by Logan, Jake
“I’ll keep my gun,” Slocum said.
“They’ll kill you in the mine if they see you with a six-gun,” Plover said.
“Won’t matter a whit to you, will it?” Slocum pointed out. “Chances are pretty good I’d go back to town and you—and them—won’t get the benefit of my knowledge.”
“He’s tough, Plover,” Baransky said. “That’s another reason I hired him.”
“You pay him out of your cut.”
“What cut’s that?” Baransky said. “You’re keeping me as a slave.”
“I meant your rations. Food. Water. You might get more when we’re done. You split that with Slocum, too.”
Slocum thought it was time to argue a bit more. To give in now would make Plover even more suspicious and likely to shoot him in the back. The argument over pay stretched for a minute until the foreman finally agreed to pay Slocum a dollar a day and not force Baransky to share rations.
“Better than what I expected,” Slocum said.
Baransky let out a lungful of air he had been holding, fearful of the outcome. Any shooting that went on would likely see more than Slocum gunned down. He stepped closer so he could speak to Slocum without being overheard as they slid the crates of dynamite out and began lugging them toward the mineshaft.
“Why’d you bring her?”
“She’s headstrong,” Slocum said. “I didn’t have much choice.” He would let Melissa tell her pa how she had been mistreated by Trueheart and Sally and the rest of the scavengers.
Baransky nodded, looking glum.
“Did she get away?”
“I couldn’t tell, but when I lifted the tarp, that gave her enough cover to get out of the wagon. It wasn’t that far to the edge of a ditch on the far side of the road.”
“Quit yammering, you two,” Plover said.
“I must teach him the proper way of carrying the dynamite. You wouldn’t want him to get careless and blow us all to kingdom come, would you?”
“Thought you said he knew what he was doing.” Plover prodded Slocum with the rifle butt and sent him staggering into the mine.
“He knows how to use the explosive once it is planted. He’s not used to carrying it like some beast of burden,” Baransky said.
Slocum heard how lame that sounded and spoke up.
“I set the charges, I don’t carry the dynamite.”
“So you know how to do the blasting?” Plover shoved Slocum harder and got him walking down the narrow mineshaft.
Slocum wondered what use this shaft was since it brushed his broad shoulders. For a serious mine, tracks should have been laid for ore carts to move the tons of ore-bearing rock out to a smelter, where the precious gold could be squeezed out, ounce by precious ounce.
“I can do the blasting,” Slocum said.
“Precision blasting?” Plover pressed.
Slocum looked ahead to get some idea what was going on, but Baransky was hidden in the darkness.
“I can drill, I can tamp, I can blast. What more do you need?” His mind raced. The only reason Baransky was still alive was his knowledge as a mining engineer.
“Can you do a mining engineer’s job?”
Slocum tensed. A wrong answer meant somebody died. If he answered “no,” then he was worthless. If he said “yes,” Baransky was the likely victim. Plover didn’t seem the kind to tolerate much waste—or surplus workers.
“I need somebody like Baransky to figure out where to blast. Once he does that, I can deliver as many pebbles from a wall as you like.”
Plover fell silent. Slocum had given him reason to keep them both alive. For the time being.
They trooped on in the darkness until a faint light ahead showed. Baransky walked a little faster and so did Slocum, wanting to see something again other than blackness deeper than midnight.
They came into a large chamber lit by kerosene lamps placed around the fifty-foot circumference. What stopped Slocum was the ceiling. The light only penetrated a few yards and then was swallowed by darkness. A couple dozen men sat scattered around the large area, rifles leaning against the walls. They only glanced in Slocum and Baransky’s direction before returning to their card games and other pursuits of bored men doing garrison duty. Three men held flea races on a hot griddle not ten feet from Slocum. Four others played dice. Others took their time to whet knifes or oil six-shooters. They were more an army than a ragtag bunch of scavengers.
