. The men dove behind it for protection. They popped up and began firing bullets into the house again.

  “Hold your fire!” a woman’s voice shouted. She stepped out of the barn. The woman hadn’t rushed behind the coach or risked her life with the men, who’d attacked the house on horseback.

  Mel could see that the woman had arranged for the others to take all the risks.

  “I want to talk to Sadie Boden.” The woman had a regal way of speaking and a tone that carried across the distance. Mel could imagine her behind a pulpit, or no, most likely on a stage, casting her voice to the farthest seats.

  On second thought, there wasn’t much about her that brought a preacher to mind.

  Long, nearly black hair flowed around her shoulders and arms. She was less than a hundred feet away, but Mel had sharp eyes. She saw the straight line of the woman’s nose, the flashing black of her eyes. The woman’s face was beautiful, as if it’d been sculpted by the hand of a master artist.

  She wore a shawl. Mel was sickened as she realized the shawl was the same color as the scrap of cloth she’d found near her mine entrance.

  “Angie, I believe we’re finally going to meet Señora Lauressa de Val.”

  Cole glanced at the head lamp. With regret ripping at every word, he said, “Turn it out. It’s dying.”

  We’re dying. God, we’re dying down here—please help us.

  He said the prayer in silence. As if Walt didn’t know.

  The light vanished and plunged them into the blackest night of Cole’s life.

  “Keep digging,” Walt said, his voice a steady presence in the darkness.

  Cole didn’t need to see to lean forward into a wall of rocks and grab one, then another, and toss them out of the way. They worked on, faster now. Maybe they should move slower to conserve air, but Cole thought the difference in how fast the oxygen ran out was a matter of minutes, so what was the point of being cautious?

  Sweat ran down Cole’s forehead and burned his eyes. A faint ringing in his ears began. He realized he was leaning against the pile of rocks even as he dug. He became unsteady. The air was running out.

  Those who wanted his family dead were winning and it made him sick to think of it. Not for himself so much. He knew God and believed eternity was waiting.

  But for his family. And Mel. They needed protection. They needed him.

  God, we’re dying down here. Help us. Protect my family. Protect us all.

  A sudden clatter brought his head up. Another avalanche? Running out of air wasn’t the only way to die.

  A bullet struck the barn only inches from the evil woman’s head, and she ducked back into the barn. Sadie, firing from upstairs.

  The woman shouted, “I’ll give you a chance to ride away. Put down your guns and you can live. But you leave the Cimarron Ranch now, as soon as you can saddle a horse, and you never come back.”

  “This is Boden land.” Sadie’s voice cut through the February breeze. “You have no claim on it, de Val. If you want it, you’ll have to kill every one of us. And not just those of us here, but my brothers and husband, my parents, too.”

  “Your brothers and husband are dead, Sadie Kincaid.” The arrogance in the woman’s voice rang with truth. “They’re dead and buried in the mines. We saw a rider come in from there before we attacked. So a messenger got through with the news. Ask if it isn’t true. I’ll wait.”

  Angie turned, her eyes wide. She looked at Mel, and the truth must have shown because the color leeched from Angie’s face. She sagged back against the kitchen wall, and the gun dropped with a dull thud to the floor.

  “Justin? He’s dead . . . in the mines.” Angie’s hands came up to cover her mouth as if to stop the words, as if the truth could be denied if she held them in.

  Sadie rushed through the door. She saw Angie first, but then her horrified gaze moved to Mel. There was nothing to do but tell it straight. “A trap was set in the mines. I tripped it. The pit we were in collapsed. I was ahead and got out, but Cole, Justin, Heath, Uncle Walt, and anyone else who was down in the mine were trapped. We watched from outside, and no one came out. I don’t know if they’re dead. Men are digging right now. With all of them stuck, your enemies would never have a better chance of attacking the rest of the family. I came running home to warn you.”

  “No, not mis niños. No . . .”

  Movement through a doorway drew Mel’s attention. Rosita stood, tears running down her cheeks. Her hands turned white from their death grip on her rifle.

  Another man appeared from behind the bunkhouse on the southeast side of the backyard, his rifle leveled. One appeared on the southwest and another from behind the barn. An armed man still hid behind the coach, ready to fire.

  “If you want to live, you will come out now,” the woman shouted. “Otherwise your entire family is as good as dead. I have men even now in Denver after your parents, but they may yet survive. I’ll allow you to ride to town and board the train to Denver to be with them. So long as your family stays away, they’ll live.”

  Sadie said, “She’s a fool. My father would never turn his back on this ranch.”

  “She knows that,” Mel replied, keeping her voice low. “She wants us to step out from behind these walls so she can finish her murderous work.”

  The woman yelled at them again from the barn. “If you don’t lay down your guns and walk out of that house on your own, we’ll have to burn you out. You got five minutes to decide which it’ll be.”

  27

  Cole pushed hard against the rock in front of him, thinking it might be rolling, working to shove it aside and preparing to do this over and over to keep the whole mountain from coming down on their heads. And all while feeling dizzy from the thin air.

