Torrents of thick dust billowed through the mine shaft, coating the young riders and their horses in grit. Strong Heart’s pony snorted in displeasure, and Duck’s horse, Irving, loosed a powerful sneeze. Mercifully, the stone ceiling had fractured only near the adit’s collapsed entrance, and nowhere else along the passageway.
“Everybody all right?” asked Quinn. The heavy fog of dirt threatened to blow out Strong Heart’s lantern, but the flame hung on, offering a dim light.
“I’m okay.” Keech brushed a hand across his cheek and found a layer of sludge on the tips of his fingers.
“I am, too,” Duck said, hacking out a dust-filled cough. “I think.”
“I should have stayed with my uncle,” Strong Heart moaned, smearing grime off her pony’s face. Flower Hunter nudged her hand, clearly appreciative.
The tunnel walls that stretched ahead of them were smooth and straight, but every few yards, hulking timber beams had been set in place to support the stone ceiling. Keech marveled at the fact that teams of miners had dug such tunnels with nothing but pickaxes.
Duck yanked out O’Brien’s hand-drawn picture of Skeleton Peak and examined the honeycomb of shafts intersecting and crossing, dropping straight down into pits and opening into vast chambers. After a moment, she tapped her finger on a dark line that traveled east and west. “This is the end of the shaft. It branches off at a T.”
Without waiting for them, Achilles started down the path. His barks and yaps filled the tunnel with thunderous echoes.
“I reckon that means we follow again,” Quinn said.
The Lost Causes proceeded up the tunnel in single file, with Keech and Hector bringing up the rear. A few yards ahead, Achilles moved in zigzagging steps, sometimes pausing to sniff around, sometimes stopping to lick the moist wall. The low ceiling of the tunnel made Keech feel trapped inside a cage. He worried that Hector might panic at the closed-in space because the stallion was so tall he had to dip his long neck just to walk under the crossbeams.
The gang led their horses in silence for a spell till Quinn peered back at Strong Heart. “You sure let that Weaver have a piece of your mind back there. You never told us you could speak French.”
“My family worked with many French traders over the years,” Strong Heart said. “I also speak Spanish. Sólo un poco, but enough to converse with travelers.”
Quinn looked impressed. “That might come in handy if we face down La Sombra again.” He then turned to Keech. “I reckon now would be a good time to chat about this House of the Rabbit. What we may have to face.”
“We don’t know enough to make a plan,” Keech said.
“We know your father found it and fetched the Key. And we know he nicknamed it,” Quinn went on. “There’s gotta be a reason. Why ‘the Rabbit’?”
“In Aesop’s fables, the hare is fast,” Duck offered. “I’d wager five dollars we’ll have to move quick to get inside.”
“Maybe so, but I ain’t too sure,” Quinn said. “On the trail out of Tennessee, Auntie Ruth used to tell me stories about animals. She used to say the rabbit was always stirrin’ up trouble. I’d wager we’ll need to solve some kind of puzzle to get in.”
“Or maybe a riddle, like Oedipus and the Sphinx,” Duck said.
“Eddy-who and the what?” Quinn asked.
Strong Heart peered back at Keech. “Black Wood would have understood that to many people, the rabbit is a trickster. Perhaps he named this place ‘Rabbit’ as a warning that we would face a problem that seems simple but contains many surprises.”
Keech mulled over the clues that O’Brien had given them. The Enforcer had said that Black Wood had returned a haunted man from his first trip into the House in thirty-three. “I agree with Duck. I think we’ll have to move fast. Pa Abner wanted me and Sam to remember the word rabbit, just like he wanted us to know the Osage word for wolf. And I’ll tell you this, Sam was faster than lightning.”
They continued through the tunnels, breaking for a short rest to drink from their waterskins. When the oil in their lantern threatened to run out and strand them in darkness, they pushed on, following Achilles till the hound halted and sat on his haunches. A dull glow flickered in the distance.
“Looks like torchlight,” Quinn noted.
Duck peered ahead at the eerie glimmer. “I’d wager thralls are running patrols all up and down these shafts.”
“We should send a scout ahead,” Strong Heart said.
Eager to heal his wounded pride alone for a while, Keech held up the two amulet shards he’d lifted from Doyle. “I’ll go. I’ll take one of these in case I run into trouble.” He handed the other fragment to Duck. “This belongs to you.”
Duck’s eyes flashed gratitude as she accepted her father’s silver. “I thought I’d never see this again.”
Securing the first shard to his palm, Keech hurried down the tunnel. Blurry yellow light kicked to life on his palm, and the magical silver grew cold. Thralls were nearby. He fisted his hand to hide the freezing light.
As Keech traveled deeper into the Peak, a strange rumbling grew louder. The sound reminded him of the summer fair at Big Timber, the clamor of chattering people and neighing livestock. He peeked around a corner. A narrow passage ran to the right and, to his surprise, one wall appeared to be missing, opening out into a vast chasm. A ramshackle railing had been erected along the open part of the passage. A thrall dressed in a soldier’s uniform leaned against the balcony, peering over at the base of the cavern fifty feet below.
