“I’m buyin’,” the elder Randolph said. “I say so, I do it.”

  Slocum was caught up in the crush that carried him to the bar. A full bottle of rye whiskey clicked onto the bar in front of him, but Slocum was lucky to get a single shot. Too many hands grabbed for the bottle, either to pour into their own glasses or to take a deep draft without benefit of a shot glass.

  “Has it been made official?” Slocum asked. “That the vein’s good?”

  “It’s good,” said Billy. “I seen the assay report from the chemist. Old Hillman might be blind as a bat but he knows his ore. He said it was ’bout the best damn strike made in Cripple Creek this year.”

  More bottles were passed up and down the bar, but Slocum drank sparingly. He studied the men gathered to celebrate the new strike and wondered which of them would steal from Morgan Haining. No one looked the least bit shifty. Then he decided even a high-grader might be rejoicing. It meant that much more gold to steal without doing the work needed to find it in the first place.

  “Randolph,” Slocum said, taking the huge man’s arm and steering him toward a corner of the saloon. It wasn’t any quieter, but it gave a sense of privacy not afforded by remaining at the long mahogany bar.

  “You want somethin’?”

  “Advice. You’ve been a miner for a long time, haven’t you?”

  “All my life. Well, from when I was half Ira’s size. Might be ten years old.”

  “You mentioned high-graders working the Low Down. How?”

  “How?”

  “How would a high-grader get the gold out of the mine? I’ve seen the way gold is guarded around here. It’d take a company of cavalry troopers to pry it loose. If there’s high-grading going on, the gold’s stolen some other way.”

  “From the mine, they take ore. Perhaps not all is sent to the mill,” Randolph said slowly.

  “You mean we dig out the vein, then the ore is hijacked?”

  “Perhaps we are not the ones who dig it out. Others go into the mine, maybe, and steal only the best ore. All in Cripple Creek know of Mr. Haining’s luck this day.”

  “So high-graders would be more likely to go to work now than earlier? Before the find?” Slocum scratched his head. For the life of him, he couldn’t see how anyone could get ore out of a mine, since it had to be taken up the elevator. The elevator operator changed often so one man couldn’t be looking the other way. Could that many men be in on it? Slocum somehow thought one would spill the beans. He didn’t know any of the elevator operators who wasn’t waiting for a chance to get down into the mines and work, since the pay was more than double. If an operator were getting paid off, he wouldn’t be so eager to descend into the dangerous tunnels and breathe dust for ten hours a day.

  Randolph shrugged, then lifted his empty glass to let Slocum know that he needed more than talk right now. The partially deaf miner returned to the bar, used his hip to knock another man out of the way, and then pulled his son up and draped him over the broad expanse. Ira started to slip back, but other miners caught him and hoisted him up so he lay flat. The partying went on without Slocum.

  He settled down when a chair in the corner came empty, and watched the miners. He shared their elation at the gold find, but he couldn’t join in. He preferred a more solitary existence.

  Except for times with a woman as fine as Evangeline Haining, he thought, smiling at the memory of being with her. Drink after drink went down his gullet, and then the barkeep threw them all out. Slocum was only a little surprised to see the false dawn outlining the mountains to the east.

  It was going to be one hell of a long day down in the mines.

  “You ever use that stuff before, Slocum?” Lucas Miles looked edgy as he stared at the glass bottle on the keg between him and Slocum. Both Singer and Herk had already left the shed.

  “Nitroglycerin? Some. Why do you need so much power?” He eyed the clear, thick liquid in the bottle. Heat it, it would blow. Drop it, there’d be a crater ten feet across to fill. If that happened, both he and Miles would share the same grave.

  “Geologist says the new drift has some real heavy rock in it. You need to use this, since regular blastin’ powder’s not enough. Otherwise, it’d be like a bird peckin’ away. That’d mean a lot of work for not much reward.”

  “You could always drill more holes and use more black powder,” Slocum suggested.

  “Takes too long. This is the way the boss wants to go.”

  “When do we get the bonus from the find yesterday?”

