Journey to Yesterday (11 page)

Moments later, she forgot her fear. “Oh, my,” she murmured,
“will you look at that?” In the lantern light, flecks of gold and silver
glittered from the cave walls. “How far down are we going?”

“I think they’re at eight hundred feet.”

Eight hundred feet! She looked up, felt her heart begin to
pound when all she saw was darkness.

A short time later, the cage landed with a dull thud. A
tunnel stretched out ahead of them, illuminated in the glow of the lanterns
strung overhead. The sound of metal striking rock echoed off the walls.

“Hey, Rio, is that you?”

“How ya doing, Moose?” Alejandro lifted the bar and stepped
out of the cage. Turning, he offered Shaye his hand.

“Who’s that you’ve got with you?”

“This here’s Miss Shaye Montgomery. She’s never been in a mine
before.”

“Well, bring her on down. We hit a rich vein yesterday
morning.”

They walked down the tunnel, careful to avoid the tracks.
She could hear the rumble of an ore cart in the distance.

Moose was aptly named. He was far and away the biggest man
Shaye had ever met. Solid and square, he looked to be at least six feet, six
inches tall. Sweat gleamed on his chest; his biceps were bigger than her
thighs. He had long blond hair; a faded red bandana was tied around his
forehead to keep his hair out of his face. There was a snake tattooed on his
left shoulder.

“Miz Montgomery, welcome to the Robison mine.” His voice was
as big as he was, and echoed off the walls.

“Thank you.” She glanced around, feeling uneasy. The tunnel
was about seven feet high and five feet wide. Here and there, she could see
huge timbers shoring up the ceiling. Wooden planks had been placed against one
wall. The precautions should have made her feel better, but somehow, they only
made her more nervous. A few feet behind Moose, she could see a wooden ladder
leading up to another level.

“All right if we look around?” Alejandro asked.

“Sure. We’re not doing any more blasting today.” Moose
reached into his pocket. “Ever seen raw gold, Miss Montgomery?”

“No.”

“Here ya go.” He handed her a lump of gold the size of a
marble. “Found that in some clay this morning.”

When she started to give it back to him, he shook his head.
“Keep it.”

“Really? Thank you.”

“Well, come along.” Moose said, moving down the tunnel. He
pointed at the wall on the left. “Vein starts here. Don’t know how we missed it
the first time. The face of this here drift assayed at three thousand a ton,
some prime samples went over four grand.”

Alejandro whistled. “Guess I should have bought some stock.”

“I told you so,” Moose said. “It’s nigh on to seventeen
dollars a share.”

Alejandro laughed. “That you did! Well,” he said, slapping
Moose on the back, “I’ll get my share one way or the other.”

Moose laughed, too. “I reckon you will, at that. They hit a
new vein over to the Standard, too.”

Alejandro nodded. “I heard Jim Mason struck it rich, too.”

“Yep. Ole Jim, he bought stock in the Standard when it was
forty cents a share. Hear he made more than six thousand dollars. I remember a
few years back when a couple miners bought a claim for nine hundred fifty
dollars. They brung out thirty-seven thousand in gold, then sold the mine for
sixty-five thousand.”

Shaye’s eyes widened. Sixty-five thousand dollars was a pile
of money; in this day and age, when you could buy three pounds of salt pork for
ten cents and a man could buy a pocket watch for a dollar, it must have seemed
like a million.

“I heard about a couple of miners at the Bodie who found a
pocket of rich ore a while back,” Alejandro remarked. “They asked for shares
instead of wages, then told the owners about their strike.”

“Yeah, I recollect that. Stock went up to fifty-five bucks a
share. Pretty soon those two were earnin’ near ‘bout nine hundred dollars a
day.”

Shaye pressed against the wall as a tall man pushing an ore
cart moved down the tunnel toward the hoist.

“Moose, dammit, if you don’t light a fire under Tolley, I’m
gonna whip his ass. I swan, he…”

“Hey, watch your language, Dave, we got comp’ny,” Moose
said.

Dave’s eyes widened when he saw Shaye. “My apologies, ma’am.
I didn’t mean no disrespect. Howdy, Rio.”

“Hey, Dave,” Alejandro said. “How are you doing,
amigo
?”

“Same as always, Rio,” Dave replied with a grin. “Counting
the hours until shift change.”

Shaye could understand that. She was anxious to get out of
the mine. She knew it was just her imagination, but she felt like the walls
were closing in on her. How did the miners spend twelve hours a day down here?
She edged closer to Alejandro, finding comfort in his nearness.

“How did William Bodey happen to find gold here?” she asked,
hoping to take her mind off her growing sense of claustrophobia.

