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Grunts and moans filled the silence. Jenna clutched the gun in one hand and felt below her breast for the source of her pain with the other. Hendricks couldn't have shot her before dropping the gun. The report would still be echoing. Yet something had struck her. Beneath her shirt, her fingers encountered something narrow and solid, like thick wire.
The candle holder! She had forgotten it.
Moving on, her fingertips met sticky dampness. Blood. The dagger-like point of the candlestick had been driven into her when she fell. The small puncture didn't seem too bad. Releasing the breath she had been holding, she sucked in air and tasted smoke. The acrid scent of kerosene and burned cloth filled her nostrils, along with the stench of singed hair and flesh.
"Is everyone all right?" she asked.
The faint rustle of clothing followed her question, then the scrape of feet. A moan.
"I'm fine." Rembrandt's voice was thin and strained. "Are you all right, Eugenia?"
"Yes." She almost called him Papa. It struck her then that she could easily have lost her father in the fracas after barely having found him. She might lose him yet. They still had to get out of this jeweled tomb.
"Tuttle?"
"Except for this hole in my shoulder, I'm fine. What do we do now?"
"I think Hendricks is unconscious," Rembrandt said.
"Are you sure you're all right?"
"Yes, yes. We need to tie up the marshal. Find the candles at the back of the cave and light one."
On hands and knees, she crawled over the cold rocky floor, gingerly feeling her way until her hand encountered the rough, faceted wall. This she followed until her fingers encountered a long, slender, wooden object that turned out to be a pick. She also found a chisel and a small wooden box. Sense of smell told her the box held tallow candles and sulfur matches.
She took the candlestick from her shirt, felt for the blunt end of a candle, and fit it into the metal cup. Careful to make sure she had the correct end of the match, she struck it on a piece of rock and set the wick aglow.
Tuttle stood toward the back of the room, one hand to his wounded shoulder. His face was gray. A rim of white circled his taut mouth, and two deep creases marked his brow between his honey-gold eyes.
"You'd better sit down," she told him.
Closer to the entrance, her father sat hunched near the marshal's prone body. Jenna crossed over to him and knelt at his side. His face matched his beard in hue, pinched with pain. "What is it? You're hurt, aren't you?"
He looked up. "Slammed my foot into the wall, trying to save that worthless. . ." He jerked his head at Hendricks. "I think it's broken." She moved to his feet.
"The left one."
Gently she removed the heavy work shoe and woolen sock. She heard him draw in his breath at the pain as she probed to find the
break. "I don't feel anything, but it's swelling already."
"It feels better," he said.
"Only because I took your shoe off. There's no way you can walk on it."
She glanced around, feeling lost and frightened. How would they get out of there without him to show them the way? There was nothing to make a litter with, no way to carry him. If only she had Branch with her. The sudden need to feel his arms around her struck so intensely it rocked her back on her heels and brought a surge of emotion into her throat and tears to her eyes. She blinked the moisture away, wishing she could banish the fear as easily.
"Get the other gun out of his waistband," her father said.
The familiar grip of the Starr lent her comfort. She closed her eyes and envisioned old Charley's dark, seamed face, gaining strength from it as she had during her years of growing up in Meadowood. She straightened and looked around again.
"We'll wait until you're rested before we try to find our way out of here," she told her father. "Only there's no place comfortable for you to lean back, the walls are too rough."
"You're going to have to go for help alone, my dear. Tuttle's lost too much blood, and, as you said, I can't walk. Is there anything to tie Hendricks up with?"
"No, nothing." Panic blossomed inside her. Go alone? Through that stygian tunnel. Alone? She sucked in air and eased it back out.
"Drag Hendricks out into the drift," Tuttle suggested. "Lay him against one wall, then help us over to the other side. Leave us his gun to hold on him while you go for help. We'll be fine."
She wanted to say, "What if I get lost and don't make it out?" but she knew she had no choice but follow their instructions. She refused to think of the mile-long yards of darkness, or of the mice and rats she might encounter along the way.
What time was it? Had McCauley received the summons to come to the mine? Would he come? He might for Rembrandt. Not for her.
