“Like a chimney,” Ezra grunted. “An’ if Chris’mus wasn’ all over, mebbe we could look fo’ Sandy Claws to come down with a bottle of rye whisky fo’ a Christmas present.” His teeth chattered uncontrollably as he ended, and he got to his feet, began flogging himself with his long arms, his long body bent in an arc.

  “A chimney means we can light a fire without smokin’ ourselves out,” Pat responded tersely. “An’ that’s somethin’ we couldn’t do if it was a regular cave.”

  “Ef you think mebbe you could smoke me out,” Ezra groaned, “I shore wisht you’d get a good smoke goin’.”

  “Shore, mebbe we’ll find a vein o’ coal to burn up in here,” Sam put in sarcastically. “Then if we come on a cache of canned stuff we might could stay ’live two-three days.” Despite his pessimistic attitude, however, he followed Ezra’s example of standing up. Being several inches shorter than his companions, his head missed the rock ceiling, and he stamped around to restore circulation to his body.

  “How many matches you fellers got on you?” Pat demanded. “I can’t find but three in my pockets and I don’t want to waste ’em unless we’ve got plenty.”

  “I’m plumb out,” Sam admitted, but after a search of his pockets, Ezra had cheering news: “Here’s a whole han’ful, but they won’t do much ’bout warmin’ us up.”

  Pat struck another match and led the way slowly along the tunnel, ducking to avoid contact with the low roof. It was impossible not to laugh inwardly at Sam’s and Ezra’s grumblings, but he managed a disgusted tone when he said, “A man’d think you two were a couple of city dudes that’ve been raised civilized an’ didn’t know how to get warm without steam heat. I’m bettin’ this tunnel hit a streak of mica or some other shiny mineral stuff somewhere. When we come to that, we’ll have firewood.”

  “I reckon a boulder got him on the haid when he was draggin’ me in,” Sam commented mournfully to Ezra as they followed the faint light cast by Pat’s match, “else’n why’d he think mica or shiny mineral’d turn into firewood?”

  “Jes’ humor him along,” Ezra said in a loud whisper, “till we get a chanct to grab ’im an’ get his guns. Reminds me of ol’ Dad Becon up Gunnison way. He got lost fer a week on Monarch Pass an’ when they found ’im he claimed he’d been livin’ on fried aspen branches. An’, b’gorry, he died a coupla days later on an’ afore they got ’im buried danged if a aspen hadn’ started sproutin’ in ’is belly.”

  Pat was careful not to turn around and show the grin on his face. It was this sort of chatter between his companions that kept fear from creeping into them when danger was imminent and death stalked their path. He stopped ten feet in front of them with an exclamation of satisfaction. His last match flickered out as he waited for his companions to reach him, and he turned impatiently.

  “Strike up a light, Ezra. Here’s a sidecut they made lookin’ for a vein, I reckon. But all they hit was a heavy streak of mica. Now, we’ll have a fire.”

  Ezra was slow getting the match struck. Sam nudged him and said, “Go ahaid an’ humor ’im. I’ll slip up behind an’ be ready to grab ’im when he finds out mica won’t burn.”

  In a soothing tone, Ezra said, “Shore, Pat. That’s fine. It’ll shore be nice to have a nice warm fire outa mica rock. I reckon that makes ’bout the hottest fire they is.”

  He scratched a match on his pants and stepped to Pat’s side. A right-angled cut had been made in the wall of the tunnel, extending back for ten feet or more. Glittery mica reflected the faint yellow light, and the floor of the cut was strewn with slivers of the shiny stuff that had been splintered off when the work was in progress.

  Then Ezra’s one eye was gleaming crazily, for piled neatly along the wall of the sidecut was a stack of dried aspen limbs ready for burning. While Ezra continued to stare, Pat seized the burning match from his shaking fingers and bent down to separate some of the twigs and smaller pieces from the main pile.

  “Lucky for us,” he observed, “that the trade rats here in the mountains’ve been raised honest and won’t carry off nothin’ without leavin’ something in its place.”

  “I’m danged,” Sam said, awe-struck. “They been tradin’ wood for pieces of mica all these years jest so we wouldn’ freeze t’death tonight. The little darlin’s. I’ll shore kiss the nex’ trade rat I meet up with.”

