.45-Caliber Deathtrap (16 page)

“Oh!” Li Mei cried.

“You know,” Cuno said thinly, pushing slowly onto his elbows, “I might've spoke too soon.” The wood cracked again, dropping farther. Cuno's voice rose as he threw an arm toward the girl. “Crawl on back away—!”

The floor opened up like a giant mouth, the wood cracking and the broken planks dropping with a great belching, thundering din.

Cuno heard Li Mei's shrill scream above the roar as he and the girl tumbled straight down into darkness.

CANNADY LOOKED UP
from the rock he'd dived behind, glanced above the mine rubble to the portal. Smoke billowed from the mouth, ghostlike in the darkness. The other men, having heard the rumble, had held fire.

Cannady glanced at Case Oddfellow and Ned Crockett, crouched behind a boulder to his left. “What the hell was that?”

“Sounded like a cave-in,” said Case.

Cannady stared at the gaping mine portal, from which no more sounds issued.

“Hey, son of a bitch in the mine!” he shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth. “You still kickin'?”

Nothing.

“Let's check it out,” said Ed Brown, standing behind a tree somewhere to Cannady's right.

“Hold on,” Cannady ordered. “Might be a trap.”

“Whinnie,” yelled Brown, his deep voice booming amongst the trees, “go check it out!”

“I ain't checkin' it out. You check it out!”

“Goddamnit!” Brown shouted, his voice cracking with fury. “I done told you to check it out. You owe me two cartwheels. You check it out, I'll call us even.”

Someone snickered. There was the metallic rasp of a rifle lever, the tinny clatter of a spent cartridge falling in gravel.

“Ah, shit,” said Whinnie, stepping out of the trees left of Brown—a stocky, bulbous-gutted figure in high-topped boots and a high-crowned hat, holding an old-model rifle across his chest. “I'll check it out, goddamnit, but you sure as pig shit better call us even, or…”

“Or you'll
what
?”

“Shut up, both of ya,” ordered Cannady. “Whinnie, haul your ass up there and see what the hell happened. Be quick about it. I'd still like to get a little shut-eye before dawn.”

“All right, all right,” complained Whinnie, crawling over the mine rubble, keeping his head raised toward the portal from which only silence issued. The dust had settled. The portal crouched across the rubble like a giant sleeping with his mouth open.

Whinnie spidered up the rocks and, breathing hard and staying low, edged a look through the mine mouth. He raised his rifle, sent several booming shots into the gaping, black hole. The shots ricocheted like firecrackers in a tin can.

Slowly, Whinnie straightened, staring intently at the mine floor.

Cannady chuffed. “Well, what the hell is it?”

A high-pitched chuckle sounded as the stocky man turned his head toward Cannady. “The floor done fell out from under 'em!”

Cannady stepped out from the tree. The others followed suit, and soon they'd all clambered over the rocks and stood outside the portal frame, staring into the cave. Like Whinnie had said, the floor had given way, the rotten planks dropping into another mine pit.

The men stood around the hole, snickering. Whinnie kicked a stone into the cavern. Two seconds later, the dull plop rose up through the darkness.

“Water,” Whinnie observed. “Good fifty feet down.”

Cannady dropped to one knee, canted his head over the hole. “Hey, son of a bitch—you alive down there?”

His voice echoed faintly before the hole swallowed it.

“Whoever he was,” Case said, “he's dead now.”

“The girl too,” said Brown. “Sorry, Cannady. I know how you was wantin' to turn her over to that whorehouse, make amends with your cousin.”

Cannady dug around in his shirt pocket, extracted a match. He raked the lucifer to life with his thumbnail and extended his arm into the hole.

The feeble light revealed only a foot-long stretch of the cavern walls, eight feet across, showing the chips and gouges of rock picks and shovels. Below lay darkness, thick as tar. The cool air wafting up smelled musty and humid. From deep inside the earth's bowels rose the faintly echoing screech of a rat.

