Slocum’s heart jumped in his chest. There was enough gold there to make him a rich man. There were also nine men who looked as likely to shoot him as to ask what he wanted if he got within fifty feet. He continued to watch as the driver counted the gold bars, then barked out an order to his two guards.

  Only then did the shotguns get laid down. The men joked as they loaded the gold into the middle of the wagon bed, but for all their joviality, Slocum saw that neither of the men had turned careless. They loaded the gold—they also kept a watch out for anyone too close. It didn’t matter that the six riflemen were on duty. The three with the wagon remained alert.

  Too alert.

  Slocum sat on the boardwalk, watching and thinking. There wasn’t any way a lone robber could get at the gold here. Out on the road to Denver? Maybe. Three men gave better odds than nine, but how was he to ride out and set an ambush when he didn’t even have a horse?

  Papers were swapped and the driver climbed into the box, complaining loudly about his arthritis and how cold it was this early in the day. For all his complaints, he was as watchful as any of the others. He checked to be certain both his cargo and the two guards were in place before getting the rig moving. Wood groaned and leather creaked as the horses began pulling the wagon along the road that wound its way through the Rockies and ended up at some bank in Denver. A bank with a secure vault.

  The gold-laden wagon vanished from sight, and Slocum still sat on the boardwalk trying to figure a way that some of the precious metal could end up in his pocket. He sat for another hour and watched another wagon pull out with a cargo of gold before becoming disconsolate. There was no way he could ever hold up one of those shipments. The first had three guards, but the gold was carried in an open wagon. The second shipment went out in what amounted to an armored stagecoach. That was bad, but the two guards inside with their rifles poking out through narrow windows was worse. It would take an entire army company to rob that shipment.

  Slocum’s attention drifted from the gold shipments to the ebb and flow of miners. Just before the sun peeked above the mountains, steam whistles had blown, summoning the workers to their mines. He considered the businesses left virtually deserted in town now as likely sources of money. Robbing men who needed the money as much as he did—and who worked hard for it—rankled. If the mines lost an entire shipment, it would be an irritation but not a tragedy for the owners.

  But there seemed to be hardly any place that fit his twisted morality that wasn’t heavily guarded. Cripple Creek was a typical boomtown with crime running rampant. Few of the businesses seemed to have much faith in the local marshal, and most employed their own guards. This got Slocum to thinking about taking a job as guard somewhere.

  He walked the streets hunting for a likely enterprise that would need a tough hombre to keep the drunks out and the money in the till, and ended up in front of the Lucky Dollar Saloon.

  He went inside and looked around. It was like any other saloon he had ever seen, except the painting of the naked woman behind the bar was artistically a little better and the bar was polished to a mirror sheen.

  “What kin I git for you, mister?” The barkeep popped up from behind the bar and laid a six-gun down.

  “I’m looking for a job. You need a bouncer to keep order?”

  “Nope.” The bartender’s hand inched toward his weapon.

  “Not at this instant, but when the miners come pouring in all thirsty and wanting to get liquored up, that can be a different can of worms,” Slocum said. He saw another man standing in a doorway leading to a back room. He couldn’t be certain, but he thought the man held a sawed-off shotgun down at his side.

  “Don’t need help,” the barkeep said.

  “I’m a hard worker,” Slocum said. “If you’re not in the hiring mood right now, do you know somewhere that is?”

  “Nope. You git on outta here, ’less you want to order.”

  “If I had that much money, I wouldn’t need a job.” Slocum hefted his gear and left, going from store to store for more than two hours and getting the same reception everywhere he stopped. He had never seen a town less friendly or inclined to put a man to work, even mucking the stables. The inquiry at the livery had been prompted by the wild-ass notion he might work there and find a horse to steal. Horse-stealing was as lowdown as a man could get, but Slocum was scraping the bottom of the barrel. But even the stable owner had turned down his offer to work.