  “An’ me,” said Ezra gallantly, “I’ll take back all the cussin’ of ’em I done ’round camp when I woke up an’ found the spoons gone and a hunk o’ mesquite wood left behind.”

  Pat had a small blaze going and was carefully adding slightly larger sticks to the fire. “We’ll have to go easy on this supply until we can scout around and see if there are any more caches like it. Chances are we’ll find plenty if we look close.”

  Flame licked greedily at the dry wood, sending out cheerful rays of heat which quickly warmed the rock walls and reflected back from the shining mica.

  While the three men crouched close, warming themselves, Pat pointed out that the smoke was being drawn off in a direction opposite the blocked exit while the air they breathed remained fresh and clean.

  “That shows my guess about an airshaft was right. It must be down the tunnel a ways and it’s drawin’ off the smoke just like a chimney. Soon’s we get thawed out we’ll look for it an’ see if there’s any chance of climbin’ out.”

  “It’s right cozy here by the fire,” Sam sighed. “If we do get out we got a long lot o’ walkin’ to do. Don’t ferget our hawses was all killed and buried under a hunnerd feet o’ snow.”

  Ezra sighed and hitched up his breeches, took a notch in his belt. “If one o’ them packrats was to show up ’bout now, I’d shore eat m’se’f one o’ the frien’ly little critters.”

  “In the meantime, the black-hoods are getting away,” Pat said to Sam, ignoring Ezra’s statement.

  “I wonder if they are,” Ezra questioned. “They was up the canyon in front o’ the slide. She shore looked like a blind un t’me. Mebbe they’re trapped jest as tight as us.”

  Pat Stevens shook his head. “I’m afraid not. I thought it looked like a blind canyon, too, but there must be another trail out of it. Stands to reason they wouldn’t trap themselves behind the slide they caused.”

  “You allus find the wrong answers,” Sam grumbled. “I wonder if they know ’bout this here mine tunnel an’ that we got inside of it.”

  “They probably know about it,” Pat replied thoughtfully. “And they may have seen us dive into it in front of the slide.”

  “Which means if there’s any way out they’ll have it blocked,” Ezra put in dolefully.

  “Yeh … if,” Sam retorted. “I never heerd o’ but one way out of a mine tunnel, ’ceptin’ mebbe where some o’ them Cousin Jacks dug theirse’fs out at the end of a gold vein.”

  “Lots of mines have two or three ways out,” Ezra argued. “Up ’round Leadville they’s mines that start in under the side o’ one mountain an’ tie into half a dozen other mines that mebbe come out the other side o’ the Divide. Fellers that know their way ’round under the ground kin travel for weeks ’thout ever coverin’ the same groun’ twict.”

  “An’ fellers that don’t know their way ’round kin travel plumb to hades and don’t never find no way out,” Sam reminded him caustically.

  “Sittin’ by a warm fire and guessin’ never got anybody anywhere,” Pat said. “Let’s pile a little more wood on and start lookin’.”

  He laid three more sticks on the glowing embers and then led the way down the tunnel which was faintly lit by the glow behind him. About fifty feet from the fire he stopped at another cut angling off from the main tunnel. He struck a match, but could see nothing but blackness ahead.

  “I’ll sashay down here a ways,” he muttered. “You-all stay here so we won’t lose the main tunnel.”

  He moved away from Sam and Ezra into the inky blackness of the side tunnel and they waited and listened to his receding footsteps.

  After a long interval, Pat returned bearing another armful of dry wood, but shaking his head dubiously when they questioned him about a possible exit.

  “Can’t tell a thing. There are two other sidecuts leadin’ off, then it makes a fork. A man’d sure get lost easy not knowin’ where they led. If we had a few miles of string, one of us could go ahead an’ then foller the strings back. But we haven’t got the string, so we’d better stick together.”

  Pat deposited his load of wood against the wall to be picked upon their way back to the fire, then the three men followed the main tunnel together.

  Ezra carried the match-light now, his one keen eye watching narrowly, scanning the walls and the floor of the cave. He called attention to two more caches of dried wood obligingly left by the trade rats. He suggested that Sam fill his arms with the branches and take them along so that they would be sure of having it when they went back, but Sam snorted disdainfully, and they moved on.