"Be very careful, Eugenia," her father said. "I told you about the drainage crosscuts, but there are others. One ends a dozen yards off Drift No. 1, at a natural abyss we couldn't traverse. If you get lost in that drift, you'll be in danger of falling to your death."
"Maybe she should wait with us until McCauley comes," Tuttle said. "I don't like the idea of a woman wandering these tunnels alone."
"Do you think I do? My God, man, she's my daughter. A daughter I thought dead until only a few days ago. There's nothing else we can do.” Rembrandt paused for a deep breath. “What if Branch didn't get the message? Without immediate help, Hendricks will die, and you're bleeding like a stuck pig. To be blunt, Tuttle, you aren't going to last long, either."
Jenna put up her hand. "It's all right. I'll be fine." Her father's stark warning and the brief argument had restored her reason. She could think rationally again.
"If you remember everything I tell you, you will be," Rembrandt assured her. "You'll have to concentrate very hard on your direction. It's when you come to a crosscut that you'll get confused. You could even end up in the old Murphey Mine."
"The Murphey Mine?"
"Yes, we attempted to angle off more to the west and connected to a mine worked by the Murphey brothers. It's been abandoned for over a year. Their drifts are lower and closer to the surface than ours. One runs so near the creek in the canyon that the water leaks in constantly. They lost two men one spring during heavy run-off when the drift flooded."
He paused to take his pipe and a small pouch of Lone Jack from his pocket, needing the calming effect of the tobacco. "But the entrance to the Murphey is open. Just head east when you get out, and you'll come to the Silver Bullion. Whatever you do, don't panic and don't run. Never take your next step for granted, in case you do get into the wrong drift. Do you think you can do it?"
The walls tried closing in on her again. She wanted to shout that she wasn't sure of anything. Instead, she took a steadying breath and said, "I have to, don't I?"
Silence was her answer.
The front of Hendricks' shirt had been badly singed, but the back proved usable. She tore it into strips, knotted them together, and bound his hands and feet. He moaned pitifully as she rolled and dragged and tied him, but she paid no mind. He deserved to suffer.
In the darkness outside the vug, she removed her camisole and put her shirt back on. She gave the wadded-up undergarment to Tuttle to hold against his wound though it did little to stop the bleeding.
"How did you know I was at the mine?" she asked him.
"I was afraid you'd release that Mex friend of yours when my back was turned, so I was keeping my eye on you. I recognized Longan. He's wanted back in Kansas for bank robbery. When you left with him, I followed." He gave her a rueful smile. "I guess I owe you an apology."
"Give it to Miguel instead. And he's Spanish, not Mexican." She crouched before him a minute longer, uncomfortable with the knowledge that he had attempted to save her life. "If I get out of here and get help back to you in time, we'll be even."
Tuttle's smile broadened. Dirt smudged his cheek, and a few kernels of sand stuck to one lip. He wiped a bloody hand on his pants leg and held it out. "More than even."
She took the hand.
Once she’d made the men as comfortable in the cold drift as possible, Jenna lit another candle, dripped wax onto a dry space on the floor, and embedded the taper in the melted tallow. "I'll take two and leave the rest with you, so you won't have to wait in the dark."
Rembrandt nodded in reply. She put her extra candle inside her shirt, tucked a few matches into her trousers pocket, picked up the candlestick, and glanced around. Nothing else to do. It was time to go.
Her feet refused to move.
She studied her father's pale, worn face. The burning hate and anger she had lived with for fifteen years had dulled to the hard ache of regret. She had come to know this man since coming to Park City and found it nearly impossible to believe him the heartless man she'd believed her father to be. She still had questions needing answers. And words to be gotten off her chest. To simply walk away now seemed cold. Wrong. But what could she say? A low moan from Hendricks reminded her this was not the time for conversation.
She picked up the candlestick, shielding the flame with her hand. There would be time later. She had to believe that. She took a step toward the waiting blackness of the drift.
"Eugenia."
Slowly, she turned and looked down at her father. "No one's called me that since I was ten and could whip most of the boys my age."