Moose rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Well, according to the
story I heard, he was huntin’ his dinner and he shot hisself a rabbit. Didn’t
kill it though. He followed the rabbit to its den and while he was digging
down, trying to get the dang thing, he hit pay dirt. Thing is, he never got to
spend any of it cause he froze to death that winter.”

“That’s so sad,” Shaye remarked.

“Reckon so,” Moose agreed. “Thanks for letting us look
around, Moose,” Alejandro said. He looked at Shaye. “You ready to go back up?”

“More than ready.”

“Come back anytime,” Moose said. “A pretty girl is always
welcome.”

“Thank you, but I think once is enough.”

“Well, if you change your mind, come see us again. I’ll walk
you back.”

“No need,” Alejandro said. He took Shaye’s hand in his and
they started walking back toward the shaft.

Shaye frowned as she heard a dull roaring sound. “I thought
Moose said they weren’t doing any more blasting today.”

“Yeah.” His hand tightened around hers as the ground beneath
them shuddered. Muttering an oath, he pulled her into a passageway that led off
the main tunnel. She stared ahead into the darkness, wondering where it led.

Alejandro dropped to his knees, pulling her with him. “Shit!
Get down!”

Before Shaye had time to wonder what was happening, she was
face down in the dirt with Alejandro lying across her, his big body shielding
hers. There was a low rumble, like distant thunder, a shriek that sounded
eerily like a woman’s scream. The ground beneath her shifted, heaving
violently. Clods of dirt rained down around them.

Being a California girl, her first thought was that it was
an earthquake. And then she heard the faint wail of a siren from above ground,
the cries and screams of frightened men, and she knew it wasn’t an earthquake.

The mine had caved in.

Shaye released a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding
when the earth beneath her stopped trembling. There was a pain in her left
cheek, her reticule was an uncomfortable lump under her left arm.

A moment later, Alejandro rolled off her. She felt a rush of
panic as she opened her eyes to utter blackness. She knew he was there, but she
couldn’t see him, couldn’t see anything.

“Rio?”

“I’m right here.”

His hand brushed her shoulder, slid down her arm, closed
around her fingers.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, I think so.” She sat up. Lifting one hand to her
cheek, she felt a warm stickiness on her fingertips.

Alejandro helped her to her feet. “Guess I picked a bad day
to show you the mine,” he muttered wryly.

“Yes, I guess so.”

“Don’t worry. I’m sure help’s on the way.”

She nodded; then, realizing he couldn’t see her, said, “I
hope so.” She clung to his hand, her heart pounding like a jackhammer. The mine
had caved in. But maybe they weren’t in any danger. Alejandro had pulled her
into an off-shoot of the main tunnel. Maybe it led to the outside.

She took a deep breath. “This leads outside, right?”

“No. It’s just a tunnel where the vein played out.”

She tried not to think of what would happen if this section
of the mine collapsed, too, or if they ran out of air before someone came to
rescue them. Buried alive…she clung tighter to Alejandro’s hand.

“Moose!” she exclaimed. “What happened to him?”

“I don’t know. Moose!” Alejandro shouted. “Moose, can you
hear me?”

There was no answer.

She didn’t want to think about Moose and the other men,
buried beneath tons of dirt and rock, and she shook the thought away. She and
Alejandro were still alive. Maybe Moose and the others were, too.

He gave a tug on her hand. “Come on, let’s see how far back
this goes. Maybe it leads up to the next level.”

She followed him down the narrow passageway. The blind
leading the blind, she thought. He was right in front of her, yet she couldn’t
see a thing.

They hadn’t gone far when he swore under his breath.

“What’s wrong?” she asked anxiously.

“It’s a dead end.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

She didn’t want to believe it. There had to be a way out, if
they could just see it. Her camera! Why hadn’t she thought of it sooner?
Reaching into her reticule, she pulled out her camera. Easing to Alejandro’s
left, she took a picture. In the light of the flash, she saw that he was right.

“Handy,” Alejandro remarked as she took another photo.

She shivered as she tucked the camera into her reticule
again. She couldn’t help wondering if she going to die down here? Alejandro
would probably survive, she thought, since history said he had been hanged on
August twelfth, but what if her journey into the past changed history? If not
for her, he wouldn’t be down here now. Today was the twenty-sixth of June. Had
she robbed him of forty-seven days of life? If he died and she made it back to
her own time, would Bodie’s history books now say he had died in a cave-in?

He turned and drew her into his arms. She was shivering
uncontrollably. “It’ll be all right,” he said, his voice low and soothing.
“Trust me. Hear that?”

She cocked her head to the side as she heard the faint wail
of a siren from up above. “Yes.”

