Mountain Rampage (18 page)

Janelle. No way would she let him leave her and the girls alone this evening. But she might appreciate a few hours away from the resort as well.

A rustle of wind swept across the parking lot, carrying with it the first hint of the coming evening chill. He needed to get going, but he had one more subject to cover with Elaine first.

“There's something else I ran across today,” he said.

Elaine took hold of her cane and placed her gnarled hands on its polished head.

He told her of the drag trails off the mountain and the carcasses in the small meadow and his suspicion that the rams' horns were headed for the black market.

“Supply and demand,” Elaine said when Chuck finished. “Capitalism at its worst.”

“I have to figure it's someone from around here.”

“Of course. I can think of plenty who would jump on a gravy train like that.”

“Such as?”

“Lots of locals are jealous of the free-spending tourists who come here. They don't understand the visitors are on their one big vacation of the year.”

Chuck knew plenty of people in Durango who felt the same way.

Elaine continued. “They start looking for easy ways to grab what they think ought to be theirs. Studies show the rate of employee theft from businesses is significantly higher in tourist towns than non-tourist towns. Which is to say, if you want to get a good look at suspects for this massacre you found, just take a walk up Elkhorn Avenue and look in the front doors of
the gift shops and restaurants.”

“That doesn't exactly narrow it down,” Chuck said. He told Elaine the conclusion he'd reached with Clarence that the poacher almost certainly was a regular visitor to the park.

“That makes sense.” Elaine turned her cane in circles beneath her hands. “I'll keep thinking. If I get any bright ideas, I'll let you know. In the meantime, your job, should you choose to accept it, is to bring me some of that black stuff—and to not kill yourself in the process.”

T
WENTY
-E
IGHT

Ninety minutes later, Chuck stood with Janelle and the girls at the eastern edge of the mine site. In front of them, the last of the evening sunlight burnished the forested foothills falling away to the plains beyond.

Janelle had agreed to Chuck's suggestion that she and the girls accompany him to the mine, where, he told her, he wanted to make sure everything was squared away now that the students had left the site for the last time.

“A chance to stay away from the resort a while longer? Count us in,” Janelle said. “Besides, I've wanted to visit the mine all summer.” She turned to the girls. “We get to see where Chuck and Uncle Clarence have been doing all their work.”

“Yippee!” Rosie cheered. She and Carmelita bumped fists.

Chuck added, “If we hurry, we'll be there for sunset.”

Janelle faltered. “It'll take until after dark?”

“Not by much. We'll have headlamps for the hike out, and the moon will be up, too. It'll be fun. And I'll feel good knowing everything's okay at the site.”

“I know you're trying to do all you can to be invited back next year, but I'll be honest with you, Chuck—after last night, I'm not sure I ever want to come back here again.”

“You won't have to. Sartore says he's lining up more field school courses at other parks,” Chuck said. No need to mention the professor's threat that Chuck's job was on the line, pending how the rest of the week played out. “I just want to spend another summer with you and the girls, it doesn't matter to me where.”

“Come on,
Mamá
,” Rosie said, hanging on Janelle's arm. “Can we go up there? Huh? Can we?”

“Well,” she hedged. She checked the sun, still well above the mountains in the western sky. “
Bueno. Vamanos
.” She patted Rosie's backside, sending her in the direction of the truck.

From the edge of the mine site, Chuck pointed out to Janelle and the girls the open swath of grass at the center of the Y of the Rockies complex. At the south edge of the fields, two hulking, log buildings, the lodge and conference center, were just visible in the fading light.

He took four headlamps from his rucksack, pulled one over his head, and handed out the other three to Janelle and the girls.

“While you watch the last of the sunset,” he said, “I'll head into the mine and grab the floodlights and make sure everything's put away.”

He threw his pack over his shoulder and followed the tracks to the mouth of the mine. He unlocked the door, pulled it open with a stubborn squeak, stowed the lock and key in his pack, and hurried to the end of the tunnel.

He clicked on the floodlights, their batteries recharged by the solar panels still set up outside. Working quickly, he strapped his seat harness around his waist and secured a dismantled length of ore cart track to one of the floor-base timbers so that the end of the iron track extended over the mouth of the vertical shaft. He clipped his anchored rope through a carabiner slung from the extended end of the track and edged backward into the opening. When the rope took his weight, he swung free, slowly rotating in the middle of the shaft.

He loosened his belay device and slid down the rope commando-style, equidistant from the shaft's four rock walls. Halfway down, where the streaks of black material first appeared, he locked the belay device and rocked his body back and forth, coming closer to the walls of the shaft with each swing. When he drew near enough, he grabbed a fistful of the crumbly black matter from the wall he faced. He pulled a Ziploc bag from his pocket, shoved the handful of black material inside it, and dropped the filled baggie down the front of his flannel shirt.

He looked up from where he hung, swinging, in the shaft. The beam of his headlamp followed the rope to the end of the ore cart track thirty feet above.

Nearly half an hour had passed since he'd left Janelle and the girls outside. Darkness would be falling by now, the girls drawing close to Janelle, who would be wondering what was taking him so long.

Was it possible that whoever had locked Chuck in the mine had followed the four of them this evening? No, he assured himself. He'd seen no sign anyone had been at the mine since the field school packed up, and, anyway, whoever it was probably wasn't that dangerous—they hadn't stayed around long enough to prevent Clarence from rescuing him.

He bounced lightly on the rope. The ore cart track held firm. The white object was only thirty feet below him.

He put his thumb to the release lever of the belay device, pressed it forward, and slid down the rope. As he descended, the black streaks widened to where they joined together just above the bottom of the mine shaft.

