Eve heard the amusement in Reno’s voice and smiled despite her anxiety.
«Besides,» he said, «didn’t the Spanish journal talk about rough ingots of gold that had been cast but not carried off to New Spain yet?»
«Yes. There were sixty-two of them.»
A whistle floated back out of the mine.
«You never told me that before,» he said.
«I started to last night, but you distracted me.»
Laughter echoed in the tunnel as Reno remembered just how he had distracted Eve.
She had been bending over the campfire, tending a vension stew and talking about a badly spotted page in the journal she had just puzzled out. He hadn’t been listening closely, for the lush curve of her hips had claimed his full attention. They had barely managed to get all their clothes off before he pressed into her with the fire crackling on one side, the cool night air on the other, and in the center a smooth, liquid heat that fit him more perfectly than any glove.
«No, you were the one who distracted me,» Reno said.
Laughter was Eve’s only answer.
The floor of the mine shaft began to slant steeply beneath Reno’s feet. The vein of gold ore also dipped sharply, telling him that the tunnel was the result of following a bigger vein of ore rather than of any particular planning on the part of the Spaniards.
Reno moved quickly but carefully into the tunnel, shining the lantern all around as he went. The mine was sound except for the places where it cut through softer rock that hadn’t been cooked deep with the fires of the earth. Where the walls were in soft or heavily fractured rock, the Spaniards had put in beams to brace the tunnel.
There were many branching, seemingly random side tunnels that were too narrow for anyone but a child to get through. Those openings hadn’t been braced. Reno looked into each small hole, but didn’t find one that tempted him to explore it.
«Reno! Where are you?»
The sound of Eve’s voice thinned and echoed as it sank down through the mine.
«Coming,» he said.
Reno scrambled back up the steep incline and down the tunnel to the mine’s mouth. Eve was waiting just outside, a lantern in her hand.
«I told you to stay out,» Reno said curtly.
«I did. Then your light disappeared and didn’t come back. When I called out, no one answered. I didn’t know if you were all right.»
Reno looked at Eve’s level gold eyes and knew he wasn’t going to succeed in keeping her out of the mine unless he roped and hog-tied her like a calf for branding.
«Stay behind me,» he said grudgingly. «Don’t light your lantern, but keep some matches handy in case something goes wrong with the one I’m carrying. I have candles, but only for an emergency.»
Eve nodded and let out a hidden breath, glad that she wasn’t going to have to fight Reno over entering the mine. But fight him she would; she simply couldn’t bear to wait on the outside not knowing if something had gone wrong deep in the mine.
«This early part is safe enough,» Reno said.
Lantern light dipped and quivered and flowed as though alive when he gestured to the rock walls, ceiling, and floor.
«I thought all mines had some kind of wooden supports,» Eve said, eyeing the bare stone distrustfully.
«Not in solid rock. You don’t need it, unless the ore body is huge. Then you just leave some of the ore in place to act as pillars.»
A flash of white caught Eve’s eye.
«What’s that on the right?» she asked.
«A small vein.»
«Gold?»
Reno made a rumbling sound of agreement. «Just like the chunk I took out of thattenate.»
«How did the Spanish know the gold was here if they couldn’t see it from the outside of the mountain? Did they use the needles?»
«Maybe. And maybe the vein showed on the surface somewhere else.»
Reno pointed to the wall. «This is the end of a shaft rather than the beginning. The nature of the rock changes about ten feet this side of the opening. The way the vein is dipping, it might come out close to that alcove you found.»
For a few steps there was only the sound of boots scuffing over the uneven floor of the tunnel.
«Watch it,» Reno cautioned. «It goes down steeply for about twenty feet.»
Eve looked. The nature of the walls seemed unchanged.
«Why did they suddenly take a notion to dig deeper?» she asked.
«Oldest mining technique in the world,» he said. «Find a vein, follow its drift, and leave tunnels wherever you take out ore or look for new veins.»
Wherever a tunnel branched off, there was an arrow pointing away from it. Each time Reno took a tunnel, he marked the shaft of the arrow so that he wouldn’t explore the same opening twice.
Some of the tunnels were numbered. Most weren’t. The result was a three-dimensional maze bored through rock that was hard as steel in some places, and nearly as soft as fruitcake in others.
«Why do all the arrowheads point away from the tunnel mouths?» Eve asked.
«In a mine, everything points to the way out. That way if you get lost, you don’t wander deeper and deeper.»
Just before the steep descent, there was a place where supporting beams had been brought in. The timber was roughly hewn. Some pieces still had fragments of bark clinging. Others were simply small logs that had been cut and dragged underground.
Small side tunnels branched out in all directions and levels. Two of them had caved in. Rubble in the bottom of the others warned of unstable ceilings or walls.
«What are those little holes I keep seeing?» Eve asked. «Most of them don’t seem to go anywhere but a dead end.»
«They’re called coyote holes. They were dug to find the drift of the vein. Once the miners struck the vein again, or found a better one, they abandoned the side tunnels and concentrated on widening the one that led to ore.»
«Such narrow tunnels. I’d barely fit in one. The Indians must have been even smaller than Don Lyon.»
«Only the children were. They’re the ones who dug the coyote holes.»
«Dear God,» Eve said.
«More like the devil’s work, despite the presence of Jesuit priests. Watch your head.»
She ducked and continued walking bent partway over. Reno had to bend much more deeply to avoid the ceiling.
«The boys would dig the holes, loadtenates, and carry ore up to the surface,» Reno said. «This must have been a wide vein, because they didn’t dig an inch more than they had to.»
Reno paused, examined the face of the tunnel carefully, and went on, crouching to avoid the ceiling.
«When the ore was brought to the surface,» he continued, «girls and smaller boys would hammer on it with rocks until everything was in pieces about as big as the ball of your thumb. Then it would go into thearrastra, to be ground into dust by the adult slaves.»
Black, ragged holes radiated out again from floor, walls, and ceiling.
«Lost the drift again here,» Reno muttered.
«What happened?»
«The vein took a turn or was pinched off or was displaced by a fault line.»
«I always imagined veins as being straight.»
«That’s every miner’s dream,» Reno agreed, «but damn few are straight. Most gold deposits are shaped like a maple tree or like lightning. Branches every which way in all directions for no reason a man can see.»
The lantern swung as Reno bent over one of the yawning mouths set into the floor of the tunnel. Light washed into one of the coyote holes that was at waist level off to the right. The hole had been clogged with debris that had since dribbled out into the main tunnel.
«What’s that?» Eve asked.
«Where?»
«Hold the lamp a little higher, where the side of the coyote hole collapsed. Yes. Right there.»
Eve peered into the crumbling side tunnel. When she realized what she was looking at, she swallowed convulsively and backed up so quickly she bumped into Reno.