“This will tell us ever’thing we need to know, Eustace,” she said excitedly. “Git rid of them. Permanent-like. I want to watch.”

  “Don’t want to rush things with ’em,” the huge outlaw said. A feral smile curled his lips. “I know jist the way to take care of ’em, the way they deserve to be took care of.”

  After Eustace explained, even Molly was enthusiastic.

  “How deep do you reckon it is?” Molly looked over the lip of the pit. She tossed a stone over. The echo of it hitting water came back after way too long for Slocum to be comfortable.

  “What’s the difference? A mile or ten?”

  “I like it you don’t wanna kill ’em off right away. In case there’s a problem with the map.”

  “I don’t wanna kill ’em fast at all. You said the map was all we needed. Ain’t that so?” Eustace looked at Molly with a spark of anger in his piglike eyes.

  “We got all we need to find the gold them Arnots hid on us.”

  “Them and those two worthless, good-for-nuthin’ Preston brothers. They was in cahoots.”

  “Jist like we are, honey,” Molly said, cozying up to Eustace. “Wasn’t the robbery my idea? How’d I know Michael and Seamus would get greedy?”

  “Seamus was a better man than any of you!” shouted Erin. For her trouble she got a strong shove from Molly that sent her reeling toward the edge of the pit. For an instant, Slocum thought Erin had regained her balance. Then she toppled into the pit. A second later came a loud splash.

  “Reckon she ain’t dead. Mighty wet, though.” Eustace came up behind Slocum and whispered in his ear, “Rot in hell, you mangy dog, you.”

  Slocum had a split second to prepare for the fall. He silently vowed not to give them the satisfaction of hearing him cry out on the way down. Just as his resolve was wearing thin and he wanted to bellow out in rage, his feet hit the pool at the bottom of the pit. His outcry was cut off by cold black water. He sputtered and shook and struggled to get to the surface with his hands bound behind him.

  “John, here. Over here,” Erin called to him. “I was lucky. I got my hands free on the way down.” She held up her wrists. In the faint light from above Slocum saw her bloodied wrists where she had fought the hemp ropes and won. He struggled to kick hard enough to keep his head above water. Erin saw his plight and grabbed his collar, pulling him over to a rocky ledge.

  Slocum got his knees under him and flopped around, out of the water. A shiver seized him. The water had been cold, but the air drying it off his clothing made him even colder.

  “Let me get your ropes off. Oh, the knots are all soaked.”

  “Knife,” Slocum said, trying to keep his teeth from chattering. “In my boot top.”

  The Montroses had missed this weapon when they trussed him up. Erin made quick work of his ropes. He was sorry he hadn’t told her to be careful, to cut the ropes so that they might tie long pieces together in an effort to escape the deep pit.

  But he was simply happy to get his hands free. Even more so when Erin threw her arms around him and hugged him tight.

  “You gave them the map to ransom me,” she said. “That’s the most wonderful thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

  “The most wonderful thing anyone can do for the two of us is get us out of here,” Slocum said. He eyed the steep walls of the pit and wondered what this place was. He didn’t see any tunnels leading away. It was as if this was a well with a mighty wide mouth. The sides were slick with slime all twenty feet to the edge.

  “We’re safe for the moment,” Erin said, trying to look on the bright side of their predicament.

  “I’m not so sure. It won’t be too long before Molly realizes there’s more to finding the gold than that map.”

  “She took my coin,” Erin said, chagrined at having to make such a confession. “I don’t know if she wanted it because it was gold or if Seamus had mentioned it. But that witch has it.”

  “Is she Seamus’s sister?” The more he thought on it, the less he believed she was related to the Preston brothers. More likely, she had come along and maybe sweet-talked either Michael or Seamus and had learned of the robbery that way. Slocum didn’t bother to suggest that Seamus might not have been totally faithful. He knew firsthand how seductive Molly could be. But his money was on Molly and Michael making whoopee, since she hadn’t known of the need to use the two half coins to orient the map.

