Where the Summer Ends

•III•

Afternoon shadows were long when Dell drove the other two men down to the house in his pickup. The farmhouse was a two-storey board structure with stone foundation, quite old, but in neat repair. Its wide planks showed the up-and-down saw marks that indicated its construction predated the more modern circular sawmill blade. The front was partially faced with dark mountain stone, and the foundation wall extended to make a flagstone veranda, shaded and garlanded by bright-petaled clematis.

Another truck was parked beside Kenlaw’s Plymouth—a battered green 1947 Ford pickup that Brandon recognized as belonging to Dell’s father-in-law, Olin Reynolds. Its owner greeted them from the porch as they walked up. He was a thin, faded man whose bony frame was almost lost in old-fashioned overalls. His face was deeply lined, his hair almost as white as Brandon’s. Once he had made the best moonshine whiskey in the region, but his last stay in Atlanta had broken him. Now he lived alone on his old homestead bordering the Pisgah National Forest. He often turned up about dinner time, as did Brandon.

“Hello, Eric,” Olin called in his reedy voice. “You been over to get that ’chuck that’s been after my little girl’s cabbages yet?”

“Hi, Olin,” Brandon grinned. “Shot him yesterday morning from over across by that big white pine on the ridge.”

“That’s near a quarter-mile,” the old man figured.

Brandon didn’t say anything because Ginger Warner just then stepped out onto the porch. Dell’s younger sister was recently back from finishing her junior year at Western Carolina in nearby Cullowhee. She was tall and willowy, green-eyed and quick to smile. Her copper hair was cut in a boyish shag instead of the unlovely bouffant most country women still clung to. Right now she had smudges of flour on her freckled face.

“Hi, Eric,” she grinned, brushing her hands on her jeans. “Supper’ll be along soon as the biscuits go in. You sure been keeping to yourself lately.”

“Putting together some of my notes for the thesis,” he apologized, thinking he’d eaten dinner here just three nights ago.

“Liar. You’ve been out running ridges with Dan.”

“That’s relaxation after working late at night.”

Ginger gave him a skeptical look and returned to her biscuits. With a ponderous grunt, Dr Kenlaw sank onto one of the widearmed porch rockers. He swung his feet up onto the rail and gazed thoughtfully out across the valley. Mist was obscuring the hills beyond, now, and the fields and pasture closer at hand filled with hazy shadow. Hidden by trees, the Pigeon River rushed its winding course midway through the small valley. Kenlaw did not seem at ease with what he saw. He glowered truculently at the potted flowers that lined the porch.

“What the hell!” Kenlaw suddenly lurched from his rocker. The other three men broke off their conversation and stared. Balancing on the rail, the archeologist yanked down a hanging planter and dumped its contents into the yard.

“Where the hell did this come from!” he demanded, examining the rusted metal dish that an instant before had supported a trailing begonia.

Dell Warner bit off an angry retort.

“For god’s sake, Kenlaw!” Brandon broke the stunned reaction.

“Yeah, for god’s sake!” Kenlaw was too excited to be nonplussed. “This is a Spanish morion! What’s it doing hanging here full of petunias?”

Ginger stepped onto the porch to announce dinner. Her freckled face showed dismay. “What on earth...?”

Kenlaw was abashed. “Sorry. I forgot myself when I saw this. Please excuse me—I’ll replace your plant if it’s ruined. But, where did you get this?”

“That old bowl? It’s lain around the barn for years. I punched holes along the rim, and it made a great planter for my begonia.” She glanced over the rail and groaned.

“It’s a morion—a conquistador’s helmet!” Kenlaw blurted in disbelief. Painstakingly he studied the high-crested bowl of rusted iron with its flared edges that peaked at either end. “And genuine too—or I’m no judge. Show me where this came from originally, and I’ll buy you a pickup full of begonias.”

Ginger wrinkled her forehead. “I really don’t know where it came from—I didn’t even know it was anything. What’s a Spanish helmet doing stuck back with all Dad’s junk in our barn? There’s an old iron pot with a hole busted in it where I found this. Want to look at it and tell me if it’s Montezuma’s bulletproof bathtub?” Kenlaw snorted. “Here, Brandon. You look at this and tell me I’m crazy.”