Shuffling closer, Keech slapped his palm against the back of the creature’s neck. The soldier stiffened with a small cry and fell limp. The body pitched forward, but Keech grabbed the thrall’s coat and hauled him backward, stretching the corpse on the ground. He considered hurrying back to report his attack, but curiosity gripped him. Keech sneaked back to peer over the railing.
The massive chamber that yawned before him was an imposing sight. It was a great cavern, roughly circular in shape and filled with cave formations. The walls of the cavern were pocked with tunnel openings that ran into the mountain. The area resembled a small city of tottering towers and clumsily erected scaffolding. Rope bridges had been strung between platforms and openings, some swaying dozens of yards above the stone floor. Smoke billowed from torches set into ugly iron sconces, sending fumes up through natural chimney openings along the ceiling. Skewers of roasting meat had been set over a few tall fires built around the chasm.
Grotesque thrall soldiers patrolled the camp with muskets and rusted army swords. At first, they appeared to be a pallid rabble, but a ferocious cruelty drove them to whip and curse their prisoners.
Hundreds of weary people worked at all levels of the cavern. They shuffled about with carts and pickaxes, hauling dirt or stone, and all of them appeared empty of morale and strength. These were the townsfolk who had been dragged from Wisdom. The poor souls had been put to work in the tunnels of Skeleton Peak to locate the House of the Rabbit.
As Keech watched, he saw two workers set a small wooden barrel inside a jagged stone crevasse. The workers placed four glass jars of clear liquid around the barrel—the same substance that Black Charlie had called nitro. Then the men poured a trail of black powder straight to a tall wooden barricade, where they tucked themselves low. A burly man bellowed, “Heads down! Heads down!”
As the man’s gruff voice echoed through the cavern, every captive and guard stopped what they were doing and hunkered down, arms curled over their heads.
The burly man touched a torch to the end of the black powder. The fire flared at once, and the crackling spark raced forward, a serpent of flame running to the barrel. As soon as the spark kissed the wood, the jars of clear liquid ignited in a fierce explosion. The crash reverberated off the chamber walls, forcing Keech to throw his head down and cover his ears.
Dust and grime rained down on Keech’s bowler hat. He spat a mouthful of grit and now understood. Ignatio was excavating the inside of Skeleton Peak, using explosives to crack the very mountain.
Keech examined the craggy dome of the chamber and wondered just how much blasting the cavern could handle before the weight of the Peak caved in and buried everything. He couldn’t help recalling the face-off with Bad Whiskey in the Floodwood cave. A few gunshots and a ravaging giant bear had brought the entire ceiling down.
“Will you take a gander at that?” a voice whispered.
Keech wheeled around to find Quinn hunched beside him. A few steps farther back, Duck and Strong Heart stood with their ponies.
“What are y’all doing here?”
“When that explosion went off, the ceiling started rumbling,” Quinn muttered. “Better we come to you instead of get buried alive.”
Keech pointed down to the chamber. “Ignatio’s got prisoners down there. I’m pretty sure they’re the Wisdom captives.”
“We have to help them,” Quinn said.
Keech pointed across the gap to where a group of soldiers stood upon a high, dangling rope bridge. “We’ll have a few obstacles, but Duck and I can dispatch them with the shards.”
“They must have twenty muskets,” Strong Heart said. “We would have to move silently, take them by surprise.”
Duck frowned. “There’ll be no surprises. Thralls sense the shards if we get too close.”
Strong Heart pondered the information, then gestured back to their mounts. “The horses present a problem, too.”
Keech grimaced at their situation. The shard proximity aside, they couldn’t just stroll up and down the tunnels with four horses. “Someone’ll need to stay behind and watch them.” He offered Strong Heart a smile, hoping she might volunteer.
The girl returned Keech a gaze that suggested he jump in a lake. “Give me one of the amulets. I’ll fight the dead men while you care for the horses.”
“Hang on, those soldiers are on the move,” Duck said. Still watching the rope bridge in the distance, she pulled out her spyglass again and peered through it. “Most of the thralls are heading away, but now I see a woman.”
Keech peered across the gap again. He saw the woman as well, a dark-skinned figure with silver hair crossing the rickety bridge with careful steps. Behind her, a thrall soldier prodded her shoulders.
Looking alarmed, Quinn tapped Duck’s shoulder. “Can I borrow that?” When she handed him the spyglass, he trained the scope on the rope bridge. No sooner did he peek through the lens than Quinn slapped a hand over his mouth, dropping the spyglass into the dirt. He slumped to his knees and a whimper escaped his trembling lips.
“Quinn, what is it?” asked Strong Heart.
“I can’t believe it,” Quinn said breathlessly. “I’ve found her. I’ve found my auntie Ruth!”