  “Cole, is that you?”

  Someone’s voice . . . coming through solid rock?

  Wait! Cole forced his heavy eyelids open and saw light. “Justin, is that you?” Not solid rock at all. “Justin, you’re alive!”

  “Step back—I’m going to shove a big rock your way. We’ve got a pile over here we’re digging through.”

  Cole looked at Walt and saw the old man smiling. With a jolt, Cole realized he could see the man, thanks to light passing through a hole in the rock wall.

  Walt caught Cole’s arm and drew him aside. It seemed odd to Cole that it was so hard for him to lift his feet, to think clearly enough to move. Lack of air maybe. The only thing clear was his profound relief to hear his brother’s voice on the other side of the rock wall. Which reminded Cole. “Is Heath with you, Justin? Is he all right?”

  “I’m here, Cole!” Heath shouted back.

  More rocks tumbled down in front of Cole as the small circle of light grew larger with every second. Cole’s head cleared some, and he believed it was due to his breathing better.

  As his thoughts became ordered again, all the danger flooded back in. “Mel, did she make it out?”

  There was a long silence. Cole could almost see them bracing themselves to give him terrible news.

  Finally, Justin said, “We don’t know. We’re digging through this rock wall because we’re trapped. We were hoping that on the other side we could find a way out of here.”

  “We can leave the house through the back bedroom window,” Rosita said, “and escape into the woods.”

  “No.” Sadie’s voice echoed with defiance. “I won’t be driven out of this house by that woman.”

  �
�You will if she sets it on fire.” Rosita came to the door beside Angie and peered out.

  Angie bent and picked up her rifle, still ashen, tears threatening to spill over. But her hands were steady, her jaw firm with determination. “They’re not going to kill my husband and run me out of this house. Besides, if they want the place so badly, I doubt they’d just set it ablaze. I think she’s bluffing.”

  Which brought Sadie to the window next to Mel. She was careful to stay off to the side. “Lauressa,” she called out, “you are out of your mind if you think you can just take over this ranch. There are laws. Even if you kill each and every Boden, there’s the sheriff to face. There are neighbors too, along with the governor. This is a settled land, and you’ll not get away with this. You’ll be taken prisoner and hung for murder. Leave now and we’ll run for the mine to see if my brothers and husband can be saved. You can still get away.”

  Scoffing laughter came from the barn. “Have you not noticed that all the big land grants have been taken over? This is all part of the plan. There will be a minor fuss, but few will speak up against me and many will take my side. I have the papers from the old land grant. Chastain and my husband divided it in half, but in truth they both owned half of the whole. This side was half mine, just as the side we lived on was half yours. I can prove ownership.”

  “That’s what the note meant, the land we stole from Mexico? The note found on Grandfather Chastain when he was shot, and the note left where the avalanche was set to kill my father.”

  “Yes, I told Dantalion the words to write.”

  “Dantalion.” The contempt in Sadie’s voice could have shattered glass. “He killed my grandfather. He did his best to kill the rest of us. And he failed, just like you’ll fail. Just like you’ll hang if a single Boden dies.”

  Lauressa laughed boisterously. “‘This is a warning. Clear out of this land you stole from Mexico.’ I didn’t want to reveal myself then,” she said, getting her laughter under control, “so I wrote ‘Mexico’ just to confuse things, to distract you from the land you stole from the house of de Val. None of you gave it a thought, even though you’d stolen this land from my family only a few years before.”

  Mel stood across the window from Sadie. Their eyes met. “She’s raving mad.”

  “I don’t know if she’s mad,” Sadie whispered. “She’s very organized for a lunatic. I think she’s just so arrogant, she thinks that whatever she wants, she gets.”

  Mel nodded. “Whatever she is, she’s not going to give up.”

  “Men,” Lauressa’s voice rang out, “light a torch.”

  Cole couldn’t speak, so he turned his attention back to the rock wall. It was a long, hard struggle, but finally the space was large enough.

  “We’re coming through,” Justin said.

  “No, wait.” Walt’s voice cracked like a whip. “We’ll go through to your side.”

  “But there’s no way out of here,” Heath said.

  Walt said, “There’s air on your side, and there’s precious little of it on ours.”

  “Well, it’s gotta be coming in from somewhere,” Cole reminded everyone.

  “Then come on through this way,” Heath agreed. “If there’s air, there’s an opening. We’ll find where it is and make it larger.”

  “Go, Walt.”

  Walt didn’t argue with Cole. Without hesitation, he slid through the opening, and mighty spry for an older man.

  Cole followed him. The opening was head-high and not much bigger around than Cole was. He reached his hands through and felt someone grab them. Justin.

  One hard yank and he was through. Justin and Heath helped him to his feet.

  Walt had already relit his head lamp and was starting down the tunnel. “We’ve passed six openings, all the tunnels collapsed. Whoever set that trip wire did some hard work to make them all fall in at once.”

  “Who has that kind of skill?” Cole didn’t think of any of his men as engineers or even particularly studious, and it would take a lot of learning to figure out how to cause a series of rockslides to be set off together.

