Chapter 26 - The Mountain's Wrath
Clara ran fifty yards into the subterranean blackness before striking a match. The tiny yellow flame flared with a sharp sizzle, catching the carbide wick of the lantern. A cool, greenish light pushed back the suffocating gloom of the tunnel.
The air in the shaft was damp, smelling of ancient wet granite, copper shavings, and iron rust. Above her head, massive timber sets groaned under the immense weight of the mountain. The sound of the world outside—the gunshots, the roaring flames, the screams—faded into a muffled, rhythmic thrumming, like blood pulsing in a giant’s veins.
Behind her, near the mouth of the drift, she heard the boots of soldiers crunching into the gravel.
"Advance by squads! Keep your carbines up! Watch the side crosscuts!"
Nathaniel’s silhouette stood framed against the gray, smoke-filled light of the entrance. He wasn't running. He was kneeling in the center of the drift, working furiously over two wooden crates of mining powder he had hauled into the narrow bottleneck where the rock ceiling was lowest.
"Boone!" Clara screamed, the sound echoing hollowly down the granite throat of the shaft.
Nathaniel didn't look back. He struck a match against the stone wall. The white spark caught the black-powder fuse with an angry, spitting hiss of blue smoke.
"Get down, Clara!" he yelled, turning and diving forward into the dark just as the first squad of cavalry rounded the portal timber.
"Hold! He’s lit a—"
The officer's warning was swallowed by a roar that shook the very foundations of the earth.
It was not a sound that entered through the ears; it was an iron fist that slammed directly into Clara’s chest, throwing her off her feet into the freezing mud of the drainage ditch. The world turned inside out. The air vanished from her lungs as a blinding wave of white light and searing heat tore down the drift, carrying with it a deafening hurricane of shattered timber, pulverized rock, and acrid black sulfur smoke.
Above them, the mountain screamed.
Thousands of tons of fractured granite, loosened by decades of winter frost and destabilized by the concussive shockwave of fifty pounds of Dupont powder, collapsed in a cataclysmic chain reaction. The heavy cedar shoring buckled like dry twigs. Huge slabs of stone sheared away from the ceiling, crashing down one after another in a thunderous roar that drowned out the explosion itself.
Clara curled into a ball, tucking the satchel beneath her body and locking her hands over the back of her neck as debris rained down around her. Small rocks pelted her back, and the thick, powdery dust of pulverized shale filled her mouth and nose, choking her into a violent fit of coughing.
Then, slowly, the terrible rumbling ceased.
A silence so profound descended upon the tunnel that Clara could hear the frantic pounding of her own heart against her ribs. The lantern had been blown out by the shockwave. The darkness was absolute—a pitch-black void so total that her eyes strained against the shadows until sparks danced across her vision.
"Nathaniel?" she whispered, her voice trembling in the choking dust.
There was no answer. Only the faint, steady trickle of loose gravel falling from the unseen ceiling.
"Nathaniel!" she cried louder, panic rising like bile in her throat. She crawled forward on her hands and knees, feeling through the sharp, jagged debris that covered the floor of the drift. Her fingers brushed against cold stone, broken wood, and then—warm, rough wool.
"Boone!"
A low, pained groan came from beneath a pile of splintered cedar. "Still... still breathing, Clara... though I think a piece of the Black Ridge territory just fell on my ribs."
Clara frantically pulled the heavy timber off his legs, her hands finding his shoulders in the dark. He hauled himself up into a sitting position, coughing violently, spitting blood-flecked dust onto the rock floor.
She fumbled in her pocket, retrieved the match tin, and struck a light. The yellow flare revealed Nathaniel’s face, pale under a mask of gray stone dust, a bloody gash running from his hairline down his left temple. But his eyes were clear, fierce, and alive.
Behind them, where the entrance of the mine had been only minutes ago, was a solid, impenetrable wall of fallen rock and splintered logs. The portal was gone. Black Ridge was sealed off from them forever.
"Did it hold?" Nathaniel rasped, leaning against the rock wall.
Clara looked at the immense barrier of stone. "Nothing short of heavy artillery could move that much granite. But Nathaniel... we’re trapped."
"No," Nathaniel said, pointing a bruised finger down the long, descending black corridor of the drift. "The main shaft runs two miles east. It cuts clean through to the federal timber reserve on the other side of the ridge. If we can reach the High Pass relay before Vane can march his horses around the southern pass, we can get that ledger to the federal wire."
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He struggled to his feet, gritting his teeth as he favored his right side. "Pick up the lantern, Clara. We have a mountain to cross."
***
