Jack and Susan in 1933 (28 page)

She simply followed the outline of
her
mountain, as she'd come to think of it. She'd learned its name from Blossom, not Mt. Superstition or Dragon's Head, as she'd suspected, but the obvious yet entirely inappropriate Mt. Bright.

She felt exposed as she circled the base of Mt. Bright, even though she saw nothing living but a few large birds that looked to have carrion on the breath, a few tiny toads that looked shriveled and burned and unhappy, and now and then something furry poking up out of a hole in the ground.

The map led her to another canyon on the far side of Mt. Bright. It was shallower, narrower, and rockier than her own, but at the end of it a kind of ramp had been leveled out. This raw roadway led upward along the side of the mountain. So many rocks had slipped down from higher up in the last twenty years that the way to the mine was hardly recognizable as manmade.

The way was steeper than it looked. Susan's labored breath told her that, and when she stopped and looked around, she was startled by how far she could see.

She could see very far across the desert, but there was little to hold her attention other than that range of ugly mountains, and the uglier range of mountains behind that.

She continued to climb. The road hairpinned, and Susan found herself walking into the sun. She bowed her head so that the brim of her hat would shield her face. She'd blistered once since she'd been here in Nevada, and didn't want to go through that torment again.

Scotty and Zelda walked inches behind her, employing her as a sunshade.

She came across something metallic and glinting— nearly buried in the earth. She kicked at some earth around it and saw it was a length of narrow rail.

She was getting closer, and she ventured to look up into the sun.

She was already there, it turned out. Here was the entrance to the mine. If there had once been a sign, it was gone now. The entrance was only a natural cave opening that had been widened sufficiently to lay the tracks inside.

She looked around and saw evidence that this was indeed the Dirt Hole Mine. Sun-bleached boards from some sort of exterior buildings. The crumbling cement foundations for those buildings, nearly buried now, too, in the earth. A twisted piece of metal, a rusted wheel, more bits of twisted metal, broken fragments of something that had been painted green, shards of green glass from beer bottles.

Susan shaded her eyes and peered into the entrance to the mine.

It was less than inviting, and looked rather like the hideout of a fugitive being pursued for murder— a fugitive who was guilty and quite deserved to die a miserable death trapped in such a place.

That seemed a good reason not to go inside.

She went inside anyway.

It was very black, so she immediately turned around and looked back out into the sunlight.

“If I can do it, you can do it,” she said very loudly.

Scotty and Zelda crept forward into the cool darkness of the cave.

Susan went a few feet farther in. She ran her right foot along one of the rails, figuring that this would be the string to lead her out again if she got lost in the three or four yards she'd decided she'd venture in.

“This is probably a very stupid idea,” said Susan aloud.

Scotty and Zelda, simply by the fact that they did not follow her any farther into the interior of the mine, appeared to concur with that assessment.

Susan stood still and allowed her eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness. Then she could make out the beams and supports here. To her relief, they didn't appear rotted at all. In fact, many of them had been reinforced, and the metal reinforcements gleamed in the light from the entrance as if they were still new.

She was more fearful of her own fear than of the mine itself. How was she going to cope with the rest of her life if she stopped ten feet into a cave that had probably been formed a hundred thousand years ago and hadn't collapsed yet?

She struck a match and lighted the candle she'd brought. She held it up and looked around.

If I see bats, I'll go back
, she promised herself.
Bats carry rabies.

Disappointingly for Susan, there were no bats, either rabid or simply filthy and disgusting in their own healthy right. She really would have preferred a dozen or so bats flying in her face than to be forced to continue her progress.

Four more feet in. Again she shone the candle around.

No bats. No rotted supports. Behind her, she could still see the entranceway, a smaller arch of light than before. Scotty and Zelda had not moved.

“Get over here,” Susan said to the dogs.

They came reluctantly, and she watched their progress.

“You're not very brave dogs, are you?”

Zelda lowered her head in apparent shame and brought it up again with something in her mouth. She offered it to Susan in appeasement for her shortcomings in the way of canine courage.

From Zelda's mouth Susan took an empty cigarette package.

Susan examined it by the light of the candle. The package had contained twenty Spud cigarettes, and it looked new. She held it to her nose and could still smell the tobacco inside. The price was marked on the side of the paper in blue ink—twelve cents. Last year—when she'd been singing at the Villa Vanity, and knew of such things from the inane chatter of the cigarette girls—cigarettes, which were normally twenty cents a pack, were dropping to twelve and even ten cents, on account of a tobacco war in North Carolina. This meant that someone had been in the mine since the beginning of the year— very recently indeed.

That seemed reason enough not to go any farther inside. Just in case the someone who had dropped the Spud cigarette package was anywhere beyond, and just in case that supposed party was someone Susan did not care to meet.

This was a very silly fear, Susan decided.

The Spud package wasn't
that
fresh.

She took a few more steps deeper into the mine. Now she came to a turn. The rails went off to the right down a wide passageway. Off to the left was a much smaller, cruder shaft. Here the beams and supports had not been reinforced. The supports bowed dramatically inward, the ceiling beam bowed dramatically downward. A passageway that had originally been six feet wide and six feet high was now not more than four feet high and perhaps a yard wide.

She went a few feet off to the right, along the much wider passage, going just far enough to lose sight of the entrance to the cave.