  Slocum had been down and out before, but there had usually been a bright spot on the horizon. Not now. He considered tracking down the gamblers who had cheated him and forcing some settlement, but the time for that was long past by now. And, truth to tell, he had a sneaking admiration for the way they had suckered him into betting all his money against a stacked deck.

  He trooped along, hunting for some store where he hadn’t already inquired after a job, when the ground shook. This explosion was so intense it forced him to his knees. Almost immediately a whistle blew and the sound of frightened men reached his ears.

  Slocum swung his saddle over his shoulder and followed the commotion to the north end of town. Many of the mines had entrances there, going straight into the sides of mountains, where the miners followed the elusive veins of gold ever deeper into solid rock. Slocum had no trouble finding which mine had succumbed to disaster. Huge plumes of dust billowed from the elevator shaft of the Low Down Mine.

  The whistle kept up a steady screech that deafened Slocum. Then the ground opened up under his feet and he plunged downward into dust-filled darkness.

  2

  Slocum fell for what seemed an eternity, then hit the ground so hard it knocked the wind from his lungs. Gasping, sucking in dirt, he struggled to sit up. It took him several seconds to realize he was facedown in the dirt. Through force of will, he rolled over, covering his face against a rain of stones pelting him from above. Then there was nothing but utter silence. No more rocks. No falling grit. Nothing.

  He sat up and wiped at his face using his bandanna until he was breathing more normally. His chest hurt as badly as if he had been shot, and his legs throbbed from the impact of his fall. Tying the bandanna over his mouth and face let him suck in deep breaths without the dust clogging his nose and throat. Standing was a chore, but he got to his feet, bracing himself against an unseen wall.

  The silence began to fade as harsh cries of dying men reached his ears. Slocum looked up and saw the blue Colorado dawn fifteen feet above. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw he had fallen into a tunnel. An underground blast had caused the cave-in, and he had been unlucky enough to be standing directly over the collapsing mine shaft. Stumbling forward, he got over the fist-sized rocks littering the stope and worked his way upward to a small chamber lit by a dozen carbide lamps and more miner’s candles than he could count. The men gathered around looked grim. One saw Slocum and demanded, “What the hell are you doing here? You’re not a miner.”

  “The ground up and swallowed me,” Slocum said. “What happened? Somebody put down too big a charge?”

  “We got problems right now, mister. Get on over to the elevator and they’ll take you out.”

  “Suits me, but I lost my gear in the fall.”

  “I’ll see to it later, after we get a couple men out from behind a big plug of rock.”

  The man turned and pointedly ignored Slocum. Slocum saw that the big, burly miner was poring over a map of the underground empire devoted only to retrieving gold and knew he was as useless as teats on a bull. He considered returning to the spot where he had fallen into the mine and hunting for his saddle and other gear, then pushed it from his mind. Better to get aboveground and wait. If an errant blast had caused a cave-in, there was no telling where the mine tunnels had been weakened.

  Tromping through the dust and large, sharp pieces of rock that had dislodged from both the walls and roof, Slocum reached the elevator cage. The operator blinked when he saw him.

  “The foreman told me to get aboveground,” Slocum said.

  “I don’t know where you came from, but you’re headed in the right direction.” The operator jerked his thumb upward. “Climb on in and let’s get out of this hellhole.”

  The miner rang a bell, got a reply from the operator above, then held on as the cage, which was hardly more than a platform, began shivering, shaking, and lurching to the surface. As they came to a halt, Slocum spilled out, glad to be out of the mine shaft.

  “Thanks,” he told the operator.

  “If I was you, I’d stay here. It’s closer to Heaven than anywhere down there.” The operator jerked his thumb downward, grinned, white teeth shining from the middle of a filthy face, then vanished as the cage lowered once more.

  “What happened?” a young man asked Slocum.

  “I don’t rightly know, but from the sound of it and from my fall, I’d say there was a premature detonation. Too much explosive went off at the wrong time and some of the mine shafts began collapsing.”

  The young man scribbled furiously, then said, “Thanks. This is going to be the lead in today’s paper. My first headline!”

