Slocum 315: Slocum's Gold Mountain

Slocum clung to the ladder until the dust and heated air had blasted past. He worried that this was from detonation of a gas pocket. If the mineshaft were filled with gas, there would be scant chance for Seamus Preston to escape. A secondary rumble shook Slocum off the ladder. He toppled backward, flailing as he fell. He landed hard on his back and was momentarily stunned.

Choking, he sat up and gasped in huge drafts of air through his bandanna. When the dust finally cleared, he got to shaky feet and looked around. The ladder had tumbled into the pit but was intact. He pushed it upright again and made certain he could get out of the glory hole when he wanted. Slocum realized this was likely to be the way he left Preston’s mine, too, since both drifts were closed with rockfall.

He went to the plug in the tunnel Seamus had taken before all hell broke loose. Slocum ran his hands over the broken timbers and saw why the collapse had occurred. The wood was rotted through even at the thickest sections. And Slocum saw that the original timber had been cut razor thin in places. The hills were denuded of trees, telling him that wood was in such demand that corners were cut at every turn. Skimping on timbers supporting the rocky roofs of a mine was suicidal.

He began digging. The rocks were the size of his head or larger and required considerable effort to move from the blockage to a spot behind him. Before he knew it, he was sweating in the close, tight hole. Slocum never flagged, though. If he didn’t reach Seamus Preston quickly enough, the man might die of suffocation.

Slocum thought about his next course of action if he found Preston’s lifeless body. Turn the map over to Molly? That was the most likely—if he believed she was Seamus Preston’s sister, which he didn’t. He might try to figure out the map himself, but he had looked at it often enough to know it was a map fragment. Whoever held the rest of it had the compass rose, the legend and information necessary to position the map properly before finding the spot where . . .

What? Where the treasure was buried? Slocum snorted at the idea of wasting time on a map to the Lost Dutchman Mine or whatever it might represent. He dug faster.

Tired, filthy, he succeeded in moving enough rock at the top of the fall to open a space the size of his head. He flopped belly down on the pile and shoved his face forward.

“Are you there?” Slocum shouted. He heard his words echoing down a long tunnel. That heartened him. The drift had not collapsed for any significant length. “Seamus Preston? You all right? My name’s Slocum. Your brother sent me.” Again, Slocum felt the lack of not even knowing the other Preston’s given name.

He listened hard but heard nothing but distant pebbles falling and timbers creaking ominously. Sniffing hard, he tried to detect any gas. A canary was better for such detection, Slocum knew, but he didn’t have a bird right now. Another way of finding out if there was firedamp, as the miners called it, was to light a lucifer and then get blown to hell and gone when the gas exploded in his face.

Slocum wanted to try some other approach to finding out if the mine was safe. He kept digging, intending to open the hole enough to let out any pockets of trapped gas that might have accumulated near the blockage.

That was what he intended. He stopped clawing away at the rock when he heard footsteps above him. Looking up, Slocum saw four sets of toes poking over the lip of the hole. He reached for his six-shooter but saw he was in no position to fight.

“Who’s down there?” came a voice he almost recognized. “We done heard you scrabblin’ about like some kind of mine rat. Who’s there?”

“Sheriff George,” Slocum called up. “It’s me, Slocum. I talked to you in town about the road agents out in Liberty Bell Canyon.”

“You’re a ways from the canyon. This here’s Seamus Preston’s claim. What’re you doin’ down there?”

“Trying to get him out. He came down the ladder and vanished into this tunnel, then the roof caved in. I have a small hole dug open, but I can’t see him inside.”

“You two, go help him,” ordered the sheriff. Two deputies with him backed away so their toes vanished from the edge of the hole. Slocum heard heated argument over who would come down to help dig.

Slocum felt the pressure of time weighing him down. Seamus Preston was nowhere in sight, but he might be injured and not far down the drift. Slocum turned back to pulling free the rocks to enlarge the opening so he could wiggle in and explore for himself. He heard the ladder creaking and groaning as someone scampered down.

“Grab a pry bar and give me a hand,” Slocum said without looking to see who had come down. “If we get this big rock moved, we could go hunt for him.”

Slocum jerked around to face a jet-black-haired woman, her bright blue eyes fixed on him. Her lovely, pale-skinned face was out of place in a world of sunbaked, ugly, leathery ones. She wore a heavy coat that couldn’t conceal the curves of her figure.

“How astute of you,” she said with open disdain. “I rode out here with the sheriff and his posse to catch those awful highwaymen.”