For that was the way it seemed to Slocum. Trueheart had moved a small army into this cave. The only reason he could think was to keep them from getting into trouble in town—or getting drunk and letting the others know what Trueheart’s plans were.
Slocum wished he knew. And then he realized he was going to find out soon enough. When he did, that likely meant he was expendable along with Baransky.
“This is a natural cave. Much of the mountainside is honeycombed with caves and tunnels.” Clem Baransky pointed to the stalactites dangling from the roof. If any came loose, they would kill a man under tons of rock. “There are damned near a dozen naturally occurring tunnels needing only a bit of work to widen.”
“Why bother?”
“Gold,” Baransky said softly. “You hardly need to dig out ore. Scraping it off the walls is easy work and nuggets are everywhere. Trueheart took a wagon load out a couple weeks ago, but they’ve been working these tunnels for months. He’s got close to another wagon filled with gold ready to take down the hill.”
“Bypassing Almost There?”
“Goes on east, nobody in town any the wiser—either town.”
“Why aren’t the men working?”
“Something’s up, something more important. He’s only got a quarter of the men here he did when they were all scraping away at the rock. Don’t know where they’ve gone but they’ve been out of here since before they brought me in to blast.”
Slocum didn’t ask about blasting near such a huge cavern. If Clem Baransky knew his job, he would decree that it was safe to blow open whatever passage Plover—Trueheart!—wanted. There had to be a mother lode Trueheart wanted revealed. But why would he get rid of three-quarters of his men? And where were they? Slocum hadn’t gotten the feeling they were in Trueheart’s personal town and they certainly weren’t in Almost There.
“Keep going. Follow Doc. He’ll tell you where we’re gonna blast.” Plover handed them carbide lamps and pointed to a tunnel leading straight into the mountain.
“It’s quite a ways,” Baransky said. “And there aren’t any tunnels or chimneys for us to get lost in.”
“How far’s that?”
“More than a mile,” he answered. “A lot more.”
As they walked, Slocum began to struggle to breathe.
“Air’s bad in here,” Slocum said as his lungs began to strain.
“No ventilation. I want to set the charge, get away as far as I can, then blast.”
“What’s going on?” Slocum finally asked after a few more minutes of hiking. They were far enough from the large vaulted room that their words wouldn’t carry.
“Listen. Do you hear it?”
“Water? An underground river?”
“You’re right. Trueheart wants me to blow open a channel and release the water.”
“Irrigation? That doesn’t make sense,” Slocum said.
“The man’s a scavenger through and through. If my geology is right, once the rock wall we’re blasting cracks, water will flood the lower part of the goldfields. We’re more ’n halfway under the mountain, and the valley where the gold strikes occurred couldn’t be much farther straight through the rock.”
“So?” Slocum didn’t understand. Then he did. “He wants to flood out the miners.”
“Exactly,” Baransky said. “The water will destroy their camps and mines and wash them out.”
“Then he moves in and takes their claims.”
“The mines will likely remain flooded. No, he is a scavenger at heart. He wants to steal the gold that’s already been smelte
d and whatever supplies aren’t ruined. He’s a carrion eater.”
“Only this carrion bird doesn’t mind killing hundreds of people to feast,” Slocum said grimly. He knew where Trueheart had sent the bulk of his gang. They were likely in the goldfields now, waiting for disaster so they could take advantage, steal what they could, and then hightail it. An army of fifty scavengers could carry off a huge amount of gold and valuable mining supplies.
Slocum and Baransky came to the end of the tunnel. Through the wall ahead he heard the deep, throaty rumble of rushing water. Break this rocky dam and untold men would die, all so Trueheart could pick their carcasses clean. And Slocum couldn’t see any way out of doing the scavenger’s bidding. Either they set off the blast and hardworking miners died, or Plover killed them and had someone else do the detonation.
15
“If we blast through the wall and release the water, we’ll drown,” Slocum said, looking back down the pitch-black tunnel they had just traversed.
