Slocum walked a dozen paces in the direction he thought was farther into the mountainside. He kept the vein at his right side until it vanished back into the wall. Then he examined the walls for signs of recent work. He was no expert, but from the sharp, bright cuts in the rock, this drift had been chopped out of the mountain less than a week earlier.

  He sat heavily and thought on the matter. If someone else mined this area, it might not mean high-grading. That their tunnel ran under the Low Down’s was one thing, but they might have found another section of the vein on their own. For all he knew, Morgan Haining might not have any claim to this part of the strike.

  He decided it was something a lawyer—or a lawman— would have to discover. From what he knew of Morgan Haining, he doubted the man intentionally stole another miner’s gold. The Low Down operation was extensive and of some duration. All this had been cut recently and hadn’t connected with the Low Down’s shafts until he had blown his way downward.

  Slocum got to his feet and traced back to where he had blasted through. The way the water flowed, the hole was about to be clogged with mud and rock. Where the water drilled a new channel he couldn’t determine, but the floor in the tunnel where he stood was drying out fast. He continued along the tunnel, going toward what had to be the mouth. Before he had walked a dozen paces, he felt a gentle breeze blowing against his face and wet clothing, chilling him. He sped up, then stopped suddenly when he came to an intersecting tunnel.

  Soft rustling sounds came from the right branch of the tunnel. Ahead, he knew, lay open air. The breeze was stronger now than before, but the sounds drew him like a magnet draws iron filings. He wanted to find out what was going on with this spiderweb of tunnels that ran in directions no sane miner would dig.

  Slocum knew that might be the problem. Seldom had he found a prospector who wasn’t as crazy as a bedbug. The years of isolation turned them loco, and if they had partners, both men were likely to be insane. But digging at odd angles, some parallel to what must be the face of the mountain, went beyond crazy. Miners worked like beavers to burrow into the hard rock, but they did so with the determination of finding gold. Wasting so much time and sweat digging the crossing tunnels made no sense.

  The sounds faded to utter silence. Slocum had long since regained his hearing after the powerful explosion that had brought him here, but he knew he might miss some faint sound. He reached up and turned down his carbide light until he got only a flickering glow. Then he covered it with his hand and plunged into utter darkness. Waiting for his eyes to adjust, he finally saw a distant reflection of a miner’s candle against the rock wall, moving down the tunnel. Spots of quartz caught and twisted the flickering light but gave him enough illumination to advance one step at a time.

  He might be walking into a rattler’s den, but he had to find out. Someone had tried to kill him in the Low Down. And others were digging tunnels along the vein of gold that Haining needed in order to keep the Low Down operational. Slocum wanted to find out who was behind it all.

  His slow pace allowed whoever carried the candle to get ahead. He came to another junction. The mountain had to be a honeycomb of tunnels, all running at strange angles. A drift would meander along following a vein of ore, but this curious arrangement had no rhyme or reason Slocum could determine.

  And he wasn’t able to tell where the person he followed had gone, either. Dropping to the ground, he pressed his ear down hard. At first all he heard was the slow dripping of water from his clothes, but then came a shuffling sound. He found which of the tunnels the noise came from and advanced cautiously, occasionally letting out a little light to show him the way. The candle had disappeared entirely.

  Then came a noise he couldn’t figure out.

  “A woman crying,” he said aloud.

  “Who’s there? Show yourself!” a frightened voice answered his declaration.

  “Is that you, Evie?”

  “John?”

  He took his hand away from in front of the carbide lamp and turned up the intensity. The carbide sizzled and hissed as more of the mineral dissolved in the water. Silhouetted in yet another juncture ahead stood Evangeline Haining, wiping away tears and looking distraught while trying not to show it.

  “I’m so glad you found me, John. B-but what are you doing here?”

  She was on the verge of blubbering. The dark-haired woman wiped away more tears and took a deep breath to compose herself. Slocum kept his distance, unsure what was causing her to be so distraught.