“They know what to do. They’ll have us out of here as soon
as possible.”

She slipped her arms around his waist and held on tight. She
couldn’t seem to stop shaking. “How long do you think it will take?”

“I don’t know, darlin’.”

“Maybe we could dig our way out.”

“With what? Our bare hands?”

The idea was ludicrous, but at the moment she was willing to
try anything. “Maybe we could find a piece of wood. Or a…a, I don’t know, a
rock.”

“They know we’re down here. They’ll come for us.” His lips
brushed the top of her head; she felt it down to her toes. “We might as well
sit down while we’re waiting,” he suggested. “It might take them awhile to dig
us out.”

What if they didn’t know they were there? What if the man
who let them down in the hoist didn’t remember them? What if… She pushed the
morbid thoughts from her mind. Someone would find them. She had to believe
that.

He sat down, and she sat close beside him, grateful for his
arm around her shoulders.

“How long will the air last?”

“Long enough,” he said reassuringly.

“Do you think….do you think that Moose and the others are
dead?”

She felt him shrug. “Damned if I know.”

Her gaze moved through the darkness, seeing nothing. She
couldn’t remember ever being in total darkness before. It was oddly
disorienting, and more than a little frightening.

They sat in silence for several minutes, the only sound that
of dirt trickling down from overhead. She didn’t know what Alejandro was
thinking about, but all she could think about was the fact that there were tons
and tons of dirt overhead that could come crashing down on them at any second.

She couldn’t remember ever being so afraid, or so close to
death. She wasn’t ready to die, she thought frantically. Not now. She took
several deep breaths, willing herself to stay calm.

“You all right, darlin’?” he asked.

“I guess so. What did you do before you came to Bodie?” she
asked. Maybe, if she could get him talking, it would take her mind off how
afraid she was.

“Same thing I do here.”

“Gamble?”

“Seems to be my chosen profession. It’s the one thing I’m
good at.”

“So you’ve always been a gambler?”

“No, not always.”

He drew her closer. His nearness was warm and comforting.

“I worked on a ranch in Montana for awhile, breaking horses.
It was steady work. Fair pay.” He laughed softly. “But the real money was gambling
with the other hands on Saturday night. I made more playing poker in one night
than I made in wages.”

“Why did you leave?”

“I took the foreman for three hundred dollars one night. He
accused me of cheating, called me a couple of names a lady shouldn’t hear. I
was young and hotheaded, and I laid into him. Broke his nose and a couple of
ribs. I left before he could fire me.”

“How old were you?”

“Nineteen.”

“And you’ve been earning your living gambling ever since?”

“Yeah. I guess it ain’t much of a life, but I’ve seen a lot
of country, and just about every boom town in the West. I reckon this one’ll go
bust, too, sooner or later. They all do.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that by next
year, only six mines would still be operating. Instead, she asked him if he had
ever lived with his mother’s people. “I spent my summers in the Black Hills
when I was young,” he said. “My old man had a small ranch near Deadwood. My
mother and I went to see her people during the Sun Dance. Those were good days.
I miss them.”

“I’ve read about the Sun Dance. It always seemed like such a
barbaric custom. Did you ever…?”

“No. My mother died when I was nine. A Pawnee raiding party
burned our house down the following year, and my old man packed us up and we
moved back east to take care of his sister, who was ailing. I didn’t like city
life, not after growing up wild. Seems like I was always in trouble of one kind
or another. By the time I was sixteen, my old man and I were hardly speaking to
each other. We had a big blow-up one night, and I left.”

He’d never had a place to call home since then. He had slept
in the open when he was broke, in hotels when he was flush, gradually coming to
the realization that it wasn’t the place that made a house a home, but the
people in it. He wondered briefly what it would be like to be married to Shaye,
then shrugged the idea aside. She was a lady through and through, far too good
for the likes of him.

“What did you and your father fight about?” Shaye asked.

“Everything. I didn’t like school and I didn’t go much. I
was keeping company with a pretty wild bunch. Drinking.” He grunted softly.
“Gambling. Anyway, one thing led to another. We both said some things we
shouldn’t have, but I was just as stubborn as he was, and I refused to back
down.” He blew out a deep breath. “I never went back,” he said softly, and she
heard the regret in his voice. “Two years later I got a letter from my aunt
telling me he was dead.”

“I’m sorry, Rio.”

“Yeah,” he said softly. “Me, too, but it was a long time ago.
Hell, that’s enough about me. What about you?”

“My life is much less exciting. I lived my whole life in the
same house until I got married…”

“You’re married!”

“Not anymore.”

His hand squeezed her shoulder. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Shaye frowned, then realized he thought her husband was
dead. “We’re divorced,” she said, and then wondered if being divorced was still
as scandalous as it had once been.