"All right, Jenna. I was just recalling. . ." He paused, then began again, "The thing I thought of most whenever you came to mind these past years, was the way you used to greet me when I came home. Do you remember?"
She did, but said nothing.
"You'd run and leap into my arms. Your little hands would twine around my neck, and you'd give me a big wet kiss, then demand I kiss you back. I-I missed that."
A last spark of anger and defiance flared and then died. Her throat filled. He had remembered. He had thought of her over the years. She gulped down a sob. "So have I, Papa," she said softly.
Lifting the candle high to hold back the darkness, she walked away.
BRANCH DARTED FROM the cover of the chokecherry shrubs, the move made awkward by his limp. He zigzagged through the trees to the crest of the rise. A large boulder topped the ridge. He bellied up to it and peered over the edge. In the distance, the mine buildings lazed amid long shadows cast by the fast-sinking sun. In another half hour, it would be dark. They could rush the place then.
Movement caught his eye, and his heart flip-flopped. A squirrel scampered from a tree over to the dump behind the cabin they called the mine office where Rembrandt slept—the most likely place for whoever held Jenna to wait.
The thought of losing her pulverized his insides, like ore beneath the iron pile drivers at the Ontario Stamp Mill. Rembrandt's words about Pinkertons being nothing more than men doing a job came back to him. Branch didn't buy the idea in its entirety. He recalled too well the enthusiasm with which the hated detectives had dragged his brother Patrick from the house a few days before he was hanged, the same day Branch fled Pennsylvania.
But he could see some sense in what the old man said about showing the Pinkertons they were wrong instead of sitting around letting his hatred eat him up. With money and a law degree, he'd have enough power to do something constructive to help the miners and union organizers. The only other thing he'd need then would be Jenna at his side.
That last thought slipped into his mind almost without notice. But he couldn't deny his feelings any longer. The fact that she might not survive this ordeal had forced him to face the truth. It no longer mattered that she'd been a Pinkerton. If he got her back alive, he would do his best to batter down the wall she'd put around her heart and make her love him.
The rolling call of a whippoorwill brought up his head. Sell Trenoweth must have found something.
Branch slid off the rock and made his way toward the sound. He located his Cornish brother-in-law in a clump of brush near the road. No words were exchanged. Sell simply motioned with his head toward the other side of the bushes. When Branch looked, he saw Jake Longan lying face down in a pool of blood. The wound had stopped bleeding long ago, and a swarm of flies buzzed over the body.
"Ee's starting to stink. Must’ve died hours ago," Sell whispered. "Let's get out of here."
Branch nodded. They moved upwind and found Miguel hunkered down behind a broken ore cart.
"It is very quiet, my friend," Miguel said when they joined him.
"They're here, though," Branch said. "That's Jenna's sorrel tied in front of the office."
Sell edged up over the rusted metal cart for a better view. "Do 'ee recognize the other horse?"
"I'm not sure. Could be Jake's. Hendricks must be behind this though. He figured out we were onto him and probably decided to get us before we got him." Branch spun the chamber of his .44 Peacemaker, checking the load for the tenth time. "That dung-eating dog made a big mistake trying to use Jenna as bait. I'm going to make him pay for that."
Miguel glanced over at the sun. It looked like an orange impaled on the blade of a saw. "It will be dark soon. We can move in closer then."
Branch doubted he could wait that long. Jenna had been in here all day, waiting for him to rescue her. Hendricks may have decided help wasn't coming. What if the bastard got fed up and shot her and Rembrandt? For certain, the marshal wouldn’t risk letting any of them live.
Branch's nerves strung as taut as a strip of wet rawhide drying in the noon sun. His muscles screamed for action. He moved back a space and sat down, crossing his legs in front of him, and took out his cigarette makings while he methodically took control of his anxious body and mind. This wait was no different from facing down a gunman in the middle of a dusty street, he told himself. Calm patience was what was called for. Unfortunately, he'd never been as frightened of the outcome before. This time, a life more important than his hung in the balance.
HOW LONG HAD SHE BEEN walking through this damnable cold darkness? Forever, it seemed.