  Without waiting for Slocum to say anything more, he ran away in the direction of Cripple Creek’s distant main street. Slocum sagged down. He had wanted to tell the young reporter that he wasn’t even a miner and that his only interest in the Low Down Mine was in retrieving his gear.

  He walked slowly to the spot where the ground had caved in. Slocum cautiously peered down but couldn’t see his saddle or other gear. He backed away, careful not to cause the lip of the hole to collapse further.

  The whistle had stopped and the furious crush of men hurrying to the mine to help their trapped friends faded away until it wasn’t possible to tell that anything untoward had happened. Slocum settled down on an empty keg of Giant Blasting Powder and waited. A couple hours later, the elevator cage rattled back to the surface. Four miners dragged tarps from the platform. Slocum knew from the ominous shapes that they carried what remained of the trapped miners.

  Coming over to him was the miner Slocum had pegged as the foreman.

  The man looked grim enough to carry the burdens of the world on his shoulders. Slocum suspected the miner was mostly concerned about the deaths.

  “I sent a mucker to find your gear. Sorry that you got dropped down like that.”

  “I came out better than they did. That all of them?” Slocum looked to the tarp shrouds.

  “What we could find of them.”

  “Too much powder? Or was it a spark that set off the blast prematurely?”

  “You sound like you know something about blasting.”

  Slocum shrugged.

  “You want a job? I need four assistant blasters right now.”

  “You have a master? Or is that you?”

  “I’m Thompson and I’m in charge of the blasting. But that wasn’t my fault. The four assistants were sent to blast by the foreman.”

  “And he didn’t bother telling you?”

  Thompson spat. His dark eyes fixed on Slocum. “I don’t dodge my own mistakes. If I made one, it was not trainin’ them boys better so they could work without supervision.”

  “That’d make them masters, wouldn’t it?”

  Thompson laughed without humor. He wiped more grit from his face, spat, and then said, “Pay’s rotten. Hours are long. Work’s damned dangerous, as you can see. There’s something about workin’ in a mine that’s like workin’ in your very own grave.”

  “You make it sound mighty unattractive,” Slocum said.

  “Them’s the good points,” Thompson said. “You can guess what the bad ones are.” He glanced toward the bodies.

  “How much?”

  “Dollar a day and all the rock you can eat. Bonuses for new veins, bonuses for ever’ day minimum production is exceeded, bonuses for bein’ on the job at the end of a month and a year.”

  “Who’s gotten the year-end bonus?” Slocum asked.

  “Ain’t many,” Thompson admitted, “but I’m one. Mr. Haining is a decent mine owner, compared with most others in Cripple Creek.”

  “Haining? Does he get down into the mine himself, or does he sit behind a big cherrywood desk over in Denver?”

  Thompson looked at Slocum funny. He spat, then said, “He don’t get down into the mine himself, but he’s not just an owner. He takes a personal interest. That’s his office over there on that rise, if you want to go talk to him.”

  “Reckon he’s a mite busy at the moment,” Slocum said.

  “He writes letters to any family a miner has. Don’t know he’ll write more ’n one from this crew, though.”

  “No family?”

  “How about you?”

  Slocum laughed and said, “Mr. Haining won’t have to write a letter on my account. I don’t figure on dying.”

  “Who does? But you’re hired. Now, what’s your name?”

  Slocum introduced himself and asked about room and board.

  “Ain’t high on the list of most owners, but Mr. Haining lets out a boardinghouse.”

  Slocum tensed. He had heard of dealings like this before. The owner paid a substandard wage, then forced his employees to buy from a company store or stay in rundown housing and ended up with the small money paid out in salary.

  “A dime a day,” Thompson said. “Not much, not very good, but affordable. And better than letting it rain and snow on your head all night long.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Breakfast is included. No dinner, and any food you take down into the mine is paid for out of your pocket.”

  “I’m liking this better and better. How is it that I can’t get a job anywhere in Cripple Creek, and something this good goes wanting?”