  “Why are you crying?”

  “I . . . I’m lost and my candle burned out. I know it was stupid, and I should have taken a few spares. I know they don’t burn for all that long, but I forgot to bring matches and—” She dashed to him and threw her arms around his neck. Her strong grip almost crushed the air from his lungs. She sobbed heavily as she clung to him. Slocum gingerly put his arms around her until the worst of the emotions had faded.

  She looked up. Her blue eyes gleamed in the light from his carbide lamp.

  “You’re wet? How’d you get wet in a mine?”

  “I lost my canoe,” he said. Evangeline frowned but Slocum wasn’t inclined to go into details. “What do you mean you’re lost? The juncture where I first heard you was the way out. All you had to do was turn to your left and you would have been outside.” He didn’t bother adding, “Wherever outside is.”

  “I . . . I didn’t know. I came into the mine and got lost. There are so many tunnels going this way and that. I got turned around and confused.”

  “Then your candle burned out.”

  “That’s when you found me. Let’s get out of here, John. I’m so scared. I should never have gone in like that.”

  Slocum knew she was impetuous and that it had gotten her into trouble. If he hadn’t found her, she might have wandered the endless maze of tunnels until she died of thirst or fell into some unseen pit. He noted how few supporting timbers were in these drifts. Whoever had cut through the rock had done it fast and furious, not bothering with anything like safety.

  “Why’d you come in at all?”

  “This—these—belong to the high-graders.” She motioned all around her. “I followed a trail to the other side of the mountain, almost opposite the Low Down, and saw a single entrance. No tailings to speak of, but evidence that rock had been moved away recently.”

  “That’s mighty suspicious,” Slocum admitted. Miners seldom got rid of tailings. Better to simply dump it down the side of the mountain than waste time and effort hauling away the dross. But the high-graders were hardly the sort to worry about being found. The rough way they had cut these tunnels showed that. They were intent on getting in, following the Low Down’s mother lode, and chipping off as much as they could. Slocum had no doubt they would have disappeared like morals in a cathouse if they’d ever been found out.

  “How’d you know where to look?” Slocum had the uneasy feeling Evangeline had been set up. Someone had intended her to find these tunnels and get lost in them.

  “I overheard two men talking. I couldn’t identify them. I . . . I was eavesdropping from behind a wall, the one over by my house. They were walking along the path and I was gardening, down on my hands and knees where they couldn’t see me. Or I them. I know it wasn’t polite to spy, but there was no way not to overhear what they said. One whispered that they were getting ready to suck all the gold out of the Low Down like a, well, what he said was crude. The meaning was clear, though. They had found the big vein of ore and were intending on stealing it.”

  Slocum considered what Evangeline had said. He doubted the men had intentionally spoken to lure her into the mine.

  “They gave directions here and you just came to check it out?”

  “More or less. Well, I figured from a few clues where to find the opening. It took me the better part of the afternoon riding around in my buggy, but I located this mine from their description, and you know the rest.”

  Slocum put his arm around her and guided the woman toward the juncture leading out. Or was it? He took a few minutes to study the footprints on the floor to determine the way back. It helped that his boots were wet and had left distinct footprints in the dust.

  “I should have soaked my shoes in water, too,” Evangeline said, joking. “This is better than marking the way with chalk.”

  “But you didn’t bring chalk, did you?”

  “Why, no. I had no idea what I’d find. The candle was on a shelf near the mouth of the mine. That’s where the miners always keep them.” She caught her breath and then said, “Sorry, John. I forgot that you’re a miner. You know those things.”

  “Not that well,” Slocum said. “I’m more at home branding cattle or breaking horses.”

  “How wonderful you ended up working for Papa,” she said, holding his arm and resting her cheek against it. “I’m lucky to have found you.”

  “You’ve got it backwards,” Slocum said. “I found you.” Before she could reply, he put a grimy hand over her mouth and turned the carbide lamp toward the wall to block most of its light.

