Tainted Gold (25 page)

Wiping tears out of her eyes, Quillen drew a deep breath but refused to cry. She wrapped her hands around the arrow shaft, tried to budge it, but couldn’t. Tucker wouldn’t have missed, she thought, not if he’d had two good fingers and she hadn’t fallen.

“I couldn’t tell you in front of him,” Jason went on. “And this lousy disguise and that dumb song was all I could think of to get your attention. I had to be careful, Quill, so Ferris or Cal wouldn’t tumble.”

“What do you mean, Cal?” she asked, giving up on the arrow.

“He’s in it with Cassil and Ferris. They’ve found gold in your mine, and you know what that does to people.”

“But Tucker said—” She stopped, raised a shaky hand to her forehead and brushed leaves out of her hair. “Oh, God, I don’t know,” she moaned. “I don’t know what to believe.”

“Would you believe the mother lode?” He held his hand out to her. “Come with me, I’ll show you.”

She hesitated, then took his hand. They stayed in the trees, and at a spot where the creek banks narrowed, stepped across the creek to the south bank. The trees grew farther apart here, and the ground sloped gently downward to the canyon floor. They reached it about a half-mile downstream from the shattered cottonwood and followed the scrabbly creek banks. Quillen shaded her eyes as she looked up at the sheer backside of the granite hill.

“We aren’t going up there, I hope?” she asked.

“No,” Jason answered, and led her up the wooded hillside on their right.

There was a fissure that looked natural in the flank of the hill. It was wide enough for two people to enter abreast, but the dark crack made Quillen shudder.

“This is an old cave,” Jason told her as he dropped to his knees, reached inside, and withdrew a battery-operated lantern. “They just widened it out some, blew a hole in the floor, and dropped a ladder right into one of your father’s shafts.” He eyed her skirts dubiously. “Careful, now, and don’t break your neck.”

“I’ll try,” she answered, and held her breath as she followed him inside.

A claustrophobic spasm tightened her throat as darkness and a damp, moldy smell enfolded her. She clutched Jason’s arm and clung to him as he switched on the lamp. The beam illuminated craggy walls and a water-pocked floor. Water dripped somewhere, the sound magnified by the rock enclosing them. Quillen’s heart yammered loudly in her throat and she tried not to think about her father.

Ten yards inside the cave they came upon the hole in the floor and Jason shone the light on it. There was a ladder, a metal one, securely bolted to the side of the hole.

“I’d better go first,” he said, setting the lantern down as he swung himself onto the ladder. “When I tell you, follow.”

He picked up the lamp and disappeared. She waited, shivering with dread, until she heard him say her name, his voice echoing up to her. Murmuring prayers that she scarcely realized she remembered, Quillen eased herself onto the ladder, steeling herself against the damp on the rungs and the chill in the rocks surrounding her as she backed down the ladder. It was a short drop, probably no more than twenty feet, but she felt ready to scream when Jason’s hands closed on her waist and her feet hit solid floor.

“Hang on to me,” he said, clenching her hand in his and pointing the lantern as he drew her down the shaft.

Long ago the ceiling had been roofed out and they didn’t have to stoop. Water glistened on the floor in the lamp beam, and beyond its warm yellow glow, dark wet rock gleamed. They went slowly, Quillen gritting her teeth against the suck and slosh around her feet. She nearly screamed again but had sense enough not to when she heard the first sagging, creaking groan in the beams overhead.

“Oh, God, Jason,” she whimpered, “I don’t think I can do this.”

“Sure you can,” he soothed, and tightened his grip on her hand.

Abruptly they stepped out of the shaft into a wide chamber. The air was fresher and Quillen drew a deep, grateful lungful that froze suddenly when electric lights strung overhead blazed and she saw Tucker kneeling beside a portable generator.

His robe was gone, and so was his Realgar makeup, though scraps of latex still clung to his jawline. The jeans and denim shirt he wore she hadn’t seen in the truck, but she guessed he’d stashed them underneath his spare robe.

“Somehow,” he said simply as he rose to his feet and faced them, “I knew I’d find you here, Lyons.”

