Stephen Cole rushed through the iron door toward Bessie. He embraced her and they sank down together on the floor, the preacher cradling her in his arms like a baby, rocking with her, whispering, “Calm down, my child, calm down. We’ll find her.”
Joss spotted Lana Hartman across the cavern, sitting quietly against the wall, her eyes shut tight, lips moving as if in prayer.
“Al, I told you I gotta see a man about a horse.”
They stood twenty feet from the iron door, and even in the weak, shadow-ridden light, Joss saw the boy’s pale complexion flush.
“Can’t you hold it a little while longer?” he whispered.
“Let me go on down that tunnel there, have my piece a privacy.”
“You know I can’t let you out a my sight.”
“You promised you’d loosen these wrist irons,” she whined.
“Hell, Joss. Hell.” The young deputy reached into his slicker, worked the key off the big ring attached to one of the belt loops on his dungarees, and waved it in Joss’s face. “Zeke Curtice’ll put me in the boneyard if I let you run a blazer on—”
“Al.” Joss smiled, watched how easily the boy’s face disarmed, knew for a fact he’d take full advantage if he ever got the chance. “You’re too close to the belly. Watch me squat if you want.”
“Might have to, Joss,” he said, then sighed. “Turn around.”
Al lifted her black serape and unlocked the wrist irons.
“Bring a happy jack,” she said, and Al picked one of the shadowgees off the floor and followed his prisoner into the empty passage.
2009
FIFTY-FIVE
A
s Lawrence rapped his knuckles on the iron, Abigail’s headlamp shone on the surface of a door so overrun with rust, it resembled brown mold. It stood closed and locked by means of a thick crossbar held in place with a padlock the size of a small shield.
Quinn reached into his down jacket and pulled out the key.
“Full disclosure, Lawrence. How’d you find this place?”
“On my final day last fall, I climbed up the east side of the canyon to take a picture of the ghost town from above, and happened to stumble upon this mine. You have to understand—at the time, I was so absorbed in my search for Oatha and Billy’s claim hole that I didn’t think twice about this shaft. Besides, there are countless mines above Abandon. Figured it wasn’t anything special. But if you found that key in Bart’s suite, and it fits that lock . . . Shit, my heart must be going a hundred miles an hour.”
“I know, mine, too.” Quinn held up the key. “Shall I?”
“Absolutely.”
Quinn slipped the key into the hole.
“Is it working?”
“Don’t know yet. The mechanism feels pretty stiff, so I’m going slow. Don’t wanna break it off.” Quinn carefully turned the key. “I think it’s working.” He slid the padlock out of the crossbar and set it down. “Jeez, that’s heavy. Help me with this, Lawrence.” The two men lifted the crossbar out of the deep iron brackets and dropped it on the rock.
With the crossbar gone, the door was naked save for a small lever on the right side near the rock, which appeared to function as a doorknob.
Lawrence lifted the lever.
From inside came the rusted squeak of a bolt moving.
The door swung inward and clanged against the rock, a strong, cold draft sweeping in, the mountain sucking air deep into itself, as if trying to breathe.
“Unbelievable,” Lawrence whispered as Abigail felt June’s grasp tighten around her hand.
“Lawrence, when did you first come to Abandon?” Quinn asked.
“Nineteen seventy-nine.”
“You’ve got me beat. Do the honors.”
Lawrence crossed the threshold, Quinn following close behind. As she entered, Abigail moved her headlamp along the walls, saw a grouping of holes in a sweep of unblasted rock, the product of a day spent double-jacking more than a hundred years ago.
She heard Lawrence gasp, and she broke away from June and went to her father’s side. “What’s wrong?” His headlamp was trained on an alcove fifteen feet off to the right of the iron door, his dimming light illuminating a collection of tattered burlap sacks, ten in all. Lawrence unclipped his backpack, took a deep, trembling breath, then limped into the alcove and knelt on the rocky floor. He reached into one of the sacks. His head dropped.
“What?” Quinn said. “They empty?”
Lawrence chucked something through the darkness.
A brick of solid gold thudded on the rock at Abigail’s feet. Then another. And another. She reached down, picked one up. The bar looked small in her hand, but it felt disproportionately heavy for its size, the yellow metal gleaming under her lamp, its surface marred with chinks and divots, cold as a block of ice.
“You’re holding more than two hundred and eighty thousand dollars right there,” Quinn said.
Lawrence wept.
Abigail went to him in the alcove, asked, “What is it?”
He shook his head. “Waited a long time for this.”
Quinn had been rifling through the sacks. “I count sixty-one bricks,” he said.
Lawrence closed his eyes as he did the math. “Almost eighteen million. God, my whole body is tingling. Look at that.” His right hand shook in the beam of his headlamp.
Abigail glanced over her shoulder, saw June wandering off into another part of the mine.
“I’m gonna go check on her,” she said.
Abigail struggled to her feet, walked over to June, found her staggering through the dark, shaking her head and muttering to herself.
“What’s wrong, honey?” Abigail asked. “You okay?”
When June looked back, her face had gone pallid and chalky, her eyes sunken, the small woman as bloodless as a cadaver.
She turned suddenly and vomited on the rock.
1893
FIFTY-SIX
W
hen Stephen Cole raised his left arm, the noise in the chamber began to wane. Soon there was no sound but the occasional squall of a child. He stood in the center of the cavern, taking a moment to regard the horrified faces—these men, women, and children of Abandon who sat huddled together along the walls.
“Would you close your eyes with me?” he said.
Hats came off. Heads bowed. Children were shushed.
“Father.” Stephen Cole fell to his knees. “We come before You on this, the night of our Savior’s birth, a greedy, wicked, corrupt assembly. It is a dark hour. We have provoked Your wrath and for that I fall on my face and beseech Your forgiveness.” The preacher prostrated himself, his cheek against the cold rock floor. “I lift up the children to You, dear God. Children! I beg You.” His voice unraveled. “I beg You. Deliver them. Let them not be afraid, and if it be possible, allow this cup to pass.” The preacher’s tears ran down into the crevices of the rock. He whispered, “What of grace? Oh, my Father, what of grace? But not as I, but as Thou wilt. In Your Son’s holy name. Amen.”
Stephen wiped his face and rose to his feet, dusted the silt from his great-coat, replaced his visored felt hat. He approached the town blacksmith, a small, well-liked man named Mason Stetler.
“Mason,” he said, “I leave the town to your care. You’re capitan. I’m going out that door now, and I’m going alone. If you hear a knock in quick intervals of three, know that it’s me, but don’t open it for any other reason. Better paint for war.”
“Mind your hair, Stephen. Got a shootin iron?”
“Yes.”
Someone grabbed Stephen’s arm. He turned, faced Gloria Curtice, her wet, probing eyes still grasping for a shred of hope.