  “They arranged it like dominoes,” Heath said. “Someone had training, that’s for certain. Have you got any miners who’ve been to war? Soldiers are often called on to dig trenches and tunnels.”

  “Come after me,” Walt snapped. “Spread out and check the same places I’ve been. Remember those fine cracks in that first door? Maybe there’s something like that down here letting in air.”

  Cole and his brothers were already doing so, but it might make Walt feel better to yell at people, so Cole didn’t object.

  “None of the miners I know of had war service or any kind of special training. But they know all about tunnels and how to shore ’em up. And if they understand how to brace a tunnel, they also know how to cave one in.”

  “True, but you don’t know the backgrounds of all your men,” Justin said, running a hand along the tunnel wall. He took off his head lamp and looked between the flame and the wall. “Maybe if there’s a tiny current, I can see the light jump.”

  “Cole, get over here.” Heath dropped to his knees on the right side of the tunnel. He had no lantern. “Justin, Walt, get back here with the light.”

  Justin got there before Cole, and all three of them saw Justin’s lantern dance.

  “Look at this, will you?” Heath drew a finger along a line Cole couldn’t see. “It’s a seam, much like the one we found in that first tunnel.”

  “Another tunnel? You think maybe there’s another man mixed up in this?”

  “You had six men die, Cole,” Justin said, “and two others run off—the Suddler brothers. But we always knew there were three.”

  Heath looked up at Walt. “You found the levers to trip these openings. Can you find a lever for this one?”

  “That’s so low to the ground, a man would have to crawl on his belly to get through it.” Walt began searching along the base of the tunnel wall to where the seam was.

  “Who has a mine here, Cole? All five of those mines along with the Suddlers were one after another in a row along the bottom of the mountain. We’re right in the middle of that row. There’s not room for another mine.”

  And then it clicked, as if the whole tunnel were flooded with light. “Not down on this level, but remember, we have mines higher up.”

  “Do you know where we are well enough to know who’s got a mine directly overhead?”

  Walt did something that made a grating sound and the slab of rock tipped, then fell backward into another tunnel.

  “I do indeed know who owns it. And it’s a man who knows mining better than I do.”

  Cole slid through the opening and stood to face Murray Elliot, his gun drawn and aimed at Cole’s heart.

  “Before you light that torch, Lauressa,” Mel roared, “I need to know why you want this land. You’re from a wealthy family in Mexico. And the rumors I heard said you’re from the royal family in Spain. What do you want with a New Mexico Territory ranch far from your fine friends and fancy food and clothes?” She caught Sadie’s eye and whispered, “We have to keep her talking, and she seems to like to boast.”

  “What good will that do if no help’s coming?” Sadie sounded near despair. She’d talked tough to Lauressa, though Mel could see that was only for show. “Pa left us this land, left it as the legacy of our grandfather. I’m the only one here with Boden blood, and if we can’t stop her, I’ll lose the ranch and the house. That’ll end the work of three generations.”

  Angie interrupted their whispering. “I’m going to keep watch from upstairs.” She left the room, and Mel was afraid the woman was hunting for a corner where she could have a good cry.

  That was fine so long as it didn’t interfere with her aim.

  “I have hated every hour I’ve spent in that hot, ugly city!” Lauressa shouted, her voice shrill and edged with fury. “I tried to get Bautista to stay here and fight for this home, but in his arrogance he turned his back on it and rode away.
I had no choice but to go along with that foul old man.”

  “But we heard you were in a mansion, surrounded by comfort and wealth. Why would you prefer to come back here?” Mel dropped her voice again. “It’s a good thing Rosita’s father was obsessed with tracking down Ramone when he thought he’d killed Frank Chastain. At least we know a little about Lauressa’s life.”

  Mel looked over her shoulder at Rosita.

  “My father knew more about the old Don than any man alive.” Rosita nodded her head with pride. “Though he was sure Ramone had killed Frank, Ramone lived on under de Val’s protection. Papa could see no way to make Ramone come back for trial. But he tried; he went down there and hunted and pried into de Val’s business, hoping to find a way to snatch Ramone away. You are right, Mel. The de Vals were rich and important. They had connections all the way to the Mexican president. And now it seems that is not enough for her.” Rosita gave a snort of contempt and left to go stand guard from another window.

  “I wanted to come home.” Lauressa’s anguished words echoed across the yard. “I am an American and I wanted my own country.”

  “An American?” Mel glanced at Sadie.

  Sadie shrugged. “You’re not an American. You’re a countess of some kind—from Spain.” Mel wracked her brain trying to remember what she’d heard on the rare occasion when Ma had talked of Don and Señora de Val.

  “I’m Hattie June Hoggins. I grew up in the Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee.”

  “What?” Sadie looked cautiously out the window despite the threat of gunfire.

  Mel couldn’t resist peeking either. Lauressa stood, hands on her hips, just outside the door of the barn. A place to hide close at hand, the coward.

  “John!” Sadie gasped and slumped out of the window frame against the wall. She gripped her rifle with both hands, the barrel aimed at the ceiling.