Miner's Daughter (38 page)

Martin grabbed his arm. “Good God, Tony. This
is terrible.”

It was worse than terrible. If anything had
happened to Mari, it would be the worst tragedy of Tony’s entire
life. After pausing for no more than ten seconds, trying to
assimilate the magnitude of his possible loss, he fell to his knees
and started heaving rubble away from the mine entrance. “For God’s
sake, help me!” he cried, his throat so tight the words barely
squeezed out.

“Wait, Tony,” Martin said in a calm voice.
“Wait a minute. Let George take a look. He’ll know better than we
what should be done, since he’s the construction expert.”

“Expert? I swear to God, Martin, if he’s
responsible for this, I’ll kill him.”

“He’s not,” Martin said crisply. “And if you
weren’t so scared, you’d know it “

Sitting back on his heels and taking a deep
breath, Tony breathed in and out twice before he whispered,
“Right.” He buried his face in his cupped hands, feeling as though
his heart were being hacked in two with a dull ax. “You’re right.
Of course, you’re right.”

He heard something from inside the mine
shaft. At once, he resumed scrabbling to get rocks out of the way.
“Did you hear that? Did you hear it? Was it Mari?”

“I don’t know.”

Tony heard Martin but didn’t look up to see
what he was doing. Then he heard Martin’s voice, sounding slightly
relieved, which didn’t make sense to Tony, who was in a
full-fledged panic now.

“Thank God, you’re here, George. What should
we do?”

“I’ll get the men fitted out with the proper
equipment, and I hope we can clear this out in no time.”

Tony felt a hand on his shoulder and he
jerked it off. “Leave me alone. I’m going to get Mari out of
there.”

“Tony,” Martin said gently, “George has the
proper equipment for moving these rocks. You can’t do much with
your bare hands.”

“Maybe, but at least I’m doing something,” he
growled.

Evidently Martin realized how futile it would
have been to argue further. Tony heard him walk away, and he
continued chucking rocks aside.

He’d been working for what seemed like hours
but was probably only ten minutes or so, when two things happened.
The first was that George’s crew showed up carrying heavy equipment
and started removing rocks. The second was that he heard Mari’s
voice, slightly muffled but still clear as day, from inside the
mine. His heart gave such an enormous heave, he wouldn’t have been
surprised if it had jumped right out of his chest and plunked onto
the ground in front of him.

“Mari! Oh, God, Mari, are you there?” Stupid
question, he knew, but he couldn’t make himself ask if she was
alive. Anyhow, clearly she was alive. Good God, his brain had
ceased functioning. “Are you hurt?”

“Um,” came her voice, sounding sort of weak.
Of course, that might have been because he was hearing it through
who knew how many tons of granite. “I’m not sure. I don’t think so.
It’s very close in here, though.”

Good God. Tony had forgotten about air. He
almost cried out to her not to breathe, but caught himself before
he’d blurted out anything so utterly stupid. “Take it easy,” he
said instead. “Don’t move around too much. George and his crew are
working on getting you out of there.”

“Good. I’m glad. Okay.”

She sounded weak. Lord, Lord, if she was
hurt, Tony didn’t know what he’d do. Kill whoever did this, for a
certainty, but there must be something more he could do. Besides
pay for her funeral.

No. He wouldn’t—couldn’t—start thinking
things like that.

Tiny, whom he’d forgotten altogether, nudged
his back with a huge wet nose, and Tony turned to see that the dog
had dragged himself to the mouth of the mine.

Knowing he could do nothing more there, Tony
first hugged the dog, then led him back to the shade. “She’ll be
all right, boy,” he assured Tiny. “She’ll be fine. They’ll get her
out of there in a jiffy.”

Then, for the first time since he could
remember, Tony shut his eyes and prayed. Hard.

Mari had never been so frightened. When the
collapse came, she’d thought for sure she was a dead woman. But the
scaffolding fell around her in a way that kept most of the rocks
away from her. Some of the smaller ones had battered against her,
but she was relatively unscathed except for some scrapes and
scratches. One of her ankles hurt like the devil, but other than
that, she didn’t think she was injured.