  “Dangerous,” Thompson said. He eyed Slocum’s cross-draw holster and the worn ebony butt of the Colt Navy resting there. “Then again, bein’ dangerous ain’t much of a problem for you, is it?”

  “Not now that I have my gear back.” Slocum saw a scrawny, towheaded boy struggling to drag the saddle with the saddlebags still tied on. He went and hoisted the saddle to his shoulder, nodded thanks to the boy, and went back to where Thompson waited. “Where do I go?”

  “Up the hill until you see the Low Down sign. That’s the bunkhouse. Then you get your cracker ass back down here. There’s still four hours left in the shift, and I’ve got blasting to do.”

  Slocum got his gear stowed, reluctantly tucked his Colt Navy and gun belt in the middle of his bedroll, then hurried back to the mouth of the mine, where Thompson waited impatiently.

  “You have experience with explosives, or were you just blowin’ off words to impress me?”

  “I’ve handled powder and nitro,” Slocum said simply. The answer, stripped of any bragging, impressed Thompson.

  “Let’s get on down and go to work. There’re miner’s lamps below.”

  They rattled and clanked all the way down to the level where Slocum had fallen. He took a deep breath when the elevator kept going lower, much lower. Counting levels, Slocum was about ready to give up when the platform stopped at twenty-three. He guessed they were more than three hundred feet below the surface.

  “Here,” Thompson said, tossing Slocum a helmet with a carbide lamp on it. The man waited as Slocum quickly checked it, added water from an open cask nearby, and got the carbide lamp burning. “You got the look of an experienced miner. Let’s see if you’ve got what it takes to be a powder monkey.”

  Slocum had to walk slightly bent over since the roof was only an inch above his six-foot height, but he was more concerned with the way the drift turned this way and that like a snake. The rock was cold and wet to the touch. He shivered and wished he had worn his coat. Next shift. He only had four hours to go on this one.

  “That there’s Billy, and the other fellow, the one without an eye, that’s Bowden. Don’t know if he’s got a first name, since I never asked and he never supplied one.”

  Slocum took in the other men. Billy hadn’t been shaving too long but looked years older than his real age. He was short, stocky, and solemn. Bowden was everything Billy wasn’t. Even taller than Slocum and thinner than a slat, he never seemed to rest. If he wasn’t shuffling his feet, his hands were darting this way and that, rubbing up and down his canvas pants or across the sleeves of his flannel shirt. The eye not hidden by a tattered, filthy patch moved restlessly, sometimes going in a direction opposite to the way he turned his head. Not much hair remained on the top of Bowden’s head, but it was hardly needed. Slocum had never seen so many scars on a man before as the number crisscrossing Bowden’s head.

  “We got to blow free the rubble from the last blast?” Bowden pointed down the drift, his long, bony fingers fluttering as if some unseen breeze ruffled them.

  “That’s what Mr. Miles wants,” Thompson said.

  “That the foreman?”

  “You are a greenhorn if you don’t know that,” Billy said. “Yep, Lucas Miles, God’s gift to the underground. He’s one—”

  “Shut up, Billy,” Thompson said. “Don’t go bad-mouthin’ our boss.”

  “Mr. Haining’s our boss, not Miles,” grumbled the youth.

  “Miles hires and fires. He could fire your ass in a flash if he chose to.”

  “Might as well fire me as bury me. It’s his doin’ that cost four lives today, and you know it, Thompson.”

  “I told you to shut up.”

  “So fire me. Or get Miles to do it.” Billy looked truculent. He thrust out his chin as if daring the blaster to hit him. “You need me. Hell, you need us all. We do the work of three men. And if you’re hirin’ men like him, that means nobody else’ll work for Miles.”

  “I can pull my own weight,” Slocum said.

  “Sorry,” Billy said. “Didn’t mean that you were a slacker. No slackers down here, ’cept for Miles.”

  “Enough. You show Slocum where the tools’re kept, then get to the end of the new drift and start drilling. Me and Bowden will fix up a charge.”