  “Someone’s ahead!” Evangeline couldn’t keep quiet. She had heard what he already had. That told him his hearing had returned to normal.

  “Quiet,” he said. Slocum wondered if they ought to retreat or hold their ground. He decided to do neither. “Stay behind me but keep close.”

  He felt her shaking hand grip his shoulder. Slocum kept the lamp turned down to prevent it from betraying his position too early while allowing it to clearly show where he was stepping. In a few minutes they reached the juncture where he had felt the air from outside against his face.

  “That’s the way out,” he said, pointing Evangeline in the right direction. “I want to see who’s poking around in the mine down around the ore vein I found.”

  “I’m not leaving!” she protested. “I came here to find out who’s stealing from Papa, and I won’t quit now.”

  “They’re probably armed,” Slocum said.

  “Don’t be silly. Who wears a six-shooter into a mine? Why, what do those things weigh? Three pounds? Four? That’s too much iron to lug around for no reason. More likely, they’d have knives or pickaxes.”

  “Either can slit your throat or bash in your head,” he told her.

  “Then we’ll have to sneak up on them so they don’t hear.”

  Slocum considered dragging Evangeline out of the mine for her own good. But that would alert the high-graders, and he didn’t want to get into a fight with them in a tunnel. In spite of her logic, the high-graders might be armed, especially if they weren’t working as miners. He had seen enough men drifting around Cripple Creek who wore their hoglegs low on their hips and had the look of gunfighters about them. It wasn’t much of a jump from gunfighter to outlaw willing to steal another man’s gold.

  In spite of all that, he had to agree with the woman. His curiosity was such that he wanted to find out the identities of the high-graders, too. It made more sense to leave the mine, find a hidden spot, and wait for the owlhoots to leave. After learning who they were, he could determine what the best way of dealing with them might be.

  That was what logic told him to do. Instead, he said to Evangeline, “Don’t say a word and keep behind me. At the first sign of trouble, run like hell.”

  “Go on, John, go on. Hurry. We don’t want to lose them.”

  “We won’t. I know exactly where they’re heading.”

  He turned down the carbide lamp to its lowest intensity. The flame sputtered and hissed, always on the verge of going out. Slocum thought about turning it off entirely, but after his tumultuous slide into this mine and the fear of dying in the dark, he kept it on.

  Voices ahead warned him when they were close.

  “. . . got enough here to make us rich,” one voice said. The tunnel distorted the voice and prevented Slocum from identifying the speaker.

  “We should think on gettin’ a bigger cut,” said another man. “We’re bein’ cheated, you know.”

  “You shut yer mouth. We ain’t double-crossin’ him. If he got wind of it, he’d cut yer damn tongue from yer mouth.”

  “You afraid of him?”

  “Damned right I am!”

  “We could be rich. Look at that there vein and tell me if it ain’t the purtiest thing you ever did see.”

  “There was a whore in San Antonio once—”

  “Shut up,” snapped the second man. “You know what I mean. You can buy every damn whore in Colorado with the kind of money that gold’d get us.”

  Silence fell. Slocum edged forward, turning the lamp around and pointing it toward the juncture that would take him and Evangeline to the outer world. He wanted to get just a glimpse of the men. Slocum knew that would be all it’d take for him to either identify them outright or be able to later.

  He just wished the rugged mine walls and the way the tunnels moseyed around didn’t distort their voices so.

  “Let me see, John.”

  “Hush,” he said, pushing Evangeline back behind him. He didn’t think she had spoken loudly enough to be overheard, but the men in the tunnel weren’t saying a word. Slocum conjured up images of an ambush. Guns trained on the tunnel. The instant he poked his head around, lead would fly. He knew it was a possibility, but he had to see.