“I’ve never met a divorced woman,” he remarked. “Can’t say
I’m sorry your marriage didn’t work out, though, cause if it had, you probably
wouldn’t be here now, with me.” He laughed softly. “Of course, I don’t imagine
you’re too happy about that at the moment, all things considered.”

She had to laugh at that. All things considered, she was
still glad to be here, with him.

“Go on,” he urged.

“There’s really nothing to tell. I grew up, got a job, got
married, got divorced.” Except for a couple of high profile news stories she
had covered early in her career, being trapped in a mine in a ghost town that
had been dead for over a hundred years was the most exciting, and frightening,
experience she’d ever had. And Alejandro Valverde was definitely the most
exciting man she had ever met. She shrugged. “That about sums it up.”

“I have a feeling there’s a lot more to you than that.”

“Well, I was just giving you the
Reader’s Digest
version.”

“What the deuce is that?”

She grinned. “It’s like a synopsis. The short version as
opposed to the long, boring one.”

“I doubt if you could ever be boring, darlin’.”

Silence fell between them. The darkness seemed heavy,
overpowering. She shifted her weight and the movement dislodged a trickle of
dirt. She felt it against her cheek, reminding her that there were several tons
of earth just overhead. She clenched her hands, shivering as fear crawled over
her skin again. What if this tunnel collapsed, too? What if they were never
found?

“Talk to me, Rio.”

“What about, darlin’?”

“Anything. Anything at all.” She needed the sound of his
voice to distract her. He had a beautiful voice, soft and low and sexy,
blatantly male. Blatantly intimate. Like black velvet.

Alejandro thought a minute. “I remember my grandmother
telling me how light came into the world,” he began. “Long ago, in the time
before time, the People lived in the underworld. There was no sun or moon or
stars, no light at all, except the light cast by the eagle feathers that the
People carried. After a time, the wise men of the tribe got together to see if
they could find a way to make more light. One of the wise men decided they
should make a sun and a moon, and so they found a piece of round hide and
painted it yellow and placed it in the sky. This sun did not give much light,
and the next day, they took it down and made it larger and brighter. Four times
the sun rose and set and was made larger, until it was very large and very
bright.

“There lived with the People a witch and a wizard who were
angry with what the wise men had done, and they tried to destroy the sun and
the moon. This frightened the sun and the moon, and they fled the underworld
and escaped to the heavens.”

“That’s a wonderful story,” Shaye said. “How long do you
think we’ve been down here?”

“I don’t know. A couple of hours, maybe more.”

It seemed like forever. How long would it take for the
miners who were topside to dig them out? Hours? Days? She posed the question to
Alejandro, dreading the answer.

“It’s hard to say,” he replied. “Depends on how much dirt
they have to dig through to get to us, and whether the shaft is still clear.”

“It might be days then?”

“Shaye…”

“Tell me the truth.”

“It’s a possibility, but I wouldn’t worry about it. The
miners have dealt with cave-ins before. They know what to do.”

Yes, she thought, shivering, but would they be able to do it
in time?

“Shaye, it’ll be all right, trust me.”

“I can’t help it, I’m scared.”

Alejandro blew out a breath. He didn’t blame her for being
scared. He was a mite unsettled himself. There had been cave-ins before; he’d
seen the bodies carried out of the mines, heard the sobs of the widows and
children.

“It’ll be all right,” he said again.

Shaye laughed softly. “Who are you trying to convince?”

He laughed, too, his arm tightening around her shoulders,
and suddenly, neither of them was laughing.

“Shaye…”

She couldn’t see him in the darkness, but she could feel the
heat of his body next to hers, his thigh pressed against her own. It was
suddenly hard to breathe, hard to think of anything but the man beside her.

She wanted him, she thought, wanted him to hold her, to kiss
her. To make love to her. Oh, but it was crazy. She hardly knew him, yet there
was no denying the attraction that hummed between them whenever their eyes met.
And in the back of her mind was the thought, what if? What if they were going
to die here? Alejandro might live. Maybe her being here wouldn’t change his
fate, but that didn’t mean she would get out alive…

She felt his breath on her face, and then his lips claimed
hers and drove every other thought from her mind. Heat spiraled through her as
his tongue caressed her lower lip, tasting her. He turned toward her and she
melted into his embrace, all her fears forgotten. His arms were strong around
her; surely he would keep her safe. His hand stroked her back, his touch light,
sending shivers of pleasure down her spine. And his mouth…she closed her eyes,
lost in the wonder of his kiss. Her hands clutched his shoulders, drifted down
his arm, curving over his biceps to lightly knead the muscles there.