The incoming ore cart was now about a hundred feet behind them. Sam picked up a rock that fit comfortably in the palm of his hand, aimed, and threw it.
With the combined speed of his throw and that of the pursuing cart, the rock managed to reach its target, smashing into a pile of splintered shards on impact. It was a lucky throw but it had done little to hinder the progress of their pursuers.
Sam picked up another stone and tried again.
This one missed completely.
He gripped a third, took aim, and…
Bang!
He heard the shot fire.
It struck the side of his throwing arm, narrowly grazing him.
He swore and yanked his arm back inside the protection of the iron cart.
Examining the wound, he confirmed it was little more than a graze. The throbbing pain was a nagging reminder not to place himself in the direct line of sight of his attackers again.
Instead, they bundled all the rocks into Sam’s small backpack. It took a few minutes, and by the time they were done it took all of his strength and willpower to lift the pack over the back of the cart and let it fall.
He glanced back in the dark and watched the sparks fly when the incoming ore cart collided with the stones. It was followed by an awful sound of metal grinding on metal. Sam hoped to hell the damned thing would derail, but instead it seemed to grind to a stop.
Sam heard the voices of men cursing. He tried to see if the cart was permanently disabled, but soon his own ore cart turned a corner, and he lost sight of the wreck.
“Do you think their cart’s destroyed?” Sam asked.
Jesse’s voice was emphatic. “No way.”
“You saw the way those sparks flew?” Sam asked. “They hit the bag pretty hard.”
“That iron cart weighs close to a ton. You’d need to hit it with a bus to do any real sort of damage.”
Sam grinned. “But we slowed them down, and that’s all we need.”
The ore cart dipped dramatically, before running across another small bridge that split a large stope in two. At the end of the opening, the track’s direction changed abruptly to the left and dipped again, causing Sam to feel as though he’d entered a free fall for a moment, before gravity caught up with them, and the cart was slammed into the gently banking track.
Up ahead, the track split into two.
Sam applied the brake gently, “Which way?”
Jesse said, “Right!”
Sam applied more force to the brake until the ore cart slowed to a crawl as it passed the switchstand lever that rose approximately four feet high beside the track.
Once they passed, he climbed out of the cart and pulled on the lever.
The harp mechanism was a simple lever which pivoted on an axle pin located midway up the main body of the stand. The upper part of the lever passed through a slot atop the stand. As he pulled on the lever, the bar moved the rail into the alternate position.
Certain that the track was now set to go left instead of right, he climbed onto the back of the ore cart. Sandi lifted the brake and the cart started to move again.
The track continued for another few hundred feet before coming to its end in a large vaulted chamber, where four separate tunnels converged. To the right were the remains of an old ore crusher, and a deep dry void that had probably once been used as a sump during the mine’s operations.
Sam applied the brake fully into the secure position. It was an automatic habit, but as he climbed out he realized it was an odd thing to do, given they had reached the bottom of the tunnel and would never use it again.
He swept the beam of his flashlight around the room. Each of the converging tunnels were horizontal and without tracks. He imagined the old miners had followed whatever leads they had found, removing the rock and digging deeper in all directions until they no longer found any viable gold reefs.
“Which way?” Sam asked.
Jesse studied each of the tunnels as though he were trying to determine which way to go. Through narrowed eyes, he said, “Can I have a look at your compass.”
“Sure.” Sam raised his eyebrow and handed him the compass. “You don’t know?”
Jesse shrugged. “It’s been a long time since I came down this far.”
“How long?”
“I was still a boy when my father took me down here… so, at least sixty years.”
Sam grimaced. Sixty years was a long time. There could have been plenty of cave-ins, and tunnels may have collapsed or become flooded. Who knows? Sam kept his mouth shut. There was nothing they could do about it now. They would just have to deal with whatever happened.
Sandi said, “What’s that?”
Sam flicked his light on the track.
They were shaking again.
“Oh shit!” Jesse cursed. “They didn’t buy the ruse.”
Chapter Fifteen
Sam was the first to recover from the news.
To Jesse, he said, “Which way out?”
Jesse opened his mouth, paused, and said, “That way. To the east.”
All three of them ran along the tunnel. It was small, but high enough that none of them had to worry about hitting their heads.
They kept running until their muscles burned with exhaustion. When they couldn’t run any farther, they rested by walking briefly, and then kept running.
After nearly an hour in the tunnel, Sam heard the sound of something up ahead. It was hard to determine what it was exactly. Sound travels strangely through a tunnel. Sometimes the narrow confines helped the sound wave bounce from wall to wall, resonating louder as it echoed, but other times, the sound would be lost down a distant tunnel, and you wouldn’t hear a thing until you rounded a corner and came face to face with the source of the noise.
“What is that?” Sandi asked.
“I have no idea,” Sam said.
His ears locked onto the distant sound as it droned on far down the tunnel. He heard something similar before, but his mind was having trouble identifying it.
To Jesse, he asked, “Where does this tunnel come out?”
“The Pike and San Isabel National Forests and Cimarron and Comanche National Grasslands.”
“So there’s not likely to be much traffic or machinery noise entering the tunnel.”
“No, whatever that sound is, it’s coming from inside.”
Sam thought about it for a moment. “Any idea how much farther this tunnel runs?”
“Shouldn’t be much longer now,” Jesse replied. “In fact, I was pretty certain we should have reached the end of the tunnel about twenty minutes ago.”
Sam swallowed. “There’s a good chance we’re in the wrong tunnel, isn’t there?”
“Yep.”
“All right. Let’s keep going. If nothing else, we might find a way to better arm ourselves against our attackers.”
Up ahead, in the dark, the distant noise started to resonate louder, until it drowned out their footsteps, and eventually even their voices.
Sam rounded a corner.
The tunnel petered out into a dead end. In its place was the rapid torrent of a flowing waterfall, gushing down on top of them.
Chapter Sixteen
Sam shined the beam of his flashlight along the waterfall.
There were a series of vertical wooden ladders and their wooden platforms, standing end on end, as they rose to dizzying heights, possibly a hundred or more feet above them. Water fell from the ladders, wooden platforms, and a ventilation shaft before disappearing into an underground siphon, leading deeper into the mountain.
He turned to Jesse. “Wrong place?”
Jesse nodded, apologetically. “Yeah, wrong place.”
Sam shot him a thin-lipped smile. “You got any ideas?”