Chapter 60 - The General’s Last Gambit
Clara didn't flinch. She pivoted on her back heel, sweeping the heavy brass base of the lantern upward with all the force in her shoulder. The metal lantern collided with the soldier’s jaw in an explosion of glass, sparking oil, and splintering bone. The man stumbled, his bayonet scraping harmlessly against the stone wall, and Caleb’s rifle butt took him across the temple, dropping him senseless to the floor.
The spilled lantern oil flared against the wet shale, casting long, dancing shadows that illuminated the vast subterranean chamber they had just entered.
It was the Grand Stope of Number Four.
A massive, cavernous room hollowed out sixty feet high, supported only by ancient, rotting spruce pillars. At the far side of the chamber, stacked against the central support pillar, sat thirty wooden crates marked with the red skull of high-explosive blasting gelatine.
Kneeling beside the crates, a burning match in his gloved fingers, was General Sterling.
His uniform was torn, his gold braid ripped away, his face smeared with soot and blood. His saber lay discarded in the dirt; in his belt was an empty revolver holster, and his fingers trembled slightly as he held the sulfur match an inch from an exposed canvas fuse.
Standing between him and Caleb was his last remaining officer—a young lieutenant holding a cocked Colt Army revolver, his hand shaking so violently that the barrel wobbled in the lantern light.
"Step back, Blackwood!" Sterling’s voice echoed through the cavern, ragged, hoarse, but dripping with the venomous arrogance that had defined his thirty years of command. "One inch further and I drop this match! We all go into the dark together!"
Caleb lowered the Winchester by two inches, his eyes never leaving Sterling’s face. "The war is over, General. Your battery is destroyed. Your men outside have thrown down their arms. Harrison has already sent the wire to the territorial capital disavowing you. If you strike that fuse, you don't die a hero. You die an outlaw who murdered his own men."
Sterling let out a harsh, barking laugh that bounced off the granite ceiling like the rattle of dry bones.
"Harrison?" Sterling sneered, his lip curling in contempt. "You think that cowardly clerk in the capital controls this territory? Harrison didn't order me here, boy! The syndicate bought Harrison ten years ago, just like they bought your father, just like they bought every mile of rail between here and Chicago!"
Clara took half a step forward, her voice ringing steady and cold as winter steel. "Arthur Thornton is dead, Sterling. The syndicate’s ledgers are in our hands. The fraud, the sabotage, the murders at the trestle—Judge Vance has the documentation. There is nothing left to protect."
"You naive little fool," Sterling hissed, his eyes burning with madness in the dim light. "You think Thornton was the head of the serpent? Arthur was nothing but a bagman with expensive suits! The men who built this line don't live in Chicago or Denver. They sit on the federal war board in Washington!"
Caleb felt a cold chill run down his spine, colder than the wind howling outside the mine mouth.
"What are you talking about?" Caleb demanded.
"Why do you think the cavalry moved so fast?" Sterling whispered, a hideous grin spreading across his bloodied mouth. "Why do you think my orders bypassed the civilian courts entirely? Black Ridge isn't just a coal basin, Blackwood. The southern spur you've been defending... it carries the high-grade silver and pitchblende needed for the federal armories. They aren't going to let a mob of starving miners and a ghost hold this mountain."
Sterling looked directly into Caleb’s eyes, his thumb easing down toward the fuse. "My orders were never to capture the town. My orders were to clear the line before the midnight express arrived."
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Caleb’s heart seized. "What midnight express?"
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