“Leave us alone, Ferris,” Jason retorted, and Quillen gasped as she saw him withdraw a pistol from an unseen pocket in his costume.

“I intend to,” Tucker answered calmly. “I’ll leave you to Sheriff Blackburn, who’s on his way. I came to get Quillen the hell out of here.” He looked at her then and smiled. “Let’s go, love.”

She couldn’t move; she wanted to, but she couldn’t. Her mouth wouldn’t work, either. It opened, but nothing came out, and indecision rooted her feet to the rock. She didn’t know whom to believe, whom to trust. It had been Tucker’s arrow in the tree, all right, but Jason was holding a gun. Why? He couldn’t have known that Tucker would intercept them here. That left only one possibility, one that raised the hair on the back of her neck and made her take a step away from Jason and look frantically, pleadingly, at Tucker. His smile faded and his eyebrows drew together as he faced Jason squarely.

“Let me give you a little advice before we leave,” Tucker said, his voice quiet but firm. “Pull the fuses on those charges that your buddy Cal told me he planted this morning. You might as well, Lyons—there’s no gold on the other side of that rock shelf, and the blast could very well bring down this whole mountain.”

Jason cocked the pistol. The metallic click, magnified by the rock walls, made up Quillen’s mind, and a shiver of dread crawled up her back as another agonized rumble shuddered the rocks beneath her feet. With a hard shove between her shoulder blades, Jason pushed her toward Tucker.

She stumbled, but he moved quickly and caught her before she fell. His arms closed around her and she shivered, clinging to him and immobile with terror as a third, long groan from the ceiling reverberated through every bone in her body. Oh, God, she thought, if only she hadn’t let Jason’s ridiculous song frighten her, if only she’d gone first to the Wizard’s Cave…

“The sheriff’s on his way,” Jason said behind her, “is the oldest line in the world, Ferris.”

“Old, but effective,” he corrected him. “And in this case true. Don’t be an idiot. I started following Wilson after I went back to Quillen’s truck and found my bow gone. He was the only one who could have used it, but, unfortunately, I didn’t get close enough to tackle him until after he’d taken the shot at Quillen. I threatened to whack him with another tree limb and he told me then about the charges and the scheme the two of you concocted to make off with the gold right under Quillen and my uncle’s nose—using his equipment, of course—”

“Shut up,” Jason snapped viciously.

“You’ve only got two problems,” Tucker went on, “one, there’s no gold in this mine. The mother lode is nowhere near here. Two, the blast you set off Wednesday afternoon to blow up my seismometer has severely weakened all the roof supports and shorings—”

“Says you,” Jason sneered.

Right on cue, a fourth groan shuddered the floor,
rose in pitch. As Jason glanced up quickly, Tucker grabbed her and threw them against the wall. An ear-splitting crack followed and Tucker slapped his hand over her mouth and the scream tearing up her throat. The lights flickered and went out, and smoke clogged her nose. She gagged, pushed his hand away, and buried her face in the front of his shirt until the low rumble died.

Coughing, she peeled herself off him then and looked over her shoulder. There was nothing but a pile of rock and two shattered timbers in the spot where Jason had stood. She heard another groan and realized it was Jason as Tucker pushed her away and picked his way across the rock-littered floor.

Quillen trailed behind him and helped lift chunks of granite off Jason. His lantern had fallen clear and gave them light to work by. In its bright beam, his face was chalky and his eyes screwed shut with pain.

As cave-ins went, it wasn’t much, and within a few minutes they’d cleared the debris off his body. His right leg was bent at an odd angle. Broken, Quillen thought, pressing her hand to her mouth as Tucker bent over him.

“Could be fractured,” he told Jason, who opened his eyes and looked up at him. “You hurt anyplace else?”

“My—my ribs,” he panted.

“I know the feeling,” Tucker returned dryly as he reached over him. He picked up the lamp and stood. “Stay here,” he told Quillen, and took a right-hand shaft out of the chamber, the main one that led to the surface through the Wizard’s Cave. Jason glanced at her almost pleadingly, but she turned her back on him.