  They came upon a huge wide room which had been cut out of the very bowels of the mountain.

  “H-m-m … it’s light in here,” Ezra muttered, “else a cat’s done swapped a eye with me.”

  “It is lighter.” Pat hurried forward to the center of the big room and stood looking upward hopefully. “There’s the air shaft,” he exclaimed. “You can see a little blob of gray sky at the top.”

  Ezra stared upward dejectedly. “Not more’n a mile up to it, I’d say, an’ it’s fifteen or twenty feet up to the roof here. Don’t look big ’nuff fer a man to get through, nohow.”

  “It prob’ly isn’t,” Pat agreed quietly. “Looks as though they struck a rich pocket here, and prob’ly followed the vein away.”

  A circuit of the large area showed three tunnels leading away from it, with no evidence to show where any of them went, nor any reason for them leading anywhere.

  Sam stopped all at once and exclaimed, “Which one of these openings did we come out of?”

  “This’n right here,” Ezra stated positively.

  Pat turned and considered the opening which Ezra pointed out. He shook his head doubtfully. “I’m all turned around now. I don’t know which one we came through.”

  For the first time, stark terror showed on the faces of the trio, with the thought of being lost in the devious system of underground passages. Pat saw Ezra’s and Sam’s faces just as Ezra’s match, which he was holding high, flickered out.

  In the moment of thick blackness before Ezra frantically struck another match on the seat of his breeches, Pat reminded them:

  “We left a fire going. We’ll be able to see the glow if we look down each tunnel carefully.”

  When the match flared up, Ezra had regained confidence in himself. He said, “Sam had me plumb scairt the way he looked. Don’t you do that to me no more,” he warned. “I know which one of them passages we come out of. Come on.”

  Again he held the match high and long-legged it before his companions. Coming upon the first pile of firewood, Pat and Sam filled their arms. Retracing their steps to the main chamber they built a fresh fire almost directly under the air shaft leading to the surface, in the hope that the column of smoke going up might attract attention and bring help.

  When the fire was going, Ezra sat down on his boot-heel and gazed upward at the opening. “I dunno what kind o’ he’p you expect to get from up there,” he opined.

  “Anyway, they could throw us down some grub,” Sam said plaintively. “It’d shore take a whoppin’ lot o’ rope to reach down from the top, an’ then we don’t know if the hole’s big ’nough for a man to climb up.”

  “You got the guts to gripe ’bout eats,” Ezra growled, “when you had yore belly full o’ bacon and biscuits this mawnin’ an’ Pat an’ me ain’t had nothin’ a-tall all day.”

  “You’d both better stop thinkin’ about food,” Pat warned, “or you’ll think pack rats are gnawin’ at your innards.”

  With that cheery prospect they grew silent, and all through the long hours of the afternoon they kept their fire burning brightly, sending up a feeble smoke signal to the heights above them where the opening kept hope kindled within them.

  The opening was high above the mountainous debris piled up by the slide … far above the point where the Indian boy had sent out his war-whoop. The men imprisoned in the cave had no way of knowing that no eyes would see the smoke in the high reaches of the mountains.

  With the coming of darkness, Pat ordered the fire extinguished to conserve their precious supply of wood until morning when, as with every new day, fresh hope would come.

  By lying close together and covering themselves with their lined sheepskin coats they passed the long sleepless night. When the light of day again showed dimly, high above at the tip of the airshaft, they started their fire again. Again they waited, and though no one spoke of it, hope was on the wane.

  They were dozing before the fire and the new day was not more than an hour old when there was a loud clatter on the rock floor beyond the fire.

  Jerking their heads up, the three men stared at each other apprehensively. Then, Pat leaped up and lifted a round stone the size of his fist. He stared at it disbelievingly when he saw a piece of brown wrapping paper tied to the rock with a string, then looked up at the airshaft from whence it had come.

  He shouted, “Halloo-oo-oo,” loudly and frantically.

  His voice was thrown back from the rock walls of the chamber but there was no other response, no slightest evidence from above of the agency that had thrown the rock down the shaft.

