'I'll even throw out my handgun. I have a revolver that you don't know about. Now I'm being honest with you. I'm not stupid enough to try fighting my way past all of you, so tell your men to keep their hands free of their triggers.'
'When I hear you throw that stuff out.'
'Coming.'
He hated to shove them through. He hated the feeling of helplessness he would have without them. Peering through the space at the top of the rockfall, looking at the bare forest and sky out there, he liked the cool breeze on his face as it came in and down the tunnel.
'I don't hear that stuff yet,' the man said out of view. 'We have tear gas.'
So. And that sonofabitch wouldn't bother himself to come up.
He was pushing the rifle through. He was just ready to let go of it when he understood. The breeze. The breeze down the tunnel. This strong it had to be going somewhere. It was blowing down to the fissure at the end, and from there it was being sucked away, sucked out another passage in the hill. Another way out, that was the only explanation. Otherwise the breeze couldn't move and circulate. Adrenalin scalded into his stomach. He had not lost yet.
'Where's the guns, I said,' the man outside told him.
Up your ass, Rambo thought. He slipped the rifle back in and heart pounding excitedly, he hurried down the darkness of the tunnel. The coals of his fire were dead, and shortly he had to grope to find where he had camped. He grabbed the fir boughs and the unburned sticks of wood and carried them down the remainder of the tunnel until, head stooped against the low ceiling, he heard the water dripping and bumped into the final wall. A new fire to guide him as far as it could. Smoke from the fir boughs to help him spot the direction of the breeze after that. Christ, maybe.
10
The pain came again, and Teasle bent forward on the bench, squinting at a dark oil stain in the wood floor. He knew he could not keep going much longer. He needed sleep. Oh how he needed it. Something from a doctor. There was no telling how much he had strained and damaged himself. Thank God this was almost over.
A little while, he told himself. That's all. Just hold on a little while more and he'll be caught.
He waited until Trautman and Kern were looking somewhere else and then fumbled to swallow two more pills.
'That box of them was full last night,' Trautman said and surprised him. 'You shouldn't be taking so many.'
'No. I upset it and lost some.'
'When was that? I didn't see.'
'When you were asleep. Before dawn.'
'You couldn't have lost that many. You shouldn't be taking them so much. Not with all the coffee.'
'I'm fine. It's a cramp.'
'Will you go to a doctor?'
'No. Not yet.'
'Then I'm calling a doctor out here.'
'Not until he's caught.'
Now Kern was walking over. Why wouldn't they leave him be? 'But he is caught,' Kern said.
'No. He's just cornered. It's not the same.'
'He might as well be caught. It's a question of time is all. What's so damn important about sitting there in needless pain until they actually put their hands on him?'
'I can't say it right. You wouldn't understand.'
'Then call a doctor,' Trautman told the radioman. 'Get a car to take him back to town.'
'I won't go, I said. I promised.'
'Who? What do you mean?'
'I promised I'd see this to the last.'
'Who?'
'Them.'
'You mean your posse? This man Orval and the rest who died?'
He didn't want to talk about it. 'Yes.'
Trautman looked at Kern and shook his head.
'I told you that you wouldn't understand,' Teasle said.
He turned to the open back of the truck, and the sun coming in was sharp on his eyes. Then he was afraid and it was dark and he was flat on his back on the floor. He remembered the boards rumbling when he hit.
'I'm warning you, don't call a doctor,' he said slowly, unable to move. 'I'm just down here resting.'
11
The blaze lit the fissure, smoke wafting down it from the breeze. For a moment Rambo hesitated, then slid his rifle between his belt and his pants, handled a torch and squeezed between the two walls, the strip of rock under his shoes wet and slippery, tilting down. He pressed his back against one wall so that his ribs would not scrape much against the other wall, and the farther in and down he went, the lower the top of the fissure came, and then the orange reflection of his torch glistening on the wet rock showed him where the roof and the walls tapered into a hole directly down. He held his torch over the hole, but the flames radiated only part of the way, and all he could see was a widening funnel down in the rock. He took out a rifle cartridge and dropped it, counting to three before it struck bottom, the echo of a faint metallic ring. Three seconds wasn't deep, so he eased one leg into the hole and then the other leg and slowly squirmed himself down. When he was in as far as his chest, his ribs wedged and he could not go down more without great pain. He stared at the fire up at the entrance to the fissure, smoke enshrouding it, irritating his nostrils, and there were noises off in the mine. Another rockfall, he thought. No. Voices, shouts that merged and rumbled down to him. Already they were coming. He drew in his chest, sweating, forcing his ribs into the hole, closed his eyes, pushed, and then he was through.
The spasm in his chest nearly made him drop. He could not let himself. He had no idea what was below him. His head still above the hole, he persisted in supporting himself by his arms and elbows on the rim while he shifted his feet down there to find a ledge or a crack. The funnel was slippery and smooth, and he let himself down a little more, but still there was no place to rest his feet. The weight of his body stretched his chest, ribs cutting. He heard the men shouting indistinctly in the mine, and eyes watering from the smoke of his fire, he was about to release his grip and drop the rest of the way anyhow, hoping there were no rocks down there to break him, when his feet touched something slender and round that felt like wood.
The upper rung of a ladder. From the mine, he thought. It must be. The guy who worked the mine must have explored here. He lowered himself gingerly onto the rung. It bent but held; he stepped gently onto the second rung, it split and he snapped through two more rungs before he stopped. The sound of his fall drummed through the chamber, startling him. When it faded, he listened for the shouts of the men but he could not hear them now, his head below the rim of the hole. Then as he relaxed, the rung that held him bent, and fearing that he would crash through to the bottom, he quickly waved his torch to see what was below. Four other rungs and then a rounded floor. When it rains, he thought, water from outside must drain down here. That's why the smooth worn rock.
He touched bottom, trembling. Looked. Followed the one exit, a wider fissure that sloped down as well. An old pick was leaning against one wall, its iron rusty, its wood dirty and warped from the damp. In the flickering torchlight, the handle of the pick cast a shadow onto the wall. He could not understand why the miner had left tools here but not in the upper tunnel. He came around a curve, water plunking somewhere, and found him. What was left of him. In the shimmer of the orange light, the skeleton was as repulsive as the first mutilated soldier he had ever seen. His mouth tasted of copper coins as he stood away from the skeleton for a moment and then took a few steps toward it. The bones were tinted orange by his light, but he was certain that their real color was gray like the silt that had gathered around them, and they were perfectly arranged. Not a bone was out of place or broken. No sign at all of why he had died. It was as if he had lain down to sleep and never wakened. Perhaps a heart attack.