Mountain Rampage (11 page)

“Oof,” he grunted.

The blow caused more of the black matter to ooze from the wall and settle around his legs. A softball-sized chunk of granite fell from the wall as well, bruising his forearm before falling into the black pool.

He gritted his teeth against the pain and settled his boot in the nylon loop. The instant the loop took his weight, his foot slalomed through the muck, knocking a piece of ladder out of the way. He hoisted himself up the rope and stood with his full weight in the loop, ankle-deep in the pool, his face to the mineshaft wall. He shoved the higher of the two ascending devices up the rope and leaned back to put his weight on the device and lock its ratchet into place. Working fast, he slid the unweighted lower device up the rope until it rested against the upper device.

He returned his weight to his foot and hoisted himself to a standing position in the lower loop, now twelve inches above the muck. Again he pushed the device attached to his waist higher on the rope, and again he leaned back until it took his weight. This time, however, as he transferred his weight to the upper device, he toppled sideways, performing an awkward pirouette until he came to rest with his back to the near wall of the shaft. He fought to regain his balance, pumping his legs like pistons, his headlamp illuminating the shaft's far wall.

He stopped, hanging sideways, and steadied his light on the opposite shaft wall. There, six feet away, a slit-like crevice opened. The beam of his headlamp reflected off a light-colored object deep in the crevice, wholly out of place in the bottom of the shaft.

The cleft, barely two feet wide where it met the shaft wall, tapered to nothing eight feet back. The object stood out against the black walls of the narrow fissure near the cleft's terminus.

Chuck recognized the shape of the object from his years of archaeological digging.

He calmed his breathing and steadied the beam of his headlamp.

The object was smooth, round, and bone-white—the size, shape, and color of a human skull.

F
OURTEEN

Chuck reached back to steady himself. The semi-solid wall oozed again at his touch. A stream of black gunk fell away from his fingers, followed by pieces of granite loosened by the collapsing black material. The freed granite chunks—none, fortunately, larger than his fist—bounced off him and plopped into the muck below.

He spun to face the disintegrating wall and fought his way to a standing position on the rope. Covered in grit and shivering with cold, he weighted and unweighted the ascending devices in quick succession, climbing away from the bottom of the pit as the last of the loosened black material fell from the wall below him and silence returned to the mine shaft.

He passed the halfway point of the shaft, where the black striations gave way to solid granite, and kept climbing, the glow of the floodlights above growing brighter.

Was the object he'd seen in the crevice indeed a skull? He couldn't say with certainty; he hadn't had time to find out for sure as he'd struggled to escape the collapsing wall of the mine.

He heaved himself up and over the lip at the top of the shaft and sat, gasping, with his back to the wall of the mine tunnel. Still soaked from his immersion at the bottom of the pit, he was shivering hard by the time he caught his breath. He gathered his gear, turned off the floodlights, and headed down the tunnel, glad to be on the move.

He shifted his pack, centering it on his shoulders, as he made his way out of the mine. He hadn't accomplished much in descending to the bottom of the shaft. He'd nearly died for a brief glimpse of an object that perhaps had something to do with the shaft's concealment, and he'd been forced to leave it behind. Whatever secrets Cordero Mine might hide, it still hid them—which was perfectly fine as far as he was concerned. Staging an
attempt to retrieve the object in the crevice held no interest to him at the moment. Better to get back to Estes Park as quickly as possible, and head for Durango with Janelle and the girls as soon as the field school ended on Friday.

The steady stream of cool air pouring into the tunnel chilled him as he headed toward the mouth of the mine. Night had fallen. He increased his pace, anxious to return to the warmth and light of the cabin.

He pulled his phone from his pocket and wiped the face of its waterproof case with the butt of his hand. Just past eight o'clock. If he hurried, he might make it back before the girls fell asleep. He smiled as he imagined the girls' response to his grit-covered appearance at their bedsides, and a tingle of anticipation ran up his spine at the thought of the hot shower he would enjoy right after he kissed them goodnight.

He looked at the end of the tunnel fifty feet ahead, and froze.

The heavy metal door was closed.

F
IFTEEN

Chuck charged down the mine tunnel, the bouncing beam of his headlamp illuminating the iron door.

“Hey!” he cried out as he neared the end of the tunnel.

No response.

He lowered his shoulder and rammed the door. An arrow of pain shot down his back, but the door did not budge.

He reached through the welded lattices that made up the top half of the door. His searching fingers found the chain wrapped around the door and frame. The padlock, which had been hanging open in a link of the chain these last weeks, was secured through the chain.

He peered through the lattices. The mine site was deserted.

“Hey!” he called again through the lattices. “
Hey!
”

Nothing.

He took off his pack and slumped to a sitting position, his back to the locked door.

Who could possibly have known about his visit to the mine this evening? Answer: no one.
He
hadn't even known he was coming here until he'd climbed into the truck outside the library and turned the key in the ignition.

Had someone spotted him leaving town and followed him? Or, had someone trailed him all the way from the resort?

He squeezed his eyes shut, thinking.

The library was next door to the Estes Park Police Department at the east edge of town.

Had Hemphill seen Chuck exit the library? Had the officer followed Chuck up Trail Ridge Road? Why would Hemphill have done so? And, more to the point, why would he have locked Chuck in the mine and run off?

Locking Chuck in the tunnel wouldn't result in his death; surely he could hold out against the cold for the few hours it
would take for him to be found. Which led to the question: what could anyone possibly gain by temporarily trapping him in the mine?