On the other hand, the dust had all but
smothered her before it had settled. Only then did she pause to
think about air. There wasn’t any coming in from outdoors any
longer. Unless the men working to free her did their job in a
hurry, she wasn’t sure how long she’d last.

When she’d heard Tony’s voice calling to her,
she’d experienced a moment of elation. She couldn’t be buried that
deeply if she could still communicate with the outside world. She’d
called back to him and was moderately reassured for a few minutes.
Then the reality of her situation began to creep over her, and her
spirits started to flag.

She couldn’t recall ever being so
uncomfortable. The heat was insufferable, the air smelled close and
stuffy, her ankle throbbed, her scratches hurt—those that didn’t
itch—and she couldn’t see anything for the stifling blackness. She
wondered if hell was like this. It was something to ponder. If this
was a foretaste of hell, Mari’d be more diligent about attending
church. Provided she got out of this latest predicament alive.

Who in the name of all that was holy could be
doing these terrible things? It was bad enough when whoever it was
had crushed the cameras, but now the person was getting perilously
close to murder. Mari couldn’t imagine why anyone would wish to
interfere with a motion picture in such a catastrophic way.

Of course, there were those religious zealots
who considered all forms of entertainment sinful. Mari had read
letters to the editor of the San Bernardino newspaper from some of
them. But moving pictures were so popular nowadays, Mari didn’t
believe the fanatics were awfully numerous.

Then again, sometimes when people felt their
positions to be especially weak, they resorted to desperate
measures. As she squinted into the blackness of what might yet
become her tomb, she decided this act had been pretty darned
desperate. So had shooting Tiny. In fact, those two acts were
criminal; and if they ever found out who was behind them, Mari
hoped the perpetrators would rot in prison.

She sat back against the smoothest boulder
she could find and tried to get comfortable. When this proved
impossible, she began singing to herself. Realizing singing would
only use up what air she had left even more quickly than merely
breathing, she ceased singing aloud and commenced humming in her
head.

After a minute or two of that, Mari realized
the humming wasn’t being created by her brain, but by some physical
phenomenon, probably lack of oxygen. A surge of panic swept through
her, but she held her breathing steady by an effort of willpower. A
moment or two later she understood the humming that had so alarmed
her was coming from outside. She would have collapsed from relief
if she hadn’t already been as collapsed as she could get.

A drill. They were using a drill. Of course.
She ought to have anticipated it.

Although she’d never have believed it
possible, she drifted off to sleep a few minutes later, her senses
dulled by the darkness and her muscles numb from inaction.

Mari was rudely awakened to reality when a
rock fell on her. She sat bolt upright, banging her head against a
piece of broken scaffolding and dislodging miniature avalanche of
pebbles and dust. For a second, she feared she’d damaged the
fragile structure keeping the tons of rock over her head from
crushing her, but she hadn’t. Not even
her
head was hard
enough to move a ton of rock, she decided, dryly.

Another rock fell on her. Good heavens, what
was happening? Was the structural damage such that the fragile
wooden scaffolding protecting her was going to give way after so
many minutes or hours of stress? Mari strove to stave off a
mounting sense of horror.

The sound of scraping stone almost caused her
heart to give out. Oh, Lord above, this was it. She was goner. In a
second, the entire structure would cave in, and there would be
nothing left of her but a squished heap of human refuse.

Tears stung her eyes. For several moments,
she tried to hold them back. Then she decided she might as well
spend her last few seconds on earth not holding anything back, so
she let them flow, wringing her hands and sobbing like the heroine
in a melodrama. Martin would have been proud of her.

A tremendous crash made her scream. Rocks and
rubble seemed to rush in upon her. A ray of sunlight nearly blinded
her, and she covered her eyes with her hands.

Great God in heaven, was life extinguished
whilst accompanied by a flash of light? Is this how it all
ended?

Two hard hands seized her by the wrists, and
she screamed again. She’d never read anywhere that one was
transported out of this world and into the other one by being
hauled there manually.

“Try, Mari, try!” a well-known and
well-beloved voice urged her. Tony must have died, too. How
strange.

