Mason slowed only when he was sure the sheriff was following. He’d reached about the limit of daylight in the mine shaft, stumbling over the rusted iron rails set into the ground, the remains of tools and fallen timber and the detritus that Logger Fetridge and Dax Pruitt had left behind.
There was nowhere to go but deeper into the dark, and Mason might have done it alone, though he knew it’d be foolish and futile. Fortunately, Hart was catching up to him, panting, gripping a flashlight in one hand and his rifle in the other.
“Careful,” he told Mason. “These boys seem to have a fondness for booby traps.”
The sheriff let Mason lead. Mason let Lucy lead. She may have been scared, but her natural curiosity seemed to win out, and she pulled at the leash at the edge of the flashlight beam, urging the men deeper into the abyss.
And the mine was abyssal. Beyond a high chimney about a hundred feet in, Mason could sense no light or fresh air, though the narrow-gauge rails on the main shaft continued, and auxiliary shafts cut away in both directions every fifty-odd feet. The air was smoky and acrid and chemical, hazy even in the beam of the sheriff’s light. Mason scanned the ground ahead of him for footprints but saw nothing; the floor of the shaft was loose rock too coarse to keep an imprint of a man’s boot.
“Where’s Jess?” he asked Lucy, and the dog glanced back at him with those ears on high alert, then scanned the dark beyond the flashlight beam. “Where’s your mom, Luce? Where’s Jess?”
He’d never know if the dog understood, if she could somehow sense Jess or if it was simply dumb luck that set her and him and the sheriff down the right path. But Lucy came to a particular branch from the main shaft and turned down it without hesitation, and Mason didn’t argue but followed and let her lead, and behind them the sheriff followed too.
The branch shaft narrowed and dug itself into the earth, and at points Mason felt sure that Lucy had led them to a dead end. But there was always a way forward, the dog nosing through, slipping between the tight confines of rock with a grace the men behind her could never match. At times Mason found himself ducking nearly doubled over; other times he had to turn sideways, make himself as lean and tall as he could, try and inch through the crevices with rock pressing into him, front and behind.
It was at one of these narrows that Hart fell back. The sheriff was a wider man than Mason and the rock was unyielding, and there was no way the lawman could squeeze through. Mason stopped and looked back, kept the beam of the flashlight out of Hart’s eyes. Heard the sheriff mutter an epithet as he tried, one last time, to force his way through.
Mason said, “We’ll go back.”
Hart didn’t answer.
“We’ve got some idea which way they headed,” Mason said. “If we hurry back, we can try and trace this tunnel aboveground, see if we can’t track where it comes out.”
The sheriff grunted and backed out of the narrows, and Mason started to follow, tugging on Lucy’s leash to turn her around. The dog resisted, dug in her feet and bucked against the lead.
“Come on, girl,” Mason said.
But then Hart said, “Burke.”
Mason looked, and the sheriff was holding out his rifle. Mason stared at it, dumb, for a moment.
“We’re losing time on those boys,” Hart said. “If Jess is up here, then she’ll need us to get to her, fast.”
“I can’t leave you alone in a cave in the dark,” Mason said, but Hart dug into his pocket and came out with a cell phone, an old one, a flip model.
“It’ll do me,” the sheriff said. “But my battery’s low. So take the rifle and try not to kill anyone, Burke. Just find Jess and make sure she’s safe.”
There was no time to argue, and Mason wasn’t really inclined anyway. He took Hart’s rifle. “Thanks,” he said.
“Jess told me what you did,” Hart told him. “For Gillies. That man owes you his life, and I’m glad you were there to save it for him.”
Mason shook his head. “It was mostly Jess’s doing, Sheriff, to be honest.”
“Not the way she tells it,” Hart replied. “And somehow I suspect that she’s right.” He motioned Mason forward, deeper into the black. “Go,” he said. “I’ll try to circle around to you up top, if I can.”
Then the sheriff turned and started back through the darkness, lit by the sickly green tint from his phone. Mason listened to the man find his footing, waited until his light had disappeared. Then he turned back to the way he was going, the way Lucy wanted to lead him. He slung the rifle over his shoulder and clicked his teeth for the dog.
“Go, Lucy,” he said. “Find your mama.”