The albino examined the helmet. It was badly pitted, but solid. It could not have lain outside, or it would have rusted entirely away centuries ago. “It’s a morion, of course,” he agreed. “Whether it dates to conquistador days or not, I’m not the one to tell. But it does seem equally unlikely that a careful reproduction would be lying around your barn.”

“Hell, I know where that come from,” Olin cut in, craning his long neck to see. “I was with your-all’s daddy time he found it.” Kenlaw stared at the old mountain man—his eyes intent behind thick glasses. “For god’s sake—where?”

Olin worked his pointed chin in a thoughtful circle, eyeing Dell questioningly. The younger man shrugged.

“Place up on Old Field Mountain,” Olin told him, “near Tanasee Bald in what’s now Pisgah National Forest. There’s a sort of cave there, and I guess it won’t do no harm now telling you a couple of old boys named Brennan used to make a little blockade from a still they’d built back inside. Me and Bard used to stop up there times and maybe carry wood and just set around. Well, one time Bard goes back inside a ways, and we worried some because he’d had a little—and after a while he comes back carrying that thing there and calling it an Indian pot ’cause he found it with a lot of bones way back in there. He liked to keep arrowheads and axeheads and such-like when he found them, and so he carried that there back and put it with some other stuff, and I guess it’s all just laid there and been scattered around the barn since.”

“You can find the place still?” Kenlaw pounced. “Can you take me there tomorrow? Who else knows about this?”

“Why, don’t guess there’s nobody knows. The Brennans is all out of these parts now and gone—never did amount to much. Hardin Brennan got hisself shot one night arguing with a customer, and they said his brother Earl busted his head in a rock fall back there in the cave. Earl’s wife had left him, and there was just his boy Buck and a daughter Laurie. She was half-wild and not right in the head; young as she was, she had a baby boy they said must’ve been by her own kin, on account everybody else was half afraid of her. They all went up north somewheres— I heard to live with their mother. There’s other Brennans still around that might be distant kin, but far as I know nobody’s gone around that cave on Old Field Mountain since Buck and his sister left here better than twenty years back.”

Kenlaw swore in excitement. “Nobody knows about it, then? Fantastic! What time tomorrow do you want to go? Better make it early. Seven?”

“Say about six instead,” Olin suggested. “You’ll need the whole day. How about coming up to the cabin—if that’s all right with you, Eric? Shouldn’t go back in there by yourself, and Lord knows my old bones are too brittle for scrambling around such places.”

“Sure, I’ll go along,” Brandon agreed. “Sounds interesting.”

“No need to,” Kenlaw told him. “I’ve done my share of spelunking.”

“Then you know it’s dangerous to go in alone. Besides, I’m intrigued by all this.”

“You all coming in to eat?” Faye Warner pushed open the screen.

“Ginger, I thought you’d gone to call them. Everything’s ready.”



•IV•

There was chicken and ham, cornbread and gravy, tomatoes and branch lettuce, bowls of field peas, snap beans, corn and other garden vegetables. Kenlaw’s scowl subsided as he loaded his plate a second time. Shortly after dinner the archeologist excused himself. “Been a long day, and we’ll be up early enough tomorrow.”

Olin drove away not long after, and when Dell went off to see to some chores, Brandon had the porch to himself. He was half asleep when Ginger came out to join him.

“Did I startle you?” she apologized, sliding onto the porch swing beside him. “You’re jumpy as a cat. Is that what living in the city does to your nerves?”

“Keeps you alert, I guess,” Brandon said sheepishly.

Coppery hair tickled his shoulder. “Then you ought to get out of New York after you finish your project or whatever it is. Sounds like you must spend most of your time travelling around from one place to another as it is.”

“That’s known as field research.”

“Ha! Dell says you don’t do anything but laze around the cabin, or go out hunting. No wonder you still don’t have your doctorate. Must be nice to get a government grant to run around the country studying folklore.”