She shrugged, then shook her head vigorously. “I have no idea where they might have been. All I am interested in is where they are and how to stop them before they harm Seamus.”

“What’s he to you?” Slocum asked, not sure he wanted to hear the answer. He had already come across Molly who had claimed to be Preston’s sister.

“His sweetheart,” the woman answered. “My name’s Erin, and I fetched the sheriff to help Seamus. He’s been bedeviled by claim jumpers from the first day he staked out this old mine.”

“He found a new vein?” Slocum looked at the rock walls and saw nothing that would have made him risk his life in the disused shafts.

“A long story,” Slocum said, not wanting to go into the details, especially where Molly was concerned. At least Erin had not claimed to be Seamus’s sister. He turned back to the rockfall and shook his head. “There’s no way we can get in there.”

“How many of them varmints was there, Slocum?” Sheriff George again looked down into the pit. “We got tracks for three of ’em.”

“Don’t know if we kin catch ’em,” the sheriff said. “Lookin’ like a storm brewin’ again. Hell of a year for the snow to come this early and it not even harvest moon yet.”

“Can you help out, Sheriff?” Slocum pointed to the rocks blocking entry to the mine. The lawman didn’t answer directly but sent down two grumbling deputies this time.

Slocum and Erin stood back and let the men cuss and piss and moan over such work. They’d signed up for a posse, one contended, not to move rock. If he had wanted a mining job, he’d have gone to work at the Silver King Mine. As much as the two complained, they worked steadily and weren’t tuckered out like Slocum. They had a good-sized hole opened at the top of the fall in less than twenty minutes.

“You boys coming along?” Slocum asked as he stared into the inky depths of the mine. “A man’s likely to be in there, injured or maybe dead.” He still didn’t understand how Seamus Preston had avoided being crushed by the collapsing roof, but there was no evidence that he was under the pile.

Slocum did not blame them. If he’d had a choice, he wouldn’t have gone into the mine, either. But he was responsible for delivering the map. More than this, he couldn’t leave a man who might be seriously injured to die in the dark. Settling his nerves, he scrambled over the crest of the rock pile, down the far side and found himself enveloped in inky darkness. Reaching out to touch the wall to guide himself along, he recoiled when he touched something warm and soft.

“You’re coming along when the deputies wouldn’t?” Slocum was glad that Erin wasn’t squeamish about checking to see if the man was flattened like a swatted mosquito.

“Those deputies are more at home bellied up to a bar, swilling demon rum.” Her outrage was directed more at the men’s drinking than at their lack of courage. Slocum wondered if Seamus was a teetotaler. His brother certainly had not been, not when he had owned the Stolen Nugget Saloon back in Truckee.

Slocum gingerly reached in the other direction to find the rough wall. He inched along until the opening was far behind, hardly a bright spot the size of a dime. As he crept deeper into the mine, he kept sniffing for gas. The time he had worked in a hard rock mine had been agonizingly backbreaking, and constant danger had ridden in his hip pocket. But he had not been in the dark. A miner’s helmet with a carbide lamp had given some light, and miner’s candles were always set to cast light on the ore vein he had used his pickax on.

“I might miss him in the dark,” Slocum finally said. “I haven’t found any drifts branching from this one. Anything on your side?”

Erin said, “Nothing. Just rock. Is it safe to light a match? I know about methane gas, but Seamus never mentioned trouble with it in this drift.”

Slocum considered his safest course of action. That was, of course, backtracking and getting the hell out of this potential grave. Since this was out of the question, lighting the lucifers in his pocket seemed better by the minute.

The sudden flare caused Slocum to squint. His first sight as soon as the yellow and blue dots dancing in front of him vanished was Erin. Her dark hair almost merged with the dark rock, but her bright blue eyes and pale face, now streaked with dirt, turned her downright angelic.

“Take a gander around while it’s burning,” Slocum said. He took his own advice and saw the tunnel stretching far ahead, disappearing into darkness a dozen yards off. He dropped the match when it burned down to his fingers.

“Fresh ones,” Slocum added. He had seen them, too. It had been years since anyone had been in this deserted section of the mine, and dust had settled from the roof to form a shallow layer on the floor. The dust had been disturbed recently by a single set of boot prints going away from the cave-in. Without a better candidate, Seamus Preston was likely to have left the footprints.

“Let’s go another twenty paces, and I’ll light another lucifer. I’ll warn you so you can look away.” Slocum advanced slowly, worried that he might not have seen a pit in the floor. If the mine could collapse all the way to the surface, the lower drifts might fall into still lower ones.