  Sam and Ezra rushed forward to peer over Pat’s shoulder impatiently as he tore the string off and unfolded the paper.

  Pat knelt down close to the fire and examined it, rumpling his brow at the lines drawn on the paper with a heavy black pencil.

  Suddenly he sucked in his breath and exclaimed excitedly, “It’s a map of this mine or I’m a ring-tailed high-behind. See, it’s plain as daylight. Here’s a circle markin’ the place where we came in … with a double line markin’ the course of the main tunnel, I’ll bet. And right here is the side drift where I turned off yesterday. See,” he shouted, as though his companions were deaf, “it’s even got the turns where I told you, and the forks.”

  Ezra’s eye danced gleefully. “Look-a-there,” he said, his long knobby finger tracing the heavy double lines, “is where we are now. See the big square with the circle in the middle? That fo’ the airshaft, and there’s two single lines leadin’ ’way … that’s the side drifts … and jest one set o’ double lines. That means the main tunnel keeps goin’ on … it’s the openin’ over there to the left. An’ here’s a side tunnel leadin’ off from it … and a right-hand turn … an’ ’nother right turn … then a forks with the double line leadin’ to the lef’ … an’ it ends in another circle … meanin’ another way out o’ this Goddamn tunnel.”

  Ezra sank back on his heels as if exhausted. He hadn’t spoken so many words at one time in his life before.

  “All we gotta do is foller the map,” Sam said caustically, but his black eyes were rapt in his bewhiskered face. “B’Gawd, I betcha a angel flew over an’ dropped that there map. Hereinafter I ain’t gonna make no more fun o’ angels an’ harps an’ sich. No sirree, from here on out …”

  “We’re gettin’ out,” Pat interposed. He had been looking sharply at the map, his quick wits running ahead of Ezra’s clumsy finger as he traced the course. He swung to his feet. “We’ll check each opening and turn as we come to it. That way, we can’t get lost. You got all this straight in your mind?” he asked, turning to Ezra.

  “Ain’t I jest been showin’ you the way?” Ezra retorted.

  “All right,” Pat answered.

  It was a long and nerve-racking journey through the black maze of underground passages, but with the crude map to guide them, and with matches to strike for reassurance, Pat went ahead of Sam and Ezra to lead the way with confidence.

  They were finally rewarded by the cheering sight of a dim rectangle of daylight far ahead at the end of a straight passage.

  Breaking into a trot as they emerged into a snow-filled, deep-walled canyon with bright sunlight blazing blindingly upon the crest of the western slope high overhead, Sam said happily:

  “B’Gawd, she looks like a angel wearin’ white robes.”

  Ezra scoffed. “Looks like the same li’l ol’ canyon we wuz lopin’ ’long on yestiddy t’me. Sam must o’ got religion when he was shut up in that cave.”

  “I didn’t know that sun on snow could look so good,” Pat interposed happily.

  “She is the same canyon,” Ezra stated positively after sniffing the air and studying the terrain with his searching eye. “We come out mebbe a mile fu’ther on from where we went in yestiddy. We musta walked nigh on to twenty mile under that mountain.”

  “Then we’re going to keep right on walkin’ up the canyon where we started yesterday,” Pat said grimly. “The outlaws were on this side of the snowslide when it hit. It’s a cinch they’re still on this side of it … or we can find where they went out and follow ’em from there.”

  Pat plunged down the hillside to the snow-blanketed canyon floor and turned determinedly up the canyon, following the same trail they had been on when the slide thundered down upon them.

  Sam and Ezra followed on his heels without the slightest hesitation.

  THIRTEEN

  Tramping over the icy trail was difficult for men who were accustomed to straddling horses for any journey of more than a hundred yards. In the high reaches the snow was congealed and slippery on top after a night of below-zero temperature. A sleepless night and lack of substantial food since the preceding day had drained the three men of their normal vigor and energy.

  Sam and Ezra plowed along behind Pat without question, accepting his leadership as they always did. Primitive and uncouth, they had no conception of the wisdom acquired by education which had been Pat’s good fortune in his youth under the guidance of his Irish father.

  They knew, however, that in the wild, uncharted country over which they plodded there was only one direction to go, for the way was blocked behind them.