“Well, part of the time I’m organizing my notes, and part of the time I’m relaxing from the tension of writing.”

“I can see how lugging that cannon of a rifle around would be exercise. Why don’t you use that little air pistol instead?”

“What air pistol?”

“You know. You use it sometimes, because once I saw you shoot a crow with it that was making a fuss in the apple tree in front of the cabin. I saw you point it, and there wasn’t a sound except the crow gave a squawk, and then feathers everywhere. My cousin has an air pistol too, so I knew what happened.”

“Little spy.” His arm squeezed her shoulder with mock roughness. “Wasn’t spying,” Ginger protested, digging her chin into his shoulder. “I was walking up to help Dell chop tobacco.”

When Brandon remained silent, she spoke to break the rhythmic rasp of the porch swing. “What do you think of Dr Kenlaw?”

“A bit too pig-headed and pushy. They raise them that way up north.”

“That’s one, coming from a New Yorker! Or are you from New York originally? You have less accent than Dr Kenlaw.”

“Hard to say. I grew up in a foster home; I’ve lived a lot of places since.”

“Well, folks around here like you well enough. They don’t much like Dr Kenlaw.”

“I expect he’s too aggressive. Some of these obsessive researchers are like that.”

Ginger lined her freckles in a frown. “You’re a researcher. Is Dr Kenlaw?”

Brandon went tense beneath her cheek. “What do you mean? ”

“I mean, have you ever heard of him? If you’re both studying the same subjects pretty much...?”

“I don’t know his work, if that’s what you mean.” Brandon’s muscles remained steel-tight. “But then, he knows his subject well enough. Why?”

“He seems to be more interested in gold than in archeology,” Ginger told him. “At least, that’s the way his questions strike most folks he talks to.”

Brandon laughed and seemed to relax again. “Well, there’s more acclaim in discovering a tomb filled with gold relics than in uncovering a burial of rotted bones and broken pot shards, regardless of the relative value to archeological knowledge. That’s why King Tutankhamen’s tomb made headlines, while the discovery of a primitive man’s jawbone gets squeezed in with the used car ads.”

“There was a curse on King Tut’s tomb,” Ginger reminded him dourly.

“Even better, if you’re fighting for a grant.”

“Grants! ” Ginger sniffed. “Do you really mean to get that degree, or do you just plan to make a career of living off grants?”

“There’s worse ways to make a living,” Brandon assured her.

“Somehow I can’t see you tied down to some university job. That’s what you’ll do when you get your doctorate, isn’t it? Teach?”

“There’s a lot of PhDs out there looking for jobs once the grants dry up,” Brandon shrugged. “If there’s an opening somewhere, I suppose so.”

“There might be an opening at Western Carolina,” Ginger hinted.

“There might.”

“And why not? You like it down here— or else you wouldn’t keep coming back. And people like you. You seem to fit right in—not like most of these loud New York types.”

“It does feel like coming home again when I get back here,” Brandon acknowledged. “Guess I’ve never stayed in one place long enough to call it home. Would you like for me to set up shop in Cullowhee?”

“I just might.”

Brandon decided she had waited long enough for her kiss, and did something about it. Shadows crept together to form misty darkness, and the cool mountain breeze carried the breath of entwined clematis and freshly turned earth. The creak of the porch swing measured time like an arthritic grandfather’s clock, softened by the rustle of the river. A few cows still lowed, and somewhere a chuck-will’s-widow called to its mate. The quiet was dense enough so that they could hear Dan gnawing a bone in the yard below.

Ginger finally straightened, stretched cozily from her cramped position. “Mmm,” she purred; then: “Lord, what is that dog chewing on so! We didn’t have more than a plate of scraps for him after dinner.”

“Maybe Dan caught himself a rabbit. He’s always hunting.”

“Oh! Go see! He killed a mother rabbit last week, and I know her babies all starved.”

“Dan probably saw that they didn’t.” Brandon rose to go look. “What you got there, boy?”

