A bitter wind screamed into the midnight abyss that yawned below them. Keech and Duck stood on the edge of the cliff and stared down into the nothingness.
“I wonder how deep it goes,” Keech said.
Duck picked up a rock and tossed it. They listened for the landing, but no telltale plop or thud echoed up from the crevasse. “Mighty deep, I’d say.”
“But we solved the puzzle! This can’t be a dead end. We shouldn’t have split off from Quinn and Strong Heart. We could’ve helped them find Ruth, but I was too dead set on finding the House of the Rabbit. And now we’re stuck.”
“No time for wishing things had gone different,” Duck said. “Hand me the torch. Maybe we missed a clue.”
With the flame in hand, she examined the limestone walls.“Do you reckon we’re supposed to jump? Take a leap of faith like we did in the Floodwood cave?”
“Even if there’s water at the bottom, we’d get smooshed. It’s too far down.”
“You could lower me with the rope,” Duck suggested.
“The rope’s only about fifty feet. You’d just be dangling off a cliff.”
Duck bit her bottom lip. “You’re always quoting some training lesson from your pa. What would he say about this situation?”
Pa Abner’s lessons flooded Keech’s mind. When facing an impossible situation, take a breath. You can think better if your soul is centered. While Pa’s advice had once been welcome, the man’s words now felt tainted by the hostile memory of O’Brien’s vision. On top of manipulating his love for Sam, Ignatio had poisoned Keech’s memories of his pa. Everything that mattered to him had been soured.
“I don’t know if I want to think about him, after what he did to my folks,” Keech said.
“That’s a bunch of hogwash.” Duck’s words sounded mean, but she placed a tender hand on his arm. “He was under Ignatio’s curse. He wasn’t to blame and you know it.”
“I know it in my head, but my heart’s having trouble catching up.”
Duck sighed. “Who do you blame for Sam’s visits on the trail?”
“Ignatio, of course. He dug around in my memories and used Sam against us.” After a moment’s thought, Keech added, “I also blame myself.”
“Well, blaming yourself ain’t gonna help nobody.” Duck pointed back toward the general direction of Ignatio’s camp. “Lay the blame at the feet of that rotten sorcerer. Ignatio is Rose’s first lieutenant. He was with the Reverend before our fathers were even pulled into all this mess. The blame rests on his shoulders, not on your pa’s, and not on yours.”
For perhaps the hundredth time, Keech found himself marveling at Duck’s wisdom and strength. “You know something? If anybody can defeat the Reverend Rose, it’s you. I’m as certain of that as I am the sun rises every morning.”
Duck smiled. “Back to my original question. What would your pa say in this situation?”
Keech listened to his mind for a moment, allowing Pa’s training to resonate. “He’d say, ‘When you can’t see the solution to a problem, change your point of view. Open your eyes to new angles.’ We should adjust the way we’re seeing the world.”
“So instead of looking out or back, we should look in another direction.” Duck lifted the torch toward the stone above them and scanned the cavern wall. A flat, shadowy line cut across the rock a few feet above the tunnel’s mouth.
Keech could barely believe what he saw. “Another ledge!”
“But how are we gonna get up there? We’d never make that jump.”
“Maybe you can lift me. If I can pull myself up, I’ll lower the rope.” Asking Duck for a boost was tricky because the girl was half his weight, but she seemed to have deep reserves of rancher strength running through her body.
“I’ll try.” Duck locked her fingers together, creating a stirrup for Keech’s boot. She hunkered low and spread her feet. “Climb on up.”
Keech set the torch down, then stepped into her hands. “Here we go. One … two…” He felt her fingers lift as he jumped on “three!” He stretched out for the ledge and reached it with ease. Twisting in surprise, Keech sat with his back against the wall. The ledge was a couple of feet wide, but the stone felt secure. He called down, “Dandy of a toss, Duck! Send up the torch.”
Duck tied the rope to the torch handle, and Keech pulled the flame up, setting it beside him. The ledge stretched a few feet to the left before dropping off into nothingness; to the right, the path ran a straight line till darkness swallowed it.
“Looks like maybe there’s a way out.” He sent the rope back down and stood with the line secured around his waist. “Ready when you are.”
When he first felt Duck’s weight, he worried she would pull him right off the ledge, so he adjusted his footing and braced himself. She had to climb only a few feet, and soon he spied her fingers reaching over and gripping the edge.