The candle should have lasted three hours, but a third of that had been used up back at the vug. Only a nub remained. If only she'd counted crosscuts on her way in, counted her steps—anything that would tell her how close she might be getting to the mine entrance. Surely, it couldn't be far now. She'd already passed two crosscuts and the jog Rembrandt called a "turned house."
The taper's pale glow extended only a dozen feet or so. She moved slowly, her eyes roving over the rough, pitted surface of the walls and floor, ever watchful for the thin-tailed rodents she so detested.
Water dripped from the timber-supported ceiling onto her hair. It ran down the walls and lay in dirty puddles on the uneven floor. Water, earth, wood, rock; the essence of nature. She smelled it with every damp, lifeless breath she struggled to take in. There never seemed enough air. Her lungs always demanded more. Jenna began to resent the oxygen gobbled up by the candle's flame. Yet the thought of being without light terrified her.
She stumbled and went down on one knee. The rock bit into her flesh. Dampness soaked her trousers. She leaned her forearm against a crag, braced her free hand on her leg, and heaved herself to her feet. Panting from what she told herself was a lack of oxygen, she huddled against the wall, her arms dangling at her sides.
A searing warmth climbed her hand. She’d been holding the candle downward so that the flame licked at her hand. Pain from the burn caused her to yelp and jerk up her head. Her elbow rammed into the wall, adding to her pain.
The candlestick dropped from her hand into a shallow pool of water.
With her injured hand pillowed between her thighs, she watched the flame sputter and go out.
Darkness brought the walls crashing down on her with the weight of an entire mountain. There was no human quality to the agonized howl that escaped her lips as she clawed inside her shirt for the second candle. She wasted no time retrieving the fallen candlestick. Her howl ebbed to small, chest-wracking sobs as she fumbled for a match in her pocket and attempted to strike it on the damp rock. The match smoked, sputtered, and went out, filling her nostrils with the smell of rotten eggs. She tossed away the worthless bit of wood and sulfur and dug into her pocket for another.
Rats. She had to get the candle lit before the rats found her. Before they scampered up her legs, nosed beneath her shirt, and feasted on her flesh.
Frantic now, she searched for a dry spot to light the match. Hopeless. The dampness was everywhere. One after another, she struck matches, dropped them, and tried another until her pocket proved empty.
"No! No! I couldn't have done anything so stupid." Her voice echoed eerily in the empty blackness.
Jenna lowered herself to the floor, no longer concerned with the wetness. She slammed her fists against her thighs and cursed herself as seven kinds of fool. After spending her, she rested her head against her drawn-up knees and forced herself to take long, slow breaths until reason and calmness returned.
Branch. Oh, Branch, where are you?
The day may come, little hellcat, when you need a man, and there's none around. What will you do then?
Even though she knew his voice had come from inside her head, Jenna peered into the darkness, her heart thudding against her ribcage. When had he said those words? A lifetime ago. And still, they were true. She wished she could admit that to him now, wished he were here to say I told you so. Wished with all her heart he were here to drive away the rodents of her imagination and comfort her in his arms.
Rest—all she needed was a few minutes of rest. Then she could go on. Maybe Branch would be at the mine shack. Once again, she leaned her head against her knees. She tuned her ears to detect sounds that might be animal in origin and closed her eyes.
JENNA AWOKE TO A PERSISTENT, annoying squeak. Beneath her, the bed was trembling. Darkness as deep as Hades greeted her when she opened her eyes.
She smelled dirt, dampness and her own sweat. The whole world shook. An earthquake. The ground had split open and swallowed her.
No, only a dream. Her body felt like ice. The world didn’t shake—she did. Cold. So cold. Her blankets were gone. Her bed had turned to stone. Never, even on a moonless night, had her room been so deathly dark. Nothing could be this dark. Not in this life.
The squeaking grew louder. Something touched her face. A tiny, cold paw. Her heart lurched, like a buggy wheel hitting a rock. She wasn't alone. Something was there in her room.
Open your eyes. Quick, Jenna, open your eyes!
No! They were open! Yet, she saw nothing.
She lifted her hand to feel her cheek. Something scurried away. Impressions flashed through her brain—warm fur, a musky animal, sharp little teeth, tiny hands that pawed her defenseless face, sharp squeals.