“What a way to go.” Cannady dropped the match and rose. “Well, just to make sure…” He canted the barrel of his Remington over the hole and loosed six shots, filling the cave mouth with the smell of cordite.

He spat into the hole, turned away, and, holstering the six-gun, stalked back the way he'd come. “One Chink's good as another, and I
will
find another.” He yawned. “Don't know about you fellas, but I'm goin' back to sleep.”

Deep in the hole, chest-deep in frigid ground water, Cuno dug his fingers into a cleft in the cave wall with his left hand while holding Li Mei around her waist with the other arm.

The girl shivered, teeth clattering. They both kicked their legs in the water as Cuno held them snug against the wall with his left hand. Apparently, the girl couldn't swim. Whenever he loosened his grip, she slipped straight down in the water, sucking air nervously and grabbing frantically at his shirt and belt, entangling her legs in his, threatening to drown them both.

He didn't know how deep the pit was. When he'd hit the water, he'd shot maybe twenty feet down without touching bottom.

This was obviously an old digging, possibly ancient. No doubt more recent prospectors had stumbled upon it and, nailing planks over the original hole, added another tunnel straight into the hill.

The old planks now floated in the stygian water around Cuno and Li Mei. Their faces sported the nicks and cuts from when the planks had fallen on them during their descent from above.

They'd managed to avoid getting pinked by Cannady's rifle shots by hugging a small alcove.

“Are they gone?” the girl asked in a pinched voice, which sounded sepulchral in the close quarters. The water chugged and gurgled around them, unseen.

“Sounds like.”

Renewing his grip around her waist, Cuno ground his left hand deeper into the cleft. The hold wouldn't last much longer. His hand was getting so tired that the fingers felt as though nails had been driven through them.

“What do we do now?” the girl asked through a sob.

“Good question.”

He looked around. The cave was black as the inside of a buried coffin. Occasionally, there was a dull flash off the water, vagrant starlight seeping in from above. Otherwise, there was no difference between his eyes being open or closed.

“Whoever dug this pit had to have a way down here.”

Cuno felt around for a lower handhold—one that Li Mei could grasp. Finding one, he guided the girl's small, shaking hand to it, then found another notch she could rest her foot on, taking some of the strain off the hand.

Leaving her clinging awkwardly to the wall, her teeth clicking together, Cuno swam around the pit, running his hands against the wall, feeling for handholds. There were many pits and clefts, slight fissures probably caused by humidity over the years, but nothing like the steps he'd been hoping for. Whoever had dug the pit must have used ropes and pulleys to climb in and out and to remove the ore.

Shit.

He stopped and, growing heavy with fatigue, the water seemingly sucking him down into its black, chill depths, he looked around, opening his eyes wide as if to see better. It did no good.

The wall eight inches from his face was black velvet, unrelieved and undefined. Cuno moved ahead, kicking off the wall with his waterlogged boots, guiding with his left hand, using the right to tread water.

As he did so, his right hand touched something that didn't feel like wood planking. He gripped it, flipped it in his hand, running his thumb and index finger down its two-foot length—slender and smooth but knobbed at both ends.

Realizing it was a human bone, probably an arm or a leg, he dropped it, curling his lip. “Christ.”

“What is it?” the girl asked in a quaking voice.

A prospector must have fallen into the pit before the planks had been laid. No reason for the girl to know that.

“Just in a foul mood's all.”

“Oh.” She swallowed. “Me too.”

Cuno kicked himself forward. After another minute's search, his left hand found a knob of sorts, and gripped it. Using it to pull himself up, digging his boots against the wall, he found another about three feet above and right. He threw his left hand up, rammed his fingers into a cleft, and, gritting his teeth so hard he thought his jaws would crack, pulled.

His wet clothes and boots hung heavy, pulling him down. Water sluiced off him, raining into the pit. He should have kicked the boots off. Too late now. Though his bulging arms felt like rubber, he was making progress.

He reached up again with his right hand.