He kicked to rotate himself until he faced the crevice. The light from his headlamp angled into the cleft, creating hard lines of gray and black. He leaned sideways, craning his neck, but couldn't catch sight of the white object at the back of the narrow opening.

He put his thumb to the belay-device lever, ready to descend to the bottom of the shaft. He pressed the lever just as a shriek reached his ears. It was coming from the mouth of the mine.

T
WENTY
-N
INE

Chuck stilled his breathing.

A second cry echoed the length of the tunnel and down into the pit.

He aimed an ear toward the top of the shaft. When he heard a third shriek, he slumped in his harness, weak with relief.

Rosie was hollering his name.

“Chu-
uck
,” she screamed a fourth time, breaking his name into two syllables. Her cry was distinct this time; she'd entered the tunnel.

“There's a hole!” he yelled back, terrified at the prospect of the girls scurrying ahead of Janelle and unknowingly coming upon the vertical shaft. “Careful!”

He peered upward. “Be careful!” he cried again.

Light from moving headlamp beams bounced off the back wall of the mine tunnel sixty feet above him, joining the steady glow of the floodlights.

“You hear me?” he hollered. “There's a hole!”

Janelle's voice came from above. “Chuck?”

“The hole I told you about, where Samuel fell,” he called to her. “You'll see it ahead of you. Keep the girls back.”

A head with a headlamp attached poked over the edge of the shaft. “What are you doing down there?” Janelle asked.

“I'm almost done. I'll be right up.”

Janelle's head hovered over the edge of the shaft for a moment before it disappeared. He returned his attention to the problem before him.

He slid down the rope until he stood thigh-deep in the viscous black muck, his legs and feet instantly growing cold. He aimed his headlamp into the fissure. The white object was wedged, as before, where the crevice narrowed to nothing. And there, scattered in the crevice below the object, were light-colored
sticks of various lengths and thicknesses.

Still attached to the rope, he edged sideways into the crevice. His back brushed the crevice wall, which collapsed onto his shoulders. The wet, black material dripped from his body and landed in the muck with wet plops.

He leaned into the crevice, his shoulders pressed against the fissure's narrowing sides. As the walls fell against him, he closed his eyes and reached blindly for something smooth.

He swam his hand through the muck, up, down, sideways, until his fingers bounced off something solid. He dug his toes into the black gunk and shoved himself forward a few more inches. He stretched full out, the black material gathering around him, and took hold of the object, his fingers finding purchase in depressions in its rounded shape.

He held the object against his chest and pushed himself backward with his free hand until he was out of the crevice. Once more he was covered in muck, soaked to the skin, and freezing.

Before he could swipe the grit-covered lens of his headlamp clean to look at the prize grasped in his hand, the wall of the shaft in front of him gave way, raising the level of black muck to his waist.

He shoved the object down his shirt and shrugged his pack around to his front. He dug out his ascending devices, attached them to the rope, wrestled his boots into the loops hanging from the devices, and commenced the arduous climb up the rope, this time hanging from the ore cart track above, safely away from the four crumbling lower walls of the shaft. He ascended from the gathering muck twelve inches at a time, the brisk climbing movements staving off the worst of the cold, his breaths coming in sharp gasps.

“Chuck?” Rosie called from above. “Is that you?”

He paused halfway up the shaft. “Sure is, sweetie,” he called
with forced cheeriness. “I'm almost there!”

The light of a headlamp illuminated him from above as he resumed his ascent. “Up from the primordial muck,” Janelle observed.

When he reached the top of the shaft, she took hold of the shoulder straps of his pack and helped him clamber onto the floor of the mine tunnel. He unclipped himself from the rope and lay on his back while he caught his breath. The round object, enveloped in his T-shirt, rose and fell each time he inhaled and exhaled.

The girls stood well back from the open shaft, their headlamps aimed at him.

“What's that sticking out of your tummy?” Carmelita asked.

Chuck sat up as his breathing slowed. He reached beneath his shirt and removed something white. Though his headlamp was still covered in grit, the headlamps of Janelle and the girls lit the object in his hand. It was a skull, all right. The stick-like debris, now buried in the bottom of the pit below, undoubtedly had been the rest of the skeleton.

Janelle backed away until she was even with the girls. She drew them to her.

Chuck rotated the skull in his hand. The cranium was small, not surprising given the smaller stature typical of miners a hundred years ago. The skull's eye sockets, dark and vacant, sat close on either side of the sinus cavity.

“What's that?” Janelle asked, pointing.

Smack in the middle of the skull's forehead was a pea-sized hole.

Chuck reached with his forefinger to touch the edge of the perfectly round opening. The edge of the indentation was slightly concave where it entered the skull.

“A bullet hole,” he said.

T
HIRTY

“That is
so gross
,” Carmelita declared, the beam of her headlamp fixed on the bullet hole.

“Uh-
huh
,” Rosie concurred, crossing her arms over her chest. “Gross, gross, grossy-gross.”

Carmelita stepped forward. “Can I touch it?”

Rosie dropped her arms to her sides. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can we? Can we?”

Janelle turned her headlamp on the girls. “I'm sure you're not allowed to do anything with it.”

Chuck cradled the skull in his hand. He couldn't see Janelle's eyes behind the light of her headlamp, but he knew by her calm tone of voice what was in them: complete and utter composure. Janelle's toughness was well earned—the girls' father, with whom Janelle had taken up as a rebellious teenager, had been a drug dealer in Albuquerque's South Valley until the day of his death by gunfire.