  “I find it hard to believe Molly and Seamus were in the same family. He was so kind, when he thought on it, and not at all like her. But Michael, well, he and Molly are a bit alike. Were. Oh, John, I don’t know what to do.” She broke down crying, clinging to him. He could do nothing but hold her for a spell.

  As he held her quaking body in his arms, he looked around and thought hard. Molly might have the entire map and Erin’s half of the coin, but the other half coin still rode on a rawhide thong around his neck. Eustace had not bothered to search him. After all, the map was all there was to claim. The Montrose gang had wanted to put an end to him and Erin so they could get a move on and find the stolen bullion.

  “They might be back. I’ve still got the other half,” he told her.

  “They have us bottled up here. They can kill us and take it.”

  “Not if we’re gone when they return,” Slocum said. There was a chance Molly and Eustace would never return. There was no reason for them to think he had the final key to finding their treasure. Molly wouldn’t give up, but she might not think to ask a man she had seen tossed into a watery grave if he held the last piece of the puzzle.

  The ropes that had held Erin’s wrists together were nowhere to be seen. The ropes she had cut from his wrists lay in small sections around the ledge. Worthless for climbing. But maybe not entirely without some usefulness.

  “How wet are these ropes?” Slocum wondered. He released her and twisted the rope hard to get out as much water as he could before peeling apart the strands. Using a lucifer from the watertight tin tucked in his vest pocket, alongside the gold half coin, he set fire to one end. A guttering pale yellow light illuminated their rocky prison.

  “There’s no way to climb up,” Erin said. “The sides are too smooth, even if it weren’t for the slime covering everything.”

  Slocum moved around and held up the sputtering hunk of rope to get as good a look as possible at a spot ten feet above their heads.

  “What’s that look like? There?” He pointed to the spot he had noticed.

  “A mine shaft?”

  “This is another glory hole. The roof caved in to an upper level, then kept collapsing. It fell two entire levels.”

  “But the water. Where’d it come from?”

  “If the mine flooded, that might have washed out the supports and caused the collapse all the way to the surface,” Slocum said. “That means there might be another tunnel about . . . there.”

  He estimated distances and pointed to a spot just under the surface of the water.

  “If the mine flooded, all the lower drifts will be underwater. And I don’t think we can climb to the upper level tunnel. It’s too far and the rock is so slick.” Erin started to cry.

  Slocum might have calmed her, but he was more inclined to find a way out of their predicament. Moaning about their bad luck wasn’t going to get them free. Slocum took out his tin of matches and the gold coin and pressed them into Erin’s hand.

  “Keep these. Till I get back.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  He shucked off his wet boots and stripped off his heavy coat and gunbelt. How light that belt seemed without the three pounds of shooting iron weighing it down. Slocum sucked in a few deep breaths, then jumped into the cold water. He dropped several feet before giving a powerful scissors kick that took him to the far wall. Even in the dark he saw a darker circle in the wall. A tunnel. Stroking forward, he swam deeper into the flooded drift. Lungs approaching the bursting point, he knew he should turn back.

  He kept swimming forward.

  Then he burst out, gasping for air, into a relatively dry tunnel that sloped upward. Dragging himself out of the water, he lay for a minute regaining his strength and making sure he could breathe without passing out. Sometimes, flooded tunnels were also the home to dangerous pockets of gas. A few tentative sniffs convinced him the air was as good as any he’d ever taken into his lungs.

  Making his way up the slope, he turned and let out a yelp of glee. He saw sunlight diffused by heavy storm clouds! Slocum hurried forward and came to a branch in the tunnel. One way led outside. The other curled around where a vagrant vein of ore had been followed religiously. He guessed where it ended.

  A dozen paces around the curving tunnel brought him to a sudden drop-off—into the watery well where Erin huddled over the feeble fire of a burning rope, trying vainly to warm herself.

  He called down to her. Erin jumped in surprise, then looked upward.