He tugged her up, and they started along the narrow ledge, their right hands slipping into cracks in the craggy wall for support. Leading with the light, Keech took careful steps, pressing his weight down to ensure the path wouldn’t crumble. They walked for several minutes, and as they moved, the ledge thinned down so much that the tips of Keech’s boots hung over the edge. “I’m running out of room,” he said.
“Can you keep going?” Duck asked.
“I think so,” he answered. To prove his point, Keech slid a step along the ledge. He felt secure enough, but suddenly his bootheel skidded across loose dust and he found himself leaning over the abyss. Pulses of fear crashed through him, and he jerked back.
But there wasn’t enough room to correct the loss of balance. Keech’s back bounced off the stone, and he pitched forward. His feet came free of the ledge, and then he was falling.
He dropped a mere two feet—then his pelt hitched under his arms, as if he were dangling from a fishhook.
“Duck!” he shouted, hanging over the chasm. “Help!”
“I got you!” Duck called. “Don’t drop the torch!”
Keech choked up on the torch handle, then stiffly glanced over his shoulder. Duck was holding on to the skirt of his pelt, her small face shaking with concentration.
“You got me? What’s got you?”
“Hang on!” With a hefty tug, Duck hauled him back up to the ledge. He reached out and gripped a crack in the wall. The moment his boots settled on the rim, Duck released her hold. Keech could feel his heart thumping, and though a thousand questions crowded his mind, he asked just one: “How in blazes did you catch me?”
“I jammed my fingers into this crack so I didn’t fall after ya,” Duck said.
“That don’t explain how you didn’t drop me. I weigh twice what you do! I should’ve pulled you right over. And you didn’t just catch me; you hauled me back up like I was a kitten!”
Duck fell silent for a moment. “You didn’t seem to weigh nothin’, though.”
Understanding struck Keech at once. “Duck, I think you found your focus. You’re as strong as a bull!”
“My focus?” Duck scratched her head. “But I didn’t do anything.”
“It makes perfect sense, though. Remember how you punched that crow in the field? And how you snapped the ropes when Black Charlie had us all tied up?” And even as he spoke, Keech recalled how Nat Embry had broken free of his chains in the Wisdom jail. “I reckon strength might be the way Embrys show their focus.”
The tiniest laugh escaped Duck’s lips. “Like my father in the vision! He tossed a boulder big enough to put Big Ben down.”
“And don’t forget the bonfire,” Keech added. “You walloped Big Ben something good.”
Duck nodded at the memory. “I guess it does make sense. The only thing I ever wanted was to be as strong as Nat and my pa. Everybody always told me girls could never be strong like that, but I always told my ma I’d prove them wrong. And she always said I would.”
For a moment, Keech and Duck stared at each other and marveled at her newly discovered abilities. Then Keech’s pulse calmed enough that he felt ready to continue. This time, he faced the wall and used the crevices in the stone to steady himself. They inched along the ledge, and after a few steps, the mantel widened again.
“Hang on,” Keech said, holding out the torch. The ledge had become a series of stairs, descending as the wall continued to curve. “The path takes us down from here.”
“Feels like we’ve reached the other side of the pit,” Duck said.
At the bottom of the staircase, they found a wide outskirt of rock and a hole in the cavern wall, a tunnel leading deeper into the solid granite of Skeleton Peak. Duck accepted the torch from Keech and led the way into the new passage. Unlike the last path, this one traveled down at a steep angle. The tunnel lacked the uniform nature of the previous shafts, shifting instead from narrow to wide, the ceiling often out of reach and other times so low they had to crawl.
The torch was dying. Soon they would be in total darkness. There was only enough glow from the flickering flame to see a few feet ahead.
The passage opened up to reveal a long chamber with sharp corners. Intricate etchings scored the walls, symbols and shapes carved into the stone to create grand images, murals depicting events from a distant history long buried by the rolling centuries. At the center of the rectangular chamber rested a stone block, as tall and wide as a supper table, with smooth sides.
Unlike the circular room, this floor lacked the white powder and bones, though a few skeleton mounds did molder in the corners. Keech said, “Seems like a few people survived this far but met their fate here. I don’t know how they made it past the other rooms, but something sure stopped them. We best be careful.”
They stepped into the room. “Let’s scout the perimeter, see if we can find a way out. All I see in this room are walls, no exit,” Duck said.
Taking another step, Keech felt the slate tile under his boot sink an inch. A terrible grating noise thundered behind them as a rock barrier slammed down, cutting off their path.