Slocum and the Four Seasons by Jake Logan

Author:Jake Logan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-05-08T00:00:00+00:00

11

Slocum coughed and forced himself to his hands and knees. Getting up from here was harder since he had a ton of rock on his back, or so it seemed. The grit in his mouth carried a tang of blood with it, and all he heard was a distant ringing. That remnants of the explosion died down as Slocum shook himself like a wet dog, sending stone fragments and dust in all directions. He twisted around and sat with his back against a rocky wall. He had to blink a few times to convince himself he wasn’t blind. He knew he wasn’t dead, unless this was hell and he was doomed for eternity to ache in every bone.

He coughed out blood and dirt as he forced himself to stand. When he bumped his head against the mine roof, he knew he wasn’t in too bad trouble. If the mine roof had collapsed, he would have been crushed flatter than a stink-bug under a boot heel.

Fumbling about, he found the metal box in his vest pocket and pulled out the lucifers. He worked carefully to avoid losing them in the dark. The sudden flare blinded him, and the sulfur fumes from the match caused him to cough up more blood and grime again. He held the smoking match up and got a quick look at the trouble he found himself in. The outlaws had dynamited the mouth of the mine, so he wasn’t too far from breathing hot desert air again. The problem lay in how much rock had been brought down by the stick or two Gunnison had used.

If either he or Clarke had been more knowledgeable, they could have collapsed the Silver Chalice all the way back with only a few sticks of explosive. That they had simply tossed it into the first crevice they found told him they didn’t know a thing about mining or blasting. The match sputtered out. Slocum waited a few minutes before lighting another so he could move closer to the rock plug and use the light to better advantage.

He hunted for any glimmer of light in the rock fall but found nothing to cheer him. His earlier inspection of the mine told him there wasn’t a safety vent anywhere to climb out. Spring and probably her pa before her had been interested more in the amount of silver chloride they could yank out of the mine rather than the miners’ safety. Time lost putting in an escape hole was time lost digging for more ore.

Slocum had a half dozen lucifers left, but he tucked them away in his pocket for later. He needed to find a few miner’s candles before using another of the precious light sources. Edging around in the dark might have taken him a minute or an hour. He lost all track of anything but careful touching and reaching for the candles. When he finally found a shelf of them, he used another match and discovered he had gone almost fifty feet deeper into the mine.

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