The cold of the metal door seeped through his soaked jacket and shirt, burrowing into the muscles of his upper back. The temperature inside the mine was its normal, fixed fifty degrees, not uncomfortable in a dry jacket and long pants, but brutally cold in soaking wet clothing.

Chuck stood and looked out at the stars gleaming through the top half of the door. He stuck his hand through the lattices. The air temperature outside was roughly the same as inside the tunnel.

He weighed his options. He kept a butane lighter stowed in a sealed plastic bag in his pack for emergencies, but he didn't dare start an oxygen-eating fire in the enclosed tunnel—not that, in any case, he'd have any success setting the moisture-laden floorboards alight.

He turned away from the door. Thanks to his text, Janelle knew he was at the mine. How long would she wait before she sent Clarence to check on him?

He set off down the tunnel, swinging his arms and taking long strides to generate body heat. Back and forth he marched, pounding the reattached floorboards in the first 150 feet of the tunnel with his boots to work blood into his feet.

He considered stripping off his pants, jacket, and shirt, but the residual insulation provided by his soaked clothing was better than no insulation at all. He focused on steady movement aimed at maintaining his body's warmth at a level that would dry his clothes from the inside out while not robbing his stores of energy too quickly.

With no sunlight to replenish their batteries, the floodlights at the end of the tunnel burned out within an hour. He walked steadily, the way ahead lit by his headlamp, each fifty minutes of movement followed by ten minutes of rest.
By eleven, his clothes were no longer soaked. He slowed as midnight approached, punished by his second straight night without sleep.

He took to stopping for five minutes after every twenty-five minutes of movement. Finally, unable to keep his eyes open any longer, he sat down and fell asleep slumped against the cold rock wall of the tunnel just inside the locked door. He awoke shaking uncontrollably and unable to bend his numb fingers.

He rolled to his knees, climbed stiffly to his feet, and looked through the lattices at the newly risen, nearly full moon hanging in the sky above the eastern plains. He lifted one foot, let it fall to the floor, and repeated the process with his other foot, his feet as cold and unfeeling as his hands.

Where was Clarence?

He vaguely recognized the first stages of hypothermia—his brain growing numb along with his body. He wandered sluggishly down the tunnel, barely capable of remaining upright. He stepped off the last of the reaffixed floorboards and continued along the gravel bottom of the mine, where the floorboards and ore cart tracks from the last section of the tunnel were stacked to one side. The gaping hole at the end of the tunnel appeared without warning in front of him. Before his listless brain could react, he took another step. His foot landed at the edge of the pit, the sole of his boot skidded forward on the gravel, and his feet flew out from under him. He gyrated his arms and toppled backward, striking his head.

Dazed, he stared at the gray roof of the tunnel in the light of his headlamp, his feet hanging over the lip of the shaft, the back of his head throbbing. He pushed himself away from the hole and cradled his head in his hands. He struggled upright only to collapse sideways, his shoulder to the wall of the tunnel, his eyes closed.

He clung to one thought: he had to keep moving.

S
IXTEEN

He stumbled back to the mouth of the tunnel. Moonlight lanced through the latticed top half of the door. He pressed his hands to the door's cold surface and leaned his forehead against its iron strips.

He turned and weaved his way halfway down the tunnel before pivoting well shy of the vertical shaft and returning to the door. Up and down he shuffled until, finally, a shout sounded through the door from the far side of the mine site. “Chuck! Chuck, are you there?”

Adrenaline surged through Chuck. He ran to the door. “In here!” he called through the lattices. “I'm locked in!”

Clarence rummaged for the padlock key in the storage boxes, hurried to the mouth of the tunnel, and unlocked the door. He wrenched the door open, the hinges screeching. Chuck stumbled past him.

Clarence aimed the flashlight from the field school van's glove box at Chuck's blackened clothes. “What the…?”

“I wanted to see what was at the bottom of the shaft,” Chuck explained. “Bad idea.”

Rather than leave the mine-mouth door unlocked as he had throughout the weeks of the field school, Chuck chained and locked the door, pocketed the key, and joined Clarence in heading back around the mountain. He warmed as he followed Clarence along the trail, his clothes drying in the cool night air.

Clarence had headed straight for the mine when Janelle had called. “I knew you couldn't resist coming back,” he said. “Did you find anything?”

Chuck kept his eyes on the short length of trail lit by his headlamp behind Clarence's heels. What use was there in mentioning the unknown object in the crevice? “Nothing I could be sure of.”

“And you have no idea who might've locked you in there?”

“I've come up with exactly nobody.”

“Jan's going to be absolutely freaked.”

“If she hears about it.”

“You're not going to tell her?”

“She's got enough to deal with as it is.”

“
Por cierto
.” Clarence ticked his fingers in succession. “Blood on the ground, my knife, asshole cops, collapsing floors, and now you, locked in the mine. This whole thing's getting more screwed up by the minute.”

“No more word from Hemphill?”

“No. Which is good news, far as I'm concerned. The longer he stays away, the better. I say we pack our things as soon as we get back to town. Call it quits and get the hell out of here.”

“They'll just put out a warrant for your arrest—and you'll look all the guiltier in their eyes.”

“We still can't leave?”

“Sorry. We have to stand our ground.”

Chuck made his apologies to Janelle as soon as he reentered cell-phone range in the truck, explaining that his return to the mine site to assure the tunnel door was secured in the wake of the floor collapse had taken longer than he'd anticipated.

The anger in Janelle's voice was unmistakable. “You're a married man now. A father,” she said. “This waiting until you're about to go out of service range before texting me? Totally unacceptable.”