“I’ve thought of a way to string enough fuse so we can be well out of the mine when it blows,” Baransky said. “That doesn’t change the fact I’d be killing dozens—maybe hundreds—of miners.”
“And all to steal their gold,” Slocum said bitterly.
“I have studied this wall, and there’s a chance this part of the tunnel wouldn’t flood,” Baransky went on. Slocum heard the note of excitement in the man’s voice, as if he were a small child discovering a toy for the first time. “The shock would fracture the wall downward, and that would release the water only on the other side of the mountain. The pressure—”
“We’d still be responsible, even if we survived,” Slocum said. He paused, his purple-white light from the carbide lamp falling on Baransky’s face and giving it a curious pallid appearance.
“I know,” the man said.
“What would Melissa and your son think of you killing so many?”
Baransky said nothing as he walked to the wall and pressed his hand against it. Then he leaned forward and placed his forehead against the cold rock. Slocum thought silent sobs shook the man but couldn’t be certain.
“All I wanted was to earn enough for my wife’s medical expenses. In Europe—”
“She’s dead.” Slocum saw no reason to edge into it.
Baransky swung about, eyes wide.
“What are you saying? She can’t be dead. The doctors said she had months to live, maybe a year.”
“Why do you think Melissa was in the wagon?”
“I don’t know. I’m confused. So much is happening. It surprised me seeing her, but somehow it wasn’t a shock. I mean, it was because I wasn’t expecting to see her, but she was always headstrong. She argued against me coming so I thought she might have followed to persuade me to return.”
“She and Stephen came to tell you your wife’s dead,” Slocum said, his words even harsher than before.
“Stephen, too? I can’t believe he came. Or did he escort Melissa?”
“Seems the other way around to me.”
“My children are here. I can’t believe it.”
Slocum remembered the letter Melissa had given him and reached into his coat pocket. The letter was water stained and in poor condition, but he handed it to Baransky. He opened the envelope and held the letter high in the carbide light beam. Slocum wasn’t sure but he thought the man turned even paler. With shaking hands, Baransky tucked the letter into his own pocket.
“You have to prevent Trueheart from carrying through with his scheme.”
“How?” Baransky turned away and muttered, “My children came after me. And she’s dead. She’s dead.” He spun back, eyes hollow and haunted. “You’re lying, Slocum. I don’t know why. You’ll do anything to keep me from carrying out Trueheart’s orders. This letter is a fake.”
“Was that Melissa in the wagon?”
“Why, yes, but—”
“That ought to be all you need to know. If Trueheart wipes out the mining camp, there’s no reason to keep you around. Or your children.”
“How’d she get into town to even climb into the wagon?”
Slocum spent a few minutes explaining how Melissa and her brother had hired him to find him. Baransky looked thunderstruck.
“I never meant for them to come with me. But Clara’s dead. She shouldn’t be. If I’d found the money earlier, if only—”
“There’s no reason for Melissa and Stephen to stay with your wife’s body. She’s in a cemetery now. What did you expect them to do?”
“Stephen could have gotten a job and Melissa, well, she is a lovely girl. Marriage…” His voice trailed off.
“If you want to save them, you have to avoid setting off the dynamite,” Slocum said.
“But the explosive is here. A lot of it. If we don’t do it, Trueheart will find someone who can. The town must be full of prospectors who know something about detonations and bringing down rock in a mine safely. All he needed me for was the geological survey. Somehow, he had figured out for himself that he could loot the goldfields if the river was diverted from its subterranean channel.”
“He’s a clever one, I’ll grant him that. But he doesn’t care about the safety of anyone but himself. All he wants is the destruction so he can scavenge.”
“What can we do, Slocum?”
There didn’t seem to be much of an answer.
“Can you rig the dynamite to go off but not cause the damage Trueheart wants?”