Ginger saw him stiffen abruptly. “Oh, no! Not another mamma bunny!”

She darted past Brandon’s arm before he could stop her.

Dan thumped his tail foolishly and returned her stare. Between his paws was a child’s arm.



•V•

Olin Reynolds shifted his chaw reflectively. “I don’t wonder Ginger came to carry on such a fit,” he allowed. “What did you figure it was?”

“Certainly not a child’s arm,” Brandon said. “Soon as you got it into good light you could see it was nothing human. It had to have been some type of monkey, and the resemblance gave me a cold chill at first glance, too. Pink skin with just a frost of dirty white fur, and just like a little kid’s arm except it was all muscle and sinew instead of baby fat. And it was a sure enough hand, not a paw, though the fingers were too long and sinewy for any child’s hand, and the nails were coarse and pointed like an animal’s claws.”

“Wonder where old Dan come to catch him a monkey,” Olin put in.

“Somebody’s pet. Tourists, maybe—they carry everything they own in those damn campers. Thing got away; or more likely, died and they buried it, and Dan sniffed it out and dug it up. He’d been digging, from the look of him.”

“What did you finally do with it?”

“Dell weighted it down in an old gunny sack and threw it into a deep hole in the river there. Didn’t want Dan dragging it back again to give the ladies another bad start.”

“Just as well,” Olin judged. “It might have had somebody come looking for to see what come of it. I suspect that’ll be Dr Kenlaw coming up the hill now.”

Kenlaw’s Plymouth struggled into view through the pines. Brandon glanced at his watch, noted it was past seven. He stretched himself out of Olin’s ladderback chair and descended the porch steps to greet the archeologist.

“Had a devil of a time finding the turn-off,” Kenlaw complained, squeezing out from behind the wheel. “Everything set?”

“Throw your stuff in my pickup, and we’ll get going,” Olin told him. “Where we’re headed, ain’t no kind of road any car can follow up.”

“Will that old bucket make it up a hill?” Kenlaw laughed, opening his trunk to take out a coil of rope and two powerful flashlights.

“This here old Ford’s got a Marmon-Herrington all-wheel-drive conversion.” Olin said coldly “She can ride up the side of a bluff and pull out a cedar stump while your feet are hanging straight out the back window of the cab.”

Kenlaw laughed easily, shoving spare batteries and a geologist’s pick into the ample pockets of the old paratrooper’s jacket he wore. Brandon helped him stow his gear into the back of the truck, then climbed into the cab beside Reynolds.

It was a tight squeeze in the cab after Dr Kenlaw clambered in, and once they reached the blacktop road the whine of the gears and fan made conversation like shouting above a gale. Olin drove along in moody silence, answering Kenlaw’s occasional questions in few words. After a while they left the paved roads, and then it was a long kidney-bruising ride as the dual-sprung truck attacked rutted mountain paths that bored ever upward through the shouldering pines. Kenlaw cursed and braced himself with both arms. Brandon caught a grin in Olin’s faded eyes.

The road they followed led on past a tumble-down frame house, lost within a yard that had gone over to first-growth pine and scrub. A few gnarled apple trees made a last stand, and farther beneath the encroaching forest, Brandon saw the hulking walls of a log barn—trees spearing upward past where the roof had once spread. He shivered. The desolation of the place seemed to stir buried memories.

Beyond the abandoned farmhouse the road deteriorated into little more than a cow path. It had never been more than a timber road, scraped out when the lumber barons dragged down the primeval forest from the heights half a century or more ago. Farm vehicles had kept it open once, and now an occasional hunter’s truck broke down the young trees that would otherwise have choked it.

Olin’s pickup strained resolutely upward, until at length they shuddered into an overgrown clearing. Reynolds cut the engine. “Watch for snakes,” he warned, stepping down.

The clearing was littered beneath witch’s broom and scrub with a scatter of rusted metal and indistinct trash. A framework of rotted lumber and a corroded padlock faced against the hillside. Several of the planks had fallen inward upon the blackness within.