  “John! How’d you get up there? Never mind. Get me out of here!”

  He decided it was only as a last resort that Erin should try to swim underwater through the tunnel to reach the exit. He had barely made it and wasn’t sure he could swim back to get her, then retrace his escape path.

  “I’ll find a rope or some other way to pull you up. It may take a few minutes, so don’t worry.”

  Before she could urge him to stay for just another minute or two, he ducked back and went exploring in the tunnels. The mine had been abandoned, leaving behind rusty equipment and useless timbers. The rot had set in, making the wood more dangerous than of value in getting Erin out of the pit.

  But Slocum did find a winch with a cable still wrapped around its drum. He wrestled it along the tunnel before he realized he could never hold it in place and crank the handle, bringing Erin up. Slocum hunted without finding a decent way of securing the winch. Then he saw a roof timber with supports that appeared sturdy enough for the task. Wedging the winch into the rock behind one roof support, he ran the cable out to the edge of the pit.

  “John! How long before you get me out?” Erin sounded a mite frantic.

  “I’ll fix a loop at the end of the rope. You slide your arms through it so it goes around your body. Then hang on. I’ll pull you up. Be sure to bring the matches and the coin.”

  “Got them here,” she said, holding them above her head.

  Slocum quickly fixed a sturdy loop that wouldn’t slip off the woman’s trim body or cut her too badly, then dropped it over the edge. As Erin got the rope secured around her, he returned to the winch. He hoped the timber would hold long enough.

  “Ready?” he called. Slocum got her eager reply and began turning the crank handle. Inch by inch the rope was wrapped back around the drum. But after only a few turns he saw how the wooden timber was beginning to yield. The roof was starting to cascade dust down on his head, and the timber support was breaking from the strain.

  Slocum cranked faster and the wood began splintering. The winch started to slip past the wood support, but he refused to give up. Slocum braced his body, shoved his feet against the edge of the winch and kept turning as fast as possible. He looked up and knew it was a race against time. The roof might cave in and crush him.

  It might do him in, but he wasn’t going to strand Erin in that watery grave. Better to die with a ton of rock smashing down on them than to starve to death.

  “I’m almost at the edge, John. A little more. Pull me up just a little more!”

  The rope snapped, relieving the pressure against the mine support. But Erin was tied onto the other end of the now-slack line.

  “Erin!” Slocum called. “Erin!”

  He got no answer.

  17

  Slocum stared at the line on the dusty tunnel floor, then dived and grabbed for it. There was no pressure against the rope.

  “Erin!” he called. “Erin!”

  He began reeling in the line, until it pulled taut. He frowned and realized that if the line were still around the woman’s body, she couldn’t be more than a few feet below the lip of the tunnel. Slocum scuttled along the floor, maintaining tension on the rope until he reached the edge of the tunnel.

  Erin clung for dear life to a tiny outcropping not a foot below him. She pressed her face hard against the cold, slimy wall and fought in silence to keep from tumbling back down into the well below.

  “I’ll pull you up,” Slocum said, bracing his feet as much as possible. There was scant traction for him, but he applied all the tension on the rope that he could. A sudden jerk brought Erin popping up and over the edge. Slocum crashed onto his back and she fell heavily atop him. He looked up into her face. She still refused to look, and her eyes were screwed tightly shut.

  “You can look now,” he said. “You’re safe.”

  Erin slowly opened her blue eyes and looked down at him. A smile danced on her lips and she said, “Not that safe, I hope.”

  “We’ve got to get out of here.” Slocum helped her to her feet and dusted himself off. She stood silently, hand outstretched. In her palm were both the tin of matches and the half of the double eagle that unlocked the location of the stolen bullion.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. She nodded, as if she didn’t trust herself to speak. Slocum took the lucifers and tucked them into his still-wet pocket. Then he hung the gold coin around his neck again, hiding it under his shirt. No sooner had the coin vanished than Erin threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.

  “We can go now,” she said. “Lead the way.”