“I don’t think so. From all I can tell, any explosion against the rock face will cause the shock to pass down and through the river and blow out the far side of the mountain. It’s not too far, I don’t think, so the crack would spread fast and wide.” Baransky put his hand against the cold wall again and shook his head. “This wall will surely be destroyed, too.”
“Flooding the shaft all the way out through to the mouth of the mine,” Slocum said. He thought hard on this. “Can you set the charge so that the water only comes this way?”
“Risk killing ourselves so those nameless, greedy miners can live! I won’t do that! Not when my daughter is at risk from such a harebrained scheme!”
Slocum picked up a stick of dynamite and tossed it from hand to hand, as if getting the feel of it before hurling it.
“No, you can’t do that. I know what you’re thinking, Slocum. You want to toss a few sticks of dynamite into the chamber and kill Trueheart’s men.”
“That has occurred to me.”
“We’d be trapped inside if the cavern roof collapsed. And it might.”
“So we walk to the other side before lighting the dynamite and tossing it into the chamber. That would give us a straight run outside.”
“Plover is no fool. He won’t let either of us, much less the pair of us, cross the chamber. Trueheart’s men are guards intended to keep me inside the mine.”
Slocum touched his empty holster and knew that Plover would never have allowed him to keep his six-shooter under any circumstances. Even with a couple sticks of dynamite, it would be him against a small army.
“Why’d Trueheart put so many of his men into this cavern?”
Baransky shrugged, then said, “He’s saving them. These are his elite fighters, the ones he culled from the dregs in town. I suspect he intends them to be the ones to get down the mountainside and guard the loot after the destruction.”
“It’d take a week or more to cross Desolation Pass,” Slocum said. Then he realized that it wouldn’t matter how long it took. Trueheart controlled the western slope of the mountain so he could take his sweet time sending in these men to help the rest bring down the gold stolen from the mines.
“He has a self-financing operation,” Baransky said. “He steals enough to keep the town going and provide supplies for his men. Selling equipment and mules he doesn’t need down in Almost There provides money, but he keeps the food and anything else his scavengers need for this project.”
“He doesn’t even have to pay to have food or gear shipped halfway u
p Desolation Mountain,” Slocum said. “The prospectors bring it to him, then he kills them.”
“We can’t get away,” Baransky said.
“Damned right you can’t get away,” came Plover’s angry voice. “I came to see how you were coming with the dynamite. You ain’t started yet. You thinkin’ on talkin’ that rock wall down?”
Slocum reached for his six-gun, then checked himself when he saw movement in the darkness behind Plover. Even if it had rested in the cross-draw holster, he would have died trying to clear leather. At least two guards had come with him, maybe three. With him and Baransky at the end of the tunnel, backs against a rock wall, they’d fall easy victim to even one gunman since they had nowhere to run or take cover.
“You missed part of what Baransky said,” Slocum explained. “We can’t get away using so little dynamite. We need another crate, maybe two if this is going to work. Use too little and that might jinx the entire blast.”
“Like hell. I’m no expert but I know bullshit when I hear it. We got all the dynamite you’d need. Which of you do I shoot?” Plover lifted his rifle and positioned it between Slocum and Baransky. A simple twist one way or the other would select his target.
“I told you before, you need us both,” Slocum said.
“People will die if we blow up this wall,” Baransky said.
“Like I care.”
“How long do you want the fuse to burn?” Slocum asked, a plan working its way into his brain. “You need to get all the men back there cleared out, or do you intend to kill them?”
This caused a stir among the three gunmen with Plover.
“He’s just tryin’ to drive a wedge between us, boys,” Plover said loudly. “We’ll all be out of the mountain ’fore the blast.”
“Fifteen minutes? Twenty?”
“It’s damned near a mile back to the chamber,” Plover said. “If you run real hard, you can make it in ten minutes.”
“Let’s call it thirty minutes of fuse,” Slocum bored on. “The air’s mighty close in here. Hard to breathe.”