Olin Reynolds nodded. “That’s the place. Reckon the Brennans boarded it over before they moved on to keep stock from falling in. Opening used to just lie hidden beneath the brush.”

Dr Kenlaw prodded the eroded timbers. The padlock hasp hung rusted nails over the space where the board had rotted away. At a bolder shove, the entire framework tore loose and tumbled inward.

Sunlight spilled in past the dust. The opening was squeezed between ledges of rock above and below, wide enough for a man to stoop and drop through. Beyond was a level floor, littered now with the debris of boards.

“Goes back like that a ways, then it narrows down to just a crack,” Olin told them.

Kenlaw grunted in a self-satisfied tone and headed back for the pickup to get his equipment.

“Coming with us?” Brandon asked.

Olin shook his head firmly. “I’ll just wait here. These old bones are too eat up with arthuritis to go a-crawling through that snaky hole.”

“Wait with him, Eric, if you like,” Kenlaw suggested. “I probably won’t be long about this. No point you getting yourself all dirty messing around on what’s likely to be just another wild goose chase.”

“I don’t mind,” Brandon countered. “If that morion came out of this cave, I’m curious to see what else lies hidden back there.”

“Odds are, one of those Brennans found it someplace else and just chucked it back in there. Looks like this place has been used as a dump.”

Kenlaw cautiously shined his light across the rubble beneath the ledge. Satisfied that no snakes were evident, the archeologist gingerly squeezed his corpulent bulk past the opening and lowered himself to the floor of the cavern. Brandon dropped nimbly beside him.

Stale gloom filled a good-sized antechamber. Daylight trickled in from the opening, and a patch of blackness at the far end marked where the cavern narrowed and plunged deeper into the side of the mountain. Brandon took off his mirror sunglasses and glanced about the chamber—the albino’s eyes were suited to the dank gloom.

The wreckage of what had once been a moonshine still cluttered the interior of the cavern. Copper coil and boiler had long ago been carried off, as had anything else of any value. Broken barrels, rotted mounds of sacks, jumbles of firewood, misshapen sculptures of galvanized metal. Broken bits of Mason jars and crockery shards crunched underfoot; dead ashes made a sodden raisin pudding. Kenlaw flung his light overhead and disclosed only sooty rock and somnolent bats.

“A goddamn dump,” he muttered petulantly. “Maybe something farther back in.”

The archeologist swung his light toward the rear of the chamber. A passage led farther into the mountain. Loose stones and more piled debris half blocked the opening. Pushing his way past this barricade, Kenlaw entered the narrow tunnel.

The passage was cramped. They ducked their heads, twisted about to avoid contact with the dank rock. Kenlaw carefully examined the walls of the cavern as they shuffled on. To Brandon’s eye, there was nothing to indicate that man’s tools had shaped the shaft. After a time, the sunlight from behind them disappeared, leaving them with their flashlights to guide them. The air grew stale with a sourness of animal decay, and as the passage seemed to lead downward, Brandon wondered whether they might risk entering a layer of noxious gases.

“Hold on here!” Kenlaw warned, stopping abruptly.

Darkness met their probing flashlight beams several yards ahead of their feet, as the floor of the passage disappeared. Kenlaw wiped his pudgy face and caught his breath, as they shined their lights down into the sudden pit that confronted them.

“Must be thirty-forty feet to the bottom,” Kenlaw estimated. “Cavern’s big enough for a high school gym. The ledge we’re standing on creeps on down that fault line toward the bottom. We can make it if you’ll just watch your step.”

“Is the air okay?” Brandon wondered.

“Smells fresh enough to me,” Kenlaw said. He dug a crumpled cigarette pack from his pocket, applied his lighter. The flame fanned outward along the direction they had come. Kenlaw dropped the burning wad of paper over the edge. It fell softly through the blackness, showering sparks as it hit the floor.

“Still burning,” the archeologist observed. “I’m going on down.”

“Nice if that was natural gas down there,” Brandon muttered.

“This isn’t a coal mine. Just another natural cavern, for my money.”