  “Next payday. Friday.” Miles glared at him, as if it might make him forget and let the foreman keep the bonus money. “You thinkin’ of movin’ on?”

  “Not till I finish blasting with that,” Slocum said, pointing to the deadly bottle. “You got a clean funnel and some tubing? If so much as a speck of dirt gets into it, it might blow.”

  “You gonna drill a hole, then pour it in?”

  “That’s the way it’s done. The holes have to be driven so they slope downward. Otherwise it’s too hard to get the nitro in and seal the hole before it drips back out.”

  “Touch the dirt floor and blooey,” Miles said, a touch of awe in his voice. “Never seen what this shit can do.”

  Slocum hesitated. Why was Miles the foreman if he hadn’t used every conceivable tool, every type of explosive? He started to ask what experience Miles had when the shed door opened and Billy stuck his head in.

  “You ready to bring down a mountain, Slocum?”

  “Reckon so,” Slocum said. “The sooner we use this, the sooner it’s no longer a danger to us.”

  “What happens to Slocum’s share if he blows himself to kingdom come?” Billy asked. “Can I claim it?”

  “Go to hell,” Miles grumbled. “And be damn careful movin’ that.”

  “Got a crate filled with sawdust to take up the shock?”

  “I’ll get one,” Billy said, disappearing.

  “You coming down to supervise?” Slocum asked, knowing the answer. He liked to see Miles squirm. The foreman did not disappoint him.

  “I got to go over to York.”

  “With Mrs. Haining?” Slocum wasn’t sure why he said that, but the expression on the foreman’s face flowed from shock to anger and then to a caginess he had seen on tinhorn gamblers when they were getting ready to deal from the bottom of the deck.

  “Yeah, somethin’ like that. Get on down into the hole. I want production, not jawing.”

  Miles skirted the keg where the nitro rested, looking as innocent as a new spring day. Barely had the foreman left when Billy returned, carrying a crate stuffed with sawdust.

  “This’ll do, won’t it, Slocum? I couldn’t find a bigger one.”

  “It’ll do,” Slocum said. He carefully picked up the bottle, then found a funnel and some rubber tubing. “Clean those out real good,” Slocum told Billy. “Not a speck of dirt.”

  “I know,” the miner said. “I’ll have them spick-and-span by the time you’re over at the elevator.”

  Slocum situated the bottle in the center of the sawdust and then gingerly picked up the crate. With deliberate steps, he made his way the hundred yards to the elevator. He was sure an hour had passed. He had certainly sweat gallons by the time he climbed onto the rickety platform.

  “Got the funnel and hose, Slocum,” Billy said, running up. “Let’s go blow open a new vein!”

  He climbed onto the platform but before it started to clang its way down to the lower levels, Miles shouted to him.

  “Billy, git yer ass over here. I told you not to do this again.”

  “What’d I do now? Or not do? Damnation. You gonna wait, Slocum?”

  “I’ll go on. Catch up with me.”

  Slocum held his breath all the way down into the mine. He had ordered everyone out of the level where he was going to blast. His carbide lamp cast a ghostly blue light as he followed the drift as it snaked around for what seemed a mile. He finally reached the end of the tunnel. Two long chisels and a sledgehammer rested against the wall he was supposed to blast.

  He put down the crate and examined the wall. The rock didn’t appear any thicker or tougher than the rest of the mountain. And the geologist hadn’t bothered marking where the holes were to be drilled. Slocum peered closely at the rock to find the right spots himself while he waited for Billy.

  It seemed an eternity before he straightened and rubbed his sore back. Where was Billy?

  Just as he was deciding to go back to find his assistant, he heard a quick shuffle of boots along the drift.

  “Hurry it up, will you, Billy?” he called.

  The sounds stopped suddenly. Slocum frowned, wondering what Billy was up to. A noise like sawing echoed down the drift. He had started back down the tunnel to find out what was going on when the explosion staggered him. He slammed hard into the wall he was supposed to blow into rubble and sank down. He sat on the floor, stunned and choking on the dust billowing toward him.

