Chapter 25 - Smoke and Shadows
Clara ran.
She did not look back when Miller’s revolver fell silent beneath a concentrated volley of carbine fire. Tears froze on her cheeks as she sprinted through the narrow alleyway between the blacksmith shop and the burning saloon. The heat from the blazing timbers was immense, scorching the side of her face even as the freezing wind tore at her clothes.
The air was thick with the stench of burning pitch, sulfur, and roasted meat from the livery where stray incendiary rounds had ignited the haylofts.
Behind her, the thudding of iron-shod hooves shook the frozen ground. Vane’s mounted outriders had crossed the shallows of the river, bypassing the ruined bridge, and were now pouring into the lower town like a black flood.
"Form line! Burn every structure! Leave nothing standing!" an officer’s voice barked through the smoke.
Clara reached the mouth of the Number Four silver mine just as the heavy wooden portal came into view. The adit was framed by massive, squared timber shoring, disappearing into the pitch-black maw of the mountain. Snow had been trampled into a muddy slurry by the panicked boots of thirty women and children who had passed through minutes before.
Suddenly, a shadow dropped from the low roof of the timber shed beside the portal.
Clara gasped, reaching for the small derringer in her pocket, but a strong, gloved hand clamped down over her mouth, pulling her violently into the shadows behind a stack of cordwood.
"It’s me," Nathaniel’s voice breathed against her ear.
He was breathing hard, his face smeared with soot and his knuckles scraped raw. The brass receiver of his rifle was hot to the touch, smelling sharply of cordite. He pulled his hand away, his chest heaving as he scanned the smoke-filled alleyway.
"Miller?" he asked softly.
Clara shook her head, unable to speak, her throat choked with grief and smoke.
Nathaniel’s jaw clenched, but there was no time to mourn. Below them, three cavalrymen on horseback trotted into the clearing outside the mine, carbines held low across their saddles. They saw the trampled snow leading into the drift.
"Lieutenant! The portal is open!" one of them shouted back toward the burning main street. "Tracks lead straight into the mountain!"
"They’re cornered!" the distant voice of Vane echoed. "Bring the second Gatling up to the adit! Block the entrance with canister fire! We’ll suffocate the rats in their own hole!"
Clara looked at Nathaniel, horror dawning in her eyes. "The mine only has one ventilation shaft on this side, Nathaniel. If they set fires at the entrance, the draft will pull the carbon monoxide straight into the main tunnel. Willa... the children... they’ll choke to death within twenty minutes."
Nathaniel glanced toward the interior of the timber shed. Stored against the back wall, hidden beneath a tarpaulin dusted with frozen snow, were three wooden crates marked with red stenciled lettering: *HAZARDOUS — DUPONT MINING POWDER — HIGH EXPLOSIVE.*
"They think we're hiding like rabbits," Nathaniel whispered, his eyes flashing with a wild, dangerous light. "They forgot that this whole mountain was built on dynamite."
He grabbed Clara’s shoulder, pulling her toward the dark mouth of the adit. "Take this," he said, pressing a miners’ brass carbide lantern and a tin of sulfur matches into her hands. "Run down the main drift until you hit the wooden rail tracks. Willa is with Martha at the second winze. Tell them to get flat on their bellies and cover their ears."
"What are you going to do?"
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Nathaniel pulled a spool of waxed fuse cord from his hunting vest, biting the end clean with his teeth. "I'm going to shut the front door."
***