“You’re about the most suspicious filly I’ve come across in quite a spell,” Slocum said. “I want to get him out of here in one piece. Anything that might help him is worth knowing.”

“Sorry,” Erin said. “I’m not acquainted with you. I don’t know why you were even looking for Seamus.”

“How many brothers and sisters does Seamus have?” He stopped, tapped ahead a few inches and found the drift angling to the left. Slocum tried to estimate how far they had come and couldn’t. Considering their pace, they might be under the hillside on the far slope of the canyon. Slocum knew mining companies ran with the veins of ore, going wherever the “color” took them and devil take the hindmost. Some claims were crisscrossed with holes that would collapse, one by one, over the years and make traveling aboveground a nightmare.

“Do you hear that?” Erin reached out and touched his arm. Her fingers clenched down hard. “It sounds like a man struggling to take a breath.”

“Close your eyes. I’m lighting another match.” Slocum pulled the lucifer from the small tin box and struck it against the rock wall. He took his own advice and kept his eyes tightly shut until the flare died. Holding the match high above his head, he saw how the flame and smoke from the fiery tip flattened out into a right angle to the matchstick.

“Look quick at the floor,” Slocum said as he craned his neck upward. The match flame sucked up toward a chimney in the roof. Slocum wasn’t sure but thought he saw a bright star or two—a sure sign the rock chimney opened onto the mountain across the valley from the entrance.

“He climbed up a rock vent to get out. It looks natural but was widened to provide air in the mine.” Slocum knew such vents were also dangerous. Any gas explosion would race through the tunnels and surge upward to turn the mine into a blast furnace that would burn far longer than it ought to.

“You didn’t see tracks going on.” Slocum struck another match and examined the chimney walls for scratches. He saw scuff marks all the way to the top.

“You want to catch me if I fall?” She seemed amused at the notion. “Very well.” Erin spit on her hands, let Slocum give her a boost and worked her way upward in the dark. Slocum caught occasional glimpses of an arm or leg or other delightful portions of her anatomy as she scaled the rock fissure. Then she disappeared.

“I’m on the side of the mountain. The far side, I think. There’s snow all around, and tracks lead away.”

Slocum grumbled as he started his own journey up the tight-walled crevice. His shoulders were rubbed raw by the time he popped out onto the ground. If he had been riding past on the mountain, he might not have seen this opening, but that hardly mattered. Once again he was out of the rocky grave below and under the open sky.

Slocum heard the hesitancy in her voice. She wanted to catch up with her sweetheart but also wanted to return to the safety of Sheriff George’s posse on the other side of the mountain.

“Why’d he hightail it like that?” Slocum knelt and caught starlight reflected off the snowpack, showing Seamus’s long stride. He had not just left; he had left in a mighty big hurry.

“I wouldn’t have headed in the opposite direction after getting out of the mine,” Slocum said. “If he didn’t know the terrain well, I’d say he was mixed up about direction.” He looked at Erin and saw the answer. Seamus Preston had explored every square inch of this valley and knew it well. Although he might not have wanted to fight off the owlhoots after his claim, why hadn’t he wanted to spy on them from the top of the mountain? He could have waited until they had left and then salvaged what he could from his cabin.

“He didn’t know I was coming with the sheriff and his posse, if you can call those craven types that.”

“We’d been harassed by those ruffians for days. I refused to allow it to go on, but Seamus has a head as hard as any of that rock. He could handle it himself, he said.”

The stars blinked out as thin tendrils of cloud blew past. Then those wisps of clouds turned into something more substantial. Slocum turned up his coat collar as a polar wind whipped across the stony face of the mountain.

“You do as you please, sir. I’ll find him. How hard can it be? He left a trail a blind man could follow.”

Slocum saw how it disappeared into the night. He found himself tossed on the horns of a dilemma. If Seamus had taken cover in a nearby stand of oak and maple, finding him would be quick. They could be in his shack boiling coffee and arguing over what few provisions Slocum carried in his saddlebags. But if the prospector had kept going at the clip he had as he left the rock chimney, they might never catch up. Slocum had to follow the trail. All Seamus had to do was blaze it.

“You head to the mountain crest and go back to the shack. Wait for us there. If the sheriff’s men are still around, send them with my horse.”

“I am not your errand girl,” Erin said tartly. “He’s my man. I won’t turn my back on him when he needs me most.”

The snowflakes began fluttering down before they reached the edge of the forest. By the time they had followed Seamus Preston’s tracks to the far side of the trees, the wind had picked up and blew the snow against their faces in a blinding fury.