Gunnison blinked. “You want to take me to see a dead body?”
“That’s right.”
That one threw him off-kilter. “If you know where a dead body is, you need to go to the law,” he suggested.
“No. I don’t much trust the law around here.”
“Why?”
“Marshal Duggan used to watch out for us, but since his term was up, things haven’t been the same. After my papa died, the lot jumpers come in on me and Mama and Old Papa. Run us right out of our own home because they wanted the lot. Almost shot Old Papa, and him laid up in a chair like he is. Now we ain’t got nothing but a little shack over on Chicken Hill. The law didn’t help us at all.” He paused. “Well? You coming with me or not?
Gunnison’s answer might have been a firm refusal had it not been for the sketch he had just seen. His journalistic curiosity, not to mention a certain sense of competition with his senior partner, moved him. If in fact Kenton had come to Leadville looking for Garrett, it would be satisfying to be the one who found the first solid evidence concerning him…especially at a time Kenton had again made himself absent without explanation.
“All right. I’ll come.”
Lundy grinned and without another word began walking. Gunnison fell in beside him.
He led them on a roundabout route. “Trying to make sure nobody can tell where we’re going,” he explained, and Gunnison began to suspect this was a rumor-inspired game of childish imagination. Nevertheless, he decided to play along for now, just in case.
“So how did you manage to find this body?” he asked.
“I’m always poking around. That’s what my mama says about me. Always poking around, snooping into everybody’s business, looking where I ain’t supposed to look. Sometimes you see things folks thought was hid.”
The sky had gone slate gray. Clouds and stinking sulphurous smelter smoke spread in layers over the town. Leadville was making a lot of people wealthy, but the pristine mountains were paying a big price for it.
Lundy led Gunnison through a portion of town he had not passed through before; it consisted almost entirely of spit-and-paper houses with big slabs for doors and barrels for chimney tops. Scattered along a nearby street were a half-dozen saloons housed in ramshackle little structures that managed to look ancient despite Leadville’s short history. Resting miners coated with dirt and dried sweat sat beneath rickety overhanging saloon-porch roofs, sipping beer from glass and crockery mugs, eyeing passersby from beneath the brims of hats that had all but grown to their heads. Shaggy-haired, callused, weathered to a permanent deep brown, these men reminded Gunnison of earth-grubbing dwarfs pulled from some European fairy tale, given the gift of human stature and set down here beyond the Mosquito Range.
He followed Lundy down a dusty road and past a small graveyard lined with row upon row of fresh earthen mounds. Tombstones, or in many cases tomb boards, sat at cocked angles at the heads of them. A few graves were surrounded by small white fences, but these did little to cheer the burial ground. What little sunlight pierced through the clouds was meager illumination among the trees around the graveyard. The place gave Gunnison a chill, particularly when he considered that not one occupant of this cemetery had come to Leadville expecting any fate but wealth and good times for the rest of a long and happy life.
Lundy paused at the graveyard for a moment. “My papa’s grave is there,” he said, pointing. “I come here sometimes to talk to him.”
They went on. Lundy tripped along at a steady rate, occasionally looking around and over his shoulder as if to make sure they weren’t being watched or followed. Maybe he was leading an overly gullible journalist on a wild-goose chase, but he obviously had a specific destination.
“How far?” Gunnison asked.
“Few more minutes,” he replied. “But I’m warning you, he smells foul as Judas’s sin and looks worse.”
“Hist!” Lundy said suddenly, stopping. He cocked his ear and listened to the air. Finally he shook his head. “Thought I heard something. Guess I didn’t.”
The country became more desolate. Here and there, isolated mining shacks looked down from hillsides or the heads of gulches, perched unnaturally where no man would expect to find them. Many of the forests had been stripped for firewood or building materials. There were enough stumps here to host every politician east of the Mississippi.
Behind them nothing of Leadville was visible but a smelter chimney and a few rooftops. One big ore wagon was rolling along just within sight, two men on the seat. Gunnison could not tell if they had seen him and Lundy and did not mention them.
Shortly afterward, Lundy stopped. “There’s where we’ll find him.”
He was pointing to a wooden structure built so naturally against the hillside that Gunnison had not even noticed it. At first Gunnison took it for a cabin, then saw that it sheltered a mine entrance. But there was no evidence of recent activity hereabouts; perhaps this mine had shown promise early on but gave out. Obviously it was abandoned now.
“Whose is this?” Gunnison asked.
“Squire Deverell grubstaked it. Never came to nothing.”
A putrid smell reached Gunnison’s nose. Not overpowering, not even all that noticeable…but it was the unmistakable smell of death. Suddenly the sky was more gray, the land more barren, the weathered mine entrance more foreboding.
“Well, we going in?” Lundy asked. His dirty little face looked strangely impish.
“Lundy, you swear this isn’t a joke?”
“Swear on my papa’s grave.”
Lundy handed him a box of matches and a candle stub, and they walked toward the door.