“Well, folks, we’re trapped,” Tucker announced grimly as he came back into the chamber. “That shaft is blocked”—he nodded at the rock-choked tunnel Jason and Quillen had followed—“and so is that one, obviously.” He brushed dirt off the front of his shirt and eyed Jason steadily. “Cal told me when the fuses were set for eight o’clock tonight, but he didn’t tell me where. I figure it’ll take a rescue crew about twelve hours to dig us out of here, unless we can find another way ourselves. Fortunately, love, your father was very meticulous about air shafts, so the oxygen should hold—that is, Lyons, unless you’ve got a death wish and you refuse to tell me where the charges are.”

Limply, Jason raised his right hand and gestured toward the far wall of the chamber. “That shaft, the new one,” he said breathlessly. “About two hundred yards.”

“Pray it didn’t fall in, because if it did—” Tucker didn’t finish his sentence, just let it trail off as he moved across the chamber, fumbled near the generator, and returned with another lantern which he gave to Quillen. “Stay here with him; you should be safe enough. The cave-in relieved the pressure for a while—I hope. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Tucker, it was your arrow in the tree,” she blurted out, “I couldn’t believe it, I didn’t
want
to believe it—” She gasped in midsentence and clutched his forearms in her hands. “Last Sunday,” she breathed, “you left some arrows in the target. Cal said he’d give them back to you, only he didn’t, did he?”

“No, love, he didn’t.” He smiled, stroking his dirty knuckles down her cheek. “And I finally remembered those missing arrows when I went back to the truck, found my bow gone but the quiver still there. I knew then that it had to be Cal. He didn’t need the arrows; he already had them. He only had to change the tips. He took the bow and left the quiver because it had my fingerprints all over it. If their plan to lure you into the woods and kill you had worked, it would’ve been just another nail in my coffin.”

“Oh God, Tucker, I’m
sorry
—”

“Don’t be,” he interrupted her gently. “I understand. I’ll be back soon.”

He kissed the top of her head and disappeared down the shaft. Quillen turned on her lantern and trained it at the dark maw of the tunnel.

“Quill, listen to me,” Jason panted behind her. “I didn’t want—we didn’t want—to hurt you. Honest to God we didn’t, but when you told Cal that you knew about the gold and that you were going to the EPA we didn’t have any choice. It all would have come out then, don’t you see?”

“No, Jason,” she replied icily, “I
don’t
see.”

“I’m almost glad we got caught,” he said wearily, “and I’m glad you’re all right.”

“Unfortunately,” Quillen said thickly as she blinked back tears, “I can’t say the same for you.”

Time crawled and she stood shivering and trembling in the near center of the chamber, trying not to think about the tons of granite over her head. She kicked rocks out of her way and began to pace, wrapping her hands around the lantern handle to keep them from shaking.

She had no idea how long Tucker had been gone when she felt the shudder beneath her feet. The rumble followed and her heart shot up into her mouth. She felt the tremor pass, heard Jason’s frightened whimper, and then heard the faint, echoing splinter at the far end of the shaft Tucker had taken.

Her own fear evaporated and Quillen ran after him, clutching the lamp. The ceiling was lower and she nearly smacked her head on a roof support. Stooping slowed her down but she ran as fast as she could, the lantern beam bobbing drunkenly before her. There was another light at the far end of the tunnel, daylight, dusty and bright.

Her chest heaving, Quillen burst out of the shaft into a small, smoke-hung chamber. There was no opposite wall and no Tucker, just a partially collapsed air shaft overhead and clods of earth littering the stone floor. Before she could catch her breath, let alone cry, she heard his voice, a quiet, calm whisper.

“Over here, love—softly now—Mother Earth may have another stretch or two left in her—”

“Where?”

“Down here,” he said.

Cautiously, Quillen crossed the chamber, stepping prudently around two fat chunks of dynamite. She nearly slipped on the edge at the far side and looked down at Tucker, grinning at her from a hole about ten feet below her feet. His face was black and his hair gray with dirt.

“What are you doing down there?” she asked. “What happened?”

“I pulled the fuses,” he whispered, “moved them way out of the way, put my hand on the wall to stand up, and it fell in. I got so excited when I saw the molybdenite that I lost my head, slipped, and fell down here.”