It took another couple of seconds for her to
realize she was being rescued. A wave of joy was quickly subsumed
by one of foolishness for how far her fancy had carried her. She
scrambled to help in her own salvation. “I’m trying,” she said
testily. “I think my ankle is sprained.”

“Sprained? Good God, I hope it’s nothing
worse than that.”

“Easy for you to say. It hurts like the
dickens.”

“I know. I’m sorry, sweetheart. Here, then,
be careful?”

She couldn’t tell for sure because she was
too rattled, but she thought he sounded as if he might be worried
about her poor sore ankle. Which made sense, she guessed, since he
undoubtedly didn’t want a piece of property in which his father had
invested to be damaged. That might cost money.

When had she become so unpleasantly cynical?
she wondered. Although she had to admit being buried underground
and in imminent peril of being squashed like a bug did tend to make
one reassess one’s prior notions about things.

Tony was dragging her by her wrists now. Mari
wondered if he was deliberately hauling her over every jagged rock
he could find, or if it was only happenstance. She tried to
scramble after him, but her ankle wouldn’t cooperate. Every time
she even tried to put weight on it, it gave out and a wash of
violent pain went through her. Blast it, this wasn’t fair.

“We’re almost there, Mari,” Tony panted.

She could hear the strain in his voice and
instantly forgave him for dragging her over a couple of sharp
rocks. “It was good of you to come after me, Tony. I’m sure Martin
would have been glad to send someone else.”

“He tried to,” Tony said grimly. “I wouldn’t
let him “

“Oh.” Good grief, he really was worried about
his father’s money, wasn’t he? “That was nice of you.”

“Nice?” He paused for only a second and
looked back at her. Mari couldn’t decipher the expression on his
face, except to note that it was very intense. “Nice?” he repeated.
“Good God.”

She didn’t have time to ask him anything else
because he started tugging at her wrists again. She wanted to know
how the accident had happened, and if they thought it had been
natural—unlikely, since Martin and his crew had spent days shoring
up the infrastructure of the mine—or if it had been another act of
vandalism. Mari’s money was on vandalism. Or it would be, if she
had any.

“Only a few more feet to go,” Tony told her
after several minutes. “It won’t be long now, Mari, and you’ll be
free again.”

Free again. That sounded so pleasant. She
hoped her blasted ankle wouldn’t interfere with her job in the
picture, because she really, really needed that money.

“The doctor’s waiting to check you over.”

“That’s nice.”

“I had him look at Tiny while George and his
men were digging you out.”

“That’s very nice.” For the first time since
her father’s life’s work had fallen down around her, Mari smiled.
“Thank you very much.”

“You’re welcome.”

He sounded grumpy again. Mari didn’t know
why. All at once, Tony, who had been faintly outlined by the one
ray of sunlight streaming into the mine’s shaft, vanished from her
sight. She cried out, “Tony!” and feared the last few minutes had
been the product of her fevered imagination.

Then light poured down upon her, and she
realized Tony had merely climbed out of the pit. He still held on
to her hands, and he was tugging her out, too. She had a feeling
she wouldn’t have an inch of skin left after she got through this
ordeal, but at least she was still alive.

That being the case, she ought to be much
happier than this, oughtn’t she? Of course, she should.

Worry. That’s what it was. She was too
worried about the consequences that might befall her after this
latest catastrophe. Surely Martin wouldn’t want to use her mine any
longer. Would he still pay her?

A deafening noise greeted her when Tony
finally hauled her out into the light of day. The noise puzzled
Mari until she realized the cast and crew of Peerless, plus most of
her friends and neighbors from Mojave Wells, were standing around
the collapsed entrance to the mine and cheering her rescue. She
glanced up, smiling, and was taken completely by surprise when Tony
wrapped his big, strong arms around her and lifted her right up off
the ground.

Then he kissed her. Her feet dangled in air,
and the crowd’s cheers became even more raucous. Mari experienced
one fleeting moment of abject embarrassment before she chucked her
cares to the wind, threw her arms about his neck, and kissed him
back.