Sure wish Kenton were here, Gunnison thought. Bet this wouldn’t make him nervous a bit. Bet he’d march right in, find out it’s just a dead mongrel, and have a good laugh at his own expense. Swallowing, he pulled at the door. It popped off its only remaining hinge and fell to the side. Man and boy stepped inside. The smell of death was much stronger. They lit their candles.
“Where is the shaft?” Gunnison asked.
“Yonder. He’s at the bottom.”
“How deep?”
“Not very. They gave up on this hole early on. I’d say he’s maybe twenty-five feet down.”
Holding up his candle, Gunnison made out the shaft opening a few yards back into the hillside against which the entrance shelter was built. A wooden railing had been built for safety around the hole, and into the hole extended a worn rope hanging from a winch above and tucked under a closed trapdoor atop the shaft. Gunnison opened the trapdoor and moved the rope; it swung freely, the ore bucket obviously having been removed for use elsewhere.
The death stench was indeed rising from the shaft and had grown stronger the moment he lifted the trapdoor. The flame of the candle he held began to dance a bit as a fit of trembling came over him. It wouldn’t have taken much to make him leave, but an image of Kenton’s scowling face came to mind. Kenton wouldn’t turn away from something like this, so neither would he. Resolutely, he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and tied it across his nose and mouth in an attempt to cut the stench. “How do we get down?” Gunnison asked through the masking cloth.
Lundy lowered his candle, and by its light Gunnison saw that rungs had been built down one side of the shaft.
Suddenly Lundy looked alarmed. “Listen!” he whispered.
Gunnison heard nothing but the wind. “What did you hear?”
Lundy shook his head as before. “Nothing, I guess. I’m just nervous. This could be dangerous if we were to be caught by the wrong people, you know.”
He was right, and that didn’t make Gunnison feel any better. The ore wagon he had seen came to mind, and he almost mentioned it but then did not, reminding himself that this probably was merely Lundy’s fantasy and whatever was making the smell was likely as not a dead dog—though a big one, judging from the stench it generated.
He steeled his nerve. “Well, I’m going down.” The first rung creaked under his weight; his candle flame flickered and threatened to go out “Wish we had lanterns,” he said. He went down several more rungs until Lundy’s face was small and far above, framed in the dim square of the shaft’s top frame.
The smell was becoming stifling. He wrinkled his nose and tried to shut out the stench as he descended clumsily, having to hold on to the candle and the rungs as well. The dangling rope brushed him as he went down.
Something moved beside him. He thought at first it was a a rat perched on an unseen ledge or peering out of a hole. In fact it was simply a piece of cloth hung on a big nail sticking out from the shaft framing. One edge of it was burned.
Lundy saw that Gunnison had stopped. “What did you find?”
“Piece of a shirt or something. Burnt.”
“Must have tore off the body when they dropped it down.”
“Why would it be burnt?”
“Because Briggs Garrett burns those he kills. Ain’t you heard the stories?”
Gunnison stopped, not sure now he would continue. The smell was so terrible, he wasn’t sure he could breathe at the bottom in any case. His stomach was beginning to lurch. “You’re telling me the corpse is burnt?” he asked a little shakily.
Lundy didn’t answer; in fact, Lundy suddenly was gone. A moment later came his scream, then the sound of scuffling, a man’s voice, another scream from Lundy. The trapdoor atop the shaft closed, shutting out all the meager light from above and creating a sudden downdraft of air that blew Gunnison’s candle dead.
Gunnison was in pitch blackness, a thick death stench rising from below, some sort of violence going on above. Panic threatened to rise within, but he stifled it. Forcing himself to become calm, he dug matches from his pocket and relit the candle stub. Then he began to climb.
More scuffling above, then silence.
“Lundy!” Gunnison yelled.
No answer. He was nearer the trapdoor now.
“Lundy?” His call was softer this time. He had reached the top of the shaft. Pausing for a moment, he gathered his resolve and pushed the trapdoor open.
The toe of a boot caught him on the side of the head, jarring him loose from the ladder and sending him down. The trapdoor closed again, he fell for what seemed half an eternity squeezed into a quarter of a second, then by pure luck his hands caught the knotted end of the rope, slowing his fall at the last possible instant. But he continued to fall, and the thing he struck at bottom was stiff and reeking, all the more horrible for being unseen. He heard a yell go echoing up the shaft and realized it was his own.
Stunned but not unconscious, Gunnison scrambled up off the foul thing that he would later realize had probably saved him from death or severe injury against the hard rock and dirt below it. He dug again in his pocket for his matches, lit one—and let out another shout when he saw what lay on the floor at his feet.
Gunnison had expected ugliness, but this burned eyeless corpse, a cut rope tailing from its rat-chewed neck, was foul beyond description. Panicked, he turned and bolted out of pure instinct into the darkness, promptly pounded his head hard against the base of the shaft ladder, and collapsed to the floor, senseless.