  Slocum got his bearings, followed the drift for some distance and then found a ladder going to the surface. The mine mouth opened onto a slope a quarter mile from the pit where they had been tossed. The dawn was even more diffused by the clouds roiling over the Sierras, but Slocum had no trouble figuring out where they had to go. He pointed north.

  “The town’s about ten miles in that direction.” He frowned a moment and added, “Be sure to skirt around the Montrose gang’s camp on your way there. Tell the sheriff what’s happened and have him send out a posse after Eustace and Molly and the rest.”

  “What’re you going to do, John? You aren’t thinking of going after them on foot?” Erin sounded shocked at the very idea he would want revenge. Slocum wanted more than that. Molly had the completed map and Erin’s part of the coin. If he hotfooted it, he might overtake the gang and get all the details of where the bullion had been hidden before Sheriff George caught up. Slocum was counting on the lawman being out of town and taking a day or two before he rustled up a posse and came charging out of Virginia City.

  “I won’t leave you,” Erin said flatly.

  “Don’t you want Eustace and the others arrested for kidnapping you?” Slocum hesitated, then added what Erin had to be thinking already. “They must have murdered Seamus, too.”

  “That bitch might have done it herself. There’s no telling what she’s capable of.”

  There was no reason to think Molly wasn’t capable of any depth of treachery with a million dollars in gold at stake. Eustace Montrose had better start watching his back once they got close to the gold, because Molly was the sort of gal who would take a fancy to owning it all.

  “How do you intend to track them on foot, without any sort of weapon?” Erin demanded.

  Slocum drew his trusty knife and balanced it on his fingertips. In spite of the use it had seen, it still balanced perfectly. He didn’t need his Colt Navy, as much as he missed it weighing down his left hip, because he was determined not to let Montrose and Molly get away with all they had done. Gold or no gold, they would pay.

  “I’ll make out,” Slocum told her.

  “Then you shall do it with me alongside. I owe you that much support. You saved my life, John.”

  “Get the sheriff. That’s what I need.”

  Erin looked at him. Her blue eyes took on an inner glow in the dim light of the new day.

  “You’re going to get the gold, aren’t you?”

  “First things first,” he said.

  “I’d be forced to think you had only my best interests at heart if I returned to Virginia City and informed the sheriff of your wild-ass chasing after the gang.”

  Slocum was amused at the way she spoke now. Then he saw how serious she was.

  “If you come along, you’ve got to keep up. I’m going to be moving mighty fast.”

  “Go on,” she said. Erin stood with her chin raised and a defiant look on her lovely face. “Let’s see if I can keep up.”

  Slocum knew she wouldn’t be able to maintain his pace as he set off at a dogtrot. He could keep this speed all day long. He lacked the endurance of an Apache or an Ute when it came to such running, especially in the high mountains, but the ground-devouring stride would quickly close the distance between him and the outlaws. The Montrose gang had to stop now and again to be sure they were following the map. When they learned they had no way of finding the gold because the remaining piece of the compass rose dangled around Slocum’s neck, they would certainly stop and argue the matter among themselves.

  By then, Slocum hoped to be close enough to pick them off one by one.

  He fell into an easy lope that soon had Erin panting harshly behind him. Slocum never slackened the pace. He was bound and determined to finish this immediately, if he could. The sun might pop out from behind the heavy clouds and spotlight him, if the Montroses bothered to look at their backtrail. Slocum knew he had only one chance at recovering the map and the gold coin, because the family would unite against him in a flash if they spotted him.

  Slocum kept running until he came to a meadow. A wolf growled toward the center of the quarter-mile expanse. Then coyotes howled a warning. Erin staggered up, flushed and almost at the end of her endurance.

  “T-taking a break?” she gasped out. “Wondered how much longer you could run.”

  Slocum was sweaty but not winded. He held her back and pointed to the dark shapes moving restlessly through the meadow.

  “That’s not good. They’re eating something.” He mentally added, or someone.