  Several seconds later, Slocum took off his bandanna and wiped his face clear of grit. He spat and wished he hadn’t left his canteen back in the larger chamber just off the elevator. He spat again, squinted, and began crawling forward to see what had happened. Everything had taken place so quickly he wasn’t sure if Billy was hurt—or if he himself was. Slocum stopped to check himself. Other than a few cuts from flying stones, he was unhurt.

  Shining his lamp into the thick cloud of dust, he saw that a support beam had collapsed.

  “Collapsed, like hell,” he muttered to himself. He ran his fingers over the exposed timber that had helped support the now-fallen roof. “Sawed clean through.” Slocum cursed himself for not being quicker to investigate the strange sounds. Someone had worked diligently to saw through the beam and cause the cave-in, trapping him. When the roof collapsed, it had sounded like an explosion.

  “Can’t take too much work to get through the fall,” he said, shining his light all over the rock plug in the drift. “Shouldn’t take longer than an hour or two, and if Billy’s on the other side, a crew will get through in only a few minutes.”

  As he spoke aloud, a cold knot formed in his belly. He didn’t believe Billy had been responsible for trapping him like this. Not for an instant. But someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make it appear to be an accident. That same owlhoot might also have arranged for an “accident” to befall Billy.

  Slocum got to work with new determination, throwing rocks back. After several minutes, he stopped to take a break. The air was still good. A sizable segment of the drift had been cut off. He mopped his face with his bandanna, wrung it out, and then wondered if he had scratched his face. It was wetter after he had dried it off than it had been before.

  He held out the bandanna and looked at it. No blood. He turned and got a spray of water in the face that forced him to backtrack a few steps.

  “Son of a bitch!” Slocum looked around, his light jumping with furious movement. Half the wall near the sawed timber support was wet from a steady stream pouring in from the top. The collapse had weakened the stone and allowed water to come in, whether from an underground river or some trapped subterranean pocket he couldn’t tell. And it didn’t matter. If there was enough water, it would eventually flood the pocket where he was trapped and he would drown.

  Slocum held down his growing panic and backed away to better assess his problems. He hadn’t made much of a dent in getting through the plug of rock that blocked his way back to the elevator. And no sounds of digging came through from the other side, although there couldn’t be more than five or six feet of obstruction.

  He futilely put his hands against the rock wall and tried to find where the water poured in. If he could block the crack, he might stave off disaster. But the crack ran the length of the wall and beyond the rock plug. Even if he had plaster all mixed and ready to apply, stopping the flow was impossible. It was coming from too wide an area.

  Backing away, he slipped in the mud forming on the floor. The water level was already midway up his boots. Sloshing around, he worked his way back to the end of the drift, thinking the collapse might show some other way out of the trap he found himself in. It didn’t. The crack had opened up only wide enough to allow the water in.

  To fill his little pocket of safety.

  Slocum would drown within a very short while since the water poured in faster now. His boots were shipping water, and before much longer he would be waist deep.

  “Help! Water’s pouring in!” he shouted. His words echoed in the ever-smaller chamber and taunted him. No sounds of rescue came from the other side of the rock fall. Panic overtook him when he realized this was going to be his grave. He was buried alive. That thought made the air a bit stuffier and breathing harder. His chest rose and fell heavily, and his hands shook as he clawed at the rock in a fruitless attempt to pull down enough stone to open a channel out. If he succeeded, the water would flow out and he would be saved.

  Slocum panicked even more when he realized that the water probably flooded the other side of the rocky barrier, too. He might open a small channel only to find even more water.

  “Don’t,” he told himself. “Stop it. This is only getting you riled. Calm down. You won’t get out of this alive if you don’t start thinking straight.”

  Slocum sucked in a deep breath, and the air wasn’t too bad. Stale, yes, but still breathable. He worked his way through thigh-deep water back to pick up a steel chisel and the sledgehammer. He stared at them, wondering what he might do with them. Then a desperate plan came to him. He had no idea how thick the mountain was, but he could extend the chamber a few yards if he blasted. Using the nitro on the rock fall would only get him in a worse predicament. The falling roof had opened an underground stream along one wall. He had to go away from it, maybe blast his way upward to the next higher level from where he was. From there he could get back to the elevator and get the hell out of the Low Down Mine.