  Arm out to hold Evangeline behind him, he inched forward until he came to the bend in the tunnel. The way he remembered it, the exposed vein of gold-bearing ore stretched along the wall here. He chanced a quick peek around and drew back in the same motion.

  “Well? Who’s there, John?”

  “Quiet,” he said. “I didn’t see anyone.” He thought hard. This had been a dead end. Or he had thought it was. He had been too intent on getting out of the mine with the news of the high-graders to properly explore. But that didn’t mean the two outlaws weren’t waiting to blow his head off if he walked into plain view.

  “You hear more than the pair of them?”

  “No, but—”

  Slocum gave the knurled knob on the carbide lamp a savage twist and swung it around, aiming it like he would a six-shooter. If he blinded them for an instant, he could take them both.

  His light bathed the quartz and the gleaming flecks of gold inside. And nothing else. The high-graders were nowhere to be seen.

  9

  “Where did they go?” Evangeline stepped past Slocum and looked around, using her hand to shield her eyes from the glare of his miner’s lamp.

  “There,” Slocum said, stepping forward quickly. He knew they should turn tail and run, but he had gone too far already. He might be walking into a leveled six-gun, but he had to be sure. Better to get a bullet in the gut than take one in the back. Pressing against the rocky wall, he found the fissure. It was hardly wide enough to squeeze through, but the two high-graders had done just that. Slocum saw how the natural crack bent away and vanished within a few feet. He could follow, but what was the point?

  “Let’s go after them, John,” the woman said. “I need to know their identities so I can tell—”

  “Never mind,” he said, catching her around the waist and preventing her from slipping into the crevice. “They’re long gone by now. But there’s a way we might find who they are.”

  “We can go after—”

  “No,” he said, bodily lifting her from the floor and turning her around. “We go out the way you came in and see if we can spot anyone on the mountainside. There’s got to be more than one way into this maze.”

  “I suppose.”

  “It’s too dangerous going after them.” Slocum told her, although he had thought to do just that. And he would have, had he been alone. “We get outside and use our eyes and our heads.”

  “Very well,” Evangeline said dubiously. She allowed him to steer her through the tunnels and soon they were out in fresh air. Slocum sucked in the pure, clean mountain air and coughed only a bit. The crusher down the valley was working today and the mill was grinding, and the smelter would be fired up before long, sending huge plumes of black smoke into the air. But not now. He appreciated the air after being almost buried alive inside the mountain.

  “There’s where I came up the trail,” Evangeline said. He saw a horse and buggy down below on a wide road. This was the main road to the mill.

  “That might be how they got rid of the tailings,” Slocum said, looking around. “All they had to do was pull up a wagon underneath and shovel it into the bed.”

  “Why? Why would they want rock that had been discarded?”

  Slocum had no answer for that, but knowing how the high-graders had gotten rid of the tailings was a step toward figuring out what they were up to, other than pulling the rich ore out from under Morgan Haining’s nose.

  “Where are they, John? I don’t see hide nor hair of anyone else up here.” Evangeline stood on a rock and looked around like a prairie dog on sentry duty. He grabbed her around the waist and lifted her easily again, depositing her feet firmly on the ground beside him.

  “Don’t let them catch a glimpse of you. They’d know we were on to their scheme.”

  “Whatever that scheme is,” she said glumly.

  “We know part of it. That vein of ore near the fissure belongs to the Low Down Mine. They’re mining gold that rightfully belongs to your pa.”

  “That’s good enough to get the law down here, isn’t it? We can chase them off and—what’s wrong, John? You look angry.”

  “Chasing them away isn’t enough for me. I want them brought to justice.” His fingers rubbed up and down across the spot on his left hip where his cross-draw holster usually rested. “They tried to kill me. Might be they already killed Thompson and Bowden.”

  “But that was an accident. Mines are dangerous.”

  “They are,” Slocum said, but he didn’t bother telling her how he had found the sawed-through timber that had almost spelled his end. He would have been drowned if he hadn’t blasted his way free.