Damn…nothing but smooth stone only slightly relieved and gouged by pick blades and drills. He waved the right hand directly above his head.

There—another knob.

Reaching for it, he ground his left boot into a crack.

The crack crumbled beneath his boot sole.

Cuno's left hand jerked out of its cleft, and he fell straight down the wall like a grain sack dropped from a barn mow.

Splash!

The cold water closed around him, ringing his ears. He fought to the surface, spitting water, arms flailing blindly for purchase. His left fist smacked the wall—the bark of skinned, bruised knuckles. Ignoring the pain, he grabbed the only crack he could find, grinding the tips of his fingers into it.

“Oh…God…I can't hold on….” It was the girl, crying.

Spitting water and blinking, Cuno turned. “Li Mei.”

Another splash as the girl hit the water, immediately gasping and flailing at the surface.

Cuno had no strength left. Still, he threw his right arm out. His hand found her head, then slipped down, and he wrapped his fingers around her arm. He pulled her to him. Doing so, he lost his grip on the wall, and he too bobbed in the water like a bottom-heavy cork, trying to keep the girl afloat with his numb right hand.

Finally, he found another handhold, and brusquely dragged the gagging girl toward him and grabbed her around the waist. He coughed up water and looked around, feeling as desperate as he'd ever felt. Even if he could find enough handholds to climb up the wall to freedom, he wouldn't have the strength.

The pit had him, and it wasn't letting go.

He held the girl close. She convulsed with anguished sobs, calling for her father as she shivered against Cuno. As hard as he gripped her, he felt his arm and hands weakening, the muscles failing from exhaustion. In his mind's eye, she slipped down his side, out away from him, sinking down in the black water.

He dug his fingers so deep into her side that she cried out in agony.

“Hold on,” he told himself aloud. “Goddamnit, there's gotta be—”

“Li Mei! Cuno!”

The accented voice rang from above, echoing tonelessly off the pit's walls. At first, Cuno wasn't sure it wasn't his imagination or merely the water and wood gurgling around his legs.

“Papa!” Li Mei cried thinly. “We're
here
!”

Cuno followed the girl's gaze straight up the pit. There the darkness was less solid, more murky. He saw nothing. But the voice that cut through the murk was Kong's.

“I am here. Is Cuno with you?”

Cuno tightened his grip on the knob, which had become slick from his scraped, bloody fingers. “I'm here! Throw a rope!”

Time slowed down, and Cuno's muscles turned to lead as Kong, finding that his own rope wasn't long enough, had to retrieve Cuno's roan and splice Cuno's rope to his own. When Cuno finally heard the end of the rope slap the water, he was nearly too weak to grab it and hold his head above the water as he slipknotted the rope around Li Mei's waist.

Kong pulled the girl up easily, while Cuno clung to a knob with both bloody hands, wedging the edge of one boot sole into a crack. Gritting his teeth, he pressed his forehead against the wet wall and summoned all remaining strength to his arms and the foot braced against the crack.

Below, the pit was a huge viper mouth sucking him down.

After what seemed a miserably long time, Kong called, “I drop rope to you now, Cuno!”

The hemp whistled through the darkness to his right. He threw out his right hand, grabbed it, awkwardly knotted the end around his waist with numb, bloody fingers, and yelled for Kong to pull.

Two seconds later, Cuno rose with a jerk. The air squeezed from his lungs as he was slammed against the wall, then pulled straight up against it before he could get his heavy boots out before him. He walked up the side as the horse pulled, water sluicing out his boot tops and running back up his legs to his knees.

He shivered uncontrollably from the cold water and exhaustion.

Though every bone and muscle in his body cried out in pain, he'd never felt such deep relief as when his head broke over the pit's rim and the horse dragged him onto the mine's stony outer ledge.

“Ho, horse!” Kong yelled.

Cuno turned onto his side and, breathing hard and snaking his fingers under the rope to slacken it, lifted his gaze. Kong knelt before him, one hand on Cuno's shoulder.