This was genuine bravery, Susan decided, and she'd had quite enough of it.

“I'm sure you'll be happy to hear,” she said to the dogs, “that it's time to go back…”

The dogs wagged their tails in apparent agreement.

But Susan didn't get very far, for a voice called out quite stridently from around the corner she'd just turned. “Hello! Hello, is anybody in there?”

The voice was Barbara Beaumont's.

I might have known
, thought Susan instantly, and without thinking of the consequences, blew out the candle.

The consequences were that she and the dogs were plunged into darkness.

It was on a par with the rest of Susan's luck in the past month or so that the one day she ventured out of her cabin, the one day she had the courage to venture into a space that was close and dark and possessed of only one exit, should be the day that Barbara Beaumont decided to make what was probably her first visit ever to a worthless and abandoned mine in a place that must be considered, even for Nevada, fairly remote. Yet somehow the circumstances, once they'd presented themselves, didn't seem surprising at all.

Barbara's voice came again: “I know you're in there! But I'm not coming in, you have to come out!”

Susan slowly shook her head. The choice between remaining in a dark cave and meeting Barbara Beaumont in the sunlight was not an agreeable one, and was possibly on a par with having to decide whether to enter hell by subway or by taxicab.

“I'm not going to wait all day!” Barbara screeched.

“Shhhhh!” said Susan to her dogs, but they knew when to be quiet and the command was entirely superfluous. “She won't come in,” Susan whispered, “she'll go away.”

“Get out here!” Barbara shouted. “Or I'm coming in after you!”

What am I going to do?
Susan wondered.

Going deeper into the mine was an unattractive idea, but it was preferable to meeting Barbara. So she turned that way—but this wasn't going to work either. For in this direction, in the blackened shaft leading deeper into the mine, she heard a masculine voice calling, “I'm on my way!” Then she heard footsteps, and a moment later, in the black distance, she saw the gleam of a lantern.

Barbara wasn't looking for her at all.

Barbara was looking for this man who had ventured far deeper into the mine than Susan had.

When he wiped his brow with the hand holding the lantern, Susan caught a glimpse of his face. The visage was familiar, but she couldn't immediately place it.

Then she did place it.

It was Malcolm MacIsaac, the private detective from Albany.

He was coming toward Barbara, and Barbara was coming toward him.

Susan was in the middle.

S
USAN GRABBED UP
Scotty and Zelda, whispered “Shhhh!” once more for good measure, and then backed across the dark corridor. Glancing toward the entrance, she saw that it was indeed Barbara Beaumont waiting for the detective—Barbara in all her desert splendor of whip-cord jodhpurs, white silk blouse, and knee-length leather jacket in forest green. Barbara peered into the cave, but Susan stood in darkness and could not be seen.

In fear that Mr. MacIsaac's lantern would catch on her pale skin, or some of her clothing, or the dog's eyes, or any little thing that would alert him to her presence, Susan backed far into the secondary shaft.

Taking a deep breath, she crouched down and backed under the bowed supports and beams.

It grew narrower quickly, until she could feel the walls on either side of her at once. Yet because she still feared she might be within reach of the detective's lantern, Susan continued to back up, squeezing herself and holding the dogs even more tightly against her breast.

They were utterly silent, and she blessed them in her heart.

She continued to back up until she felt the sinking roof of the passage against her shoulders and back. It was rock, but the rock was crumbly, and sand and bits of gravel spilled down the back of her neck.

Mr. MacIsaac passed. His lantern light flashed on the walls of the narrow passage, sooty as lampblack, but it did not touch her, and he did not even glance her way.

She released her breath in a long sigh.

“I didn't hear you at first, Mrs. Beaumont,” she heard MacIsaac say. “Sound travels only so far in a place like this, and then it just stops dead.”

“That is a scientific fact of undying interest to me,” said Barbara, “and I will be sure to note it in my diary tonight. I will also be sure to…”

Then they passed out of Susan's hearing.

Susan waited in the silence and darkness a full minute more before moving—just in case MacIsaac came back into the cave.

She attempted to put the dogs down, but the walls of the cave were so narrow, she could not move her arms. She tried to waddle forward.

She couldn't move. She'd wedged herself in.

She nearly screamed from fear.

This was exactly what her worst nightmares were like.

She tried to twist sideways. She couldn't. She was stuck. She whimpered.

Scotty and Zelda whimpered in sympathy.

She drew in her breath, and then found she was in so tightly she couldn't even fill her lungs.

This made her feel even worse, but it also gave her an idea.

She slowly exhaled
all
her breath.

Without worrying that she might break her nose, she simply pitched herself forward and slipped out of her stifling corner.

She threw out her elbows to keep from crushing Scotty and Zelda beneath her. This saved the dogs, saved her nose, and only tore open the sleeves of her shirt and abraded the skin of her forearms.

She released the dogs and crawled forward until she could stand upright. She took a deep, full breath, and then peered toward the entrance of the cave. She saw no one outside.

Hugging the walls, she crept closer to the entrance of the mine. The dogs followed at her heels.

She stood just inside the entrance and listened. She heard nothing.

Then a harrowing screech.

She startled so that she slipped and fell forward onto the ground, expecting the worst—whatever that might be.

But the harrowing screech was only that of a bird of prey wheeling overhead.

No Barbara. No MacIsaac. And no sign of anyone else.