  Bracing the long chisel with rocks, he clumsily began hammering a hole near the top of the wall. He wanted to blast upward but had to drill the hole downward to hold the nitro. By the time he had several inches of hole, the water was up around his chest. Slocum couldn’t work any longer. He had to blast. Now.

  He took a deep breath, then plunged underwater to find the funnel and tube. When he surfaced, he saw that the tube had been cut by a flying rock and was useless. He had to use only the funnel. And he had to be mighty careful pouring the nitroglycerin, because the water might set it off.

  Sweating even as he worked in the deep water, he got the funnel slipped into place in the hole he had drilled. Slocum began worrying that the hole wasn’t deep enough to make a difference. Then he concentrated entirely on getting the cork out of the nitro bottle and pouring the thick liquid into the broad mouth of the funnel.

  Slocum chewed his tongue as he poured. And poured and poured. He began to wonder where the explosive went. The hole hadn’t been that deep. Or had it? He couldn’t remember how far he had hammered. All he knew was that most of the bottle had been emptied. When he saw a tiny pool at the bottom of the funnel, he stopped pouring and corked the bottle.

  “Here goes nothing,” he said. Slocum fumbled in his pocket and found the long piece of black miner’s fuse he had intended to use. He had brought enough for a ten-minute burn. He bit off only a foot and affixed it to the funnel. Then he lit the other end. The fuse fell down under water for a moment, but that didn’t extinguish it. The magnesium center burned brightly, sputtering and sending up a small cloud of steam as it worked its way out of the water and toward the nitro.

  Slocum splashed furiously and then swam to get away from the blast site.

  The explosion doubled him up and slammed him into the rocky wall. He felt sharp edges cutting into him, and then there was a curious lack of pain.

  He felt himself being swept toward the spot where he had blasted, and then let out a scream as the floor fell away under him, sending him plunging downward faster and faster.

  8

  The sudden rush of water carried Slocum into darkness and battered him about like a woodchip in a millrace. As quickly as the water had grabbed him, it was gone. He lay facedown in mud, panting harshly and wondering if this was what it was like being dead. He hoped not. He hurt all over. To spend an eternity with aches, pains, and cuts would be a real hell.

  Forcing himself to hands and knees, he looked around. Surprisingly, his carbide lamp still worked. He reached up and adjusted it to shine directly in front of him. The tunnel looked different. Then he turned over and sat heavily. Behind him ran a steady stream of water from above. He peered up and around and saw what had happened. Although he had blasted at the top of the drift, hoping to reach the level above where he had been trapped, the bottom had fallen out of the shaft and sent him downward. Into another tunnel.

  The water poured like a waterfall and vanished into holes at the end of this tunnel, disappearing back into the underground river. He didn’t try to figure out what this all meant, other than that he wasn’t dead. Being safe and relatively intact was all that mattered.

  Going back to the spot where he had blasted through, he saw he had fallen about ten feet. The new tunnel ran at an angle to the drift above, and he knew this one hadn’t been blasted by anyone working for the Low Down Mine. He had been on the lowest level, and this one was even deeper. It meandered around and headed back toward the spot where he imagined the vein he had unearthed the day before must dive down. Bending over, he directed his light onto the wall. The vein had to have dipped down, like a fish with a hook in its mouth diving to get away from the fisherman.

  Slocum rubbed his fingers over the rock and scraped enough to show a bright yellow streak. If this wasn’t the same vein he had found higher up, he would eat it one stone at a time. Somebody had come up underneath and had worked out a considerable amount of the blue dirt.

  High-graders.

  He swung around and cast his light into the distance. The tunnel curved enough to swallow up the light and not show him anything. Slocum examined the wet slope up into the Low Down tunnel above and knew he could never climb back. Not only was the steady stream of water against him, making the stone too slippery to climb, it was too steep. Even if he could jump and catch the edge of the drift above, pulling up into it wasn’t likely to happen.