Rats!
With a startled gasp, she bolted to her knees. Memory returned in a heartbeat.
The mine.
She must have fallen asleep.
On her knees now, she stretched out her arms and felt for the wall with chilled fingers. Wet all over, her entire body shook as though with an ague. Her head ached. She could have frozen to death.
She fought off the certainty that if she moved, she would fall into a bottomless pit, and inched forward, ignoring the discomfort of a full bladder. The solidness of the wet, moldy wall, when she found it, offered comfort. She dragged herself up and inched her way along, listening, always listening for the sound of footsteps approaching—even tiny ones.
At last, she came to a wooden brace. A splinter drove beneath her fingernail as she traced the surface of the brace with her hands. Cursing silently, she thrust her finger into her mouth to suck away the pain and tasted grit and minerals. After relieving herself on the dank floor, she moved on.
Twice she came to cross-cuts. Blindly—hands held out in front of her—she groped her way across the empty space, one step at a time. A corner of her brain cried Branch's name continually while another prayed she didn't become confused and travel the wrong drift.
Jenna learned a lot stumbling through that thick blackness. She learned you couldn’t tell time in the dark. She learned that blindness sharpened every sound until even her own breathing came as the roar of a tornado. She learned the true meaning of aloneness. And she learned things about herself she didn't like.
Jenna Leigh-Whittington was a coward. She had been even as a child. Unable to face her mother being different from every other mother, she had bashed noses until everyone stopped trying to make her see reality. She had refused to forgive her father for something over which he'd had no control because she wasn't brave enough to give him a second chance. She'd scorned all women, including her own mother, for letting men rule their lives, because Jenna herself was afraid to be a woman and risk suffering a woman's pain.
She feared tiny animals with skinny, hairless tails.
And—dreadfully, shamefully—she feared the dark.
But that last one had only developed recently, and she doubted she’d get over it anytime soon—if she lived long enough to get out of this rock-bound Hades.
Panic wormed its way into her heart, causing it to race as she wondered if she could be lost. Surely it had been hours since she'd awakened and begun to feel her way through the drift.
Branch, where are you?
Over and over, she found herself praying for him to find her and end her misery. With every step though she moved with great care, she expected to tumble into the hole her father had warned her about in the drift that dead-ended near the Silver Bullion's main tunnel.
In many ways, she would be better off to find herself in that drift, for she had concluded that if she weren't there, then she must be lost somewhere in the old Murphey mine.
Her stomach growled with hunger. Thoughts bounced inside her brain like bullets in a metal drum. A peal of laughter burst from her dry, achy throat as she remembered one of the miners telling her that women underground brought bad luck. She had laughed when she first heard it, too, but there had been no madness in the sound then. Still giggling, she ran her tongue around her mouth to moisten it, then pursed her lips and tried to whistle—another harbinger of bad luck. No sound came, other than the hiss of her breath. Just as well. Her luck seemed bad enough.
Maybe the dwarf the miners talked about—with arms so long, he could buckle his sandals without stooping—had made her stumble and drop the candlestick. The scratching and scurrying sounds she'd thought were rats might be Tommy Knockers, vindictive little creatures of the imagination who created terror with strange voices in the walls, ghostly tapping, and the sound of single-drilling where none could happen. If she were never found, she would join the ranks of the "mountain ghosts," victims of cave-ins and mining accidents who forever haunted the mines.
Jenna discovered a new fear—losing her mind.
A silent litany filled her head, a repetition of her name, place of birth, all her vital statistics, again and again, certain if she could remember her identity, she'd be able to hang onto her sanity.
Faintness plagued her. She leaned against the wall, head down, until the world righted itself once more. Then she moved on.
The rats accompanied her permanently now. They followed her stumbling course, laughing in small, squeaky voices.
Never would she see daylight again, they told her. Never eat another meal or taste the sweetness of spring water flowing down her throat. Never have a chance to tell her father she forgave him.
Never see Branch again.
No use fooling herself any longer—she was lost, and no one would ever find her.
Except the rats—always, always, the rats.