Clinging to the side of the rock for support, they cautiously felt their way down the steep incline. Although an agile climber could negotiate the descent without ropes, the footing was treacherous, and a missed step could easily mean a headlong plunge into the darkness.

They were halfway down when Kenlaw paused to examine the rock wall. Switching hands with his flashlight, he drew his geologist’s pick and tapped against the stone.

“Find something?” Brandon turned his light onto the object of the archeologist’s scrutiny, saw a band of lighter stone running along the ledge.

“Just a sample of stratum,” Kenlaw explained, hastily breaking free a specimen and shoving it into one of his voluminous pockets. “I’ll have to examine it back at my lab—study it for evidence of tool marks and so on.”

The floor of the pit appeared little different from the chamber through which they had entered the cavern, save that it lacked the accumulated litter of human usage. The air was cool and fresh enough to breathe, although each lungful carried the presence of a sunless place deep beneath the mountains.

“Wonder when the last time was anyone came down here?” Brandon said, casting his light along the uneven floor. The bottom was strewn with broken rock and detritus, with a spongy paste of bat guano and dust. Footprints would be hard to trace after any length of time.

“Hard to say,” Kenlaw answered, scooping up a handful of gravel and examining it under his light. “Sometimes the Confederates worked back into places like this after saltpetre. Maybe Bard Warner came down here, but I’m betting that morion was just something some dumb hillbilly found someplace else and got tossed onto the dump.”

“Are these bones human?” Brandon asked.

Kenlaw stuffed the gravel into a jacket pocket and scrambled over to where Brandon crouched. There was a fall of broken rock against the wall of the pit opposite their point of descent. Interspersed with the chunks of stone were fragments of moldering bone. The archeologist dug out a section of rib. It snapped easily in his hand, showing whiteness as it crumbled.

“Dead a long time,” Kenlaw muttered, pulling more of the rocks aside. “Maybe Indian.”

“Then it’s a human skeleton?”

“Stone burial cairn, at a guess. But it’s been dug up and the bones scattered about. These long bones are all smashed apart.”

“Maybe he was killed in a rock slide.”

Kenlaw shook his head. “Look how this femur is split apart. I’d say more likely something broke open the bones to eat the marrow.

“An animal?”

“What else would it have been?”

Kenlaw suddenly bent forward, clawed at the detritus. His thick fingers locked onto what looked to be the edge of a flat rock. Grunting, he hauled back and wrenched forth a battered sheet of rusted iron.

“Part of a breastplate! Damned if this isn’t the original skeleton in armor! Give me a hand with the rest of these rocks.”

Together they dragged away the cairn of rubble—Kenlaw puffing energetically as he flung aside the stones and fragments of bone. Brandon, caught up in the excitement of discovery himself, reflected with a twinge that this was hardly a careful piece of excavation. Nonetheless, Kenlaw’s anxious scrabbling continued until they had cleared a patch of bare rock.

The archeologist squatted on a stone and lit a cigarette. “Doesn’t tell me much,” he complained. “Just broken bones and chunks of rust. Why was he here? Were there others with him? Who were they? What were they seeking here?”

“Isn’t it enough that you’ve found the burial of a conquistador?”

“Can’t prove that until I’ve run some tests,” Kenlaw grumbled. “Could have been a Colonial—breastplates were still in use in European armies until this century. Or an Indian buried with some tribal heirlooms.”

“There’s another passage back of here,” Brandon called out.

He had been shining his light along the fall of rock, searching for further relics from the cairn. Behind where they had cleared away some of the loose rocks, a passageway pierced the wall of the pit. Brandon rolled aside more of the stone, and the mouth of the passage took shape behind the crest of the rock pile.

Kenlaw knelt and peered within. “Not much more than a crawl space,” he announced, “but it runs straight on for maybe twenty or thirty feet, then appears to open onto another chamber.”

Brandon played his flashlight around the sides of the pit, then back to where they stood. “I don’t think this is just a rock slide. I think someone piled all these rocks here to wall up the tunnel mouth.”

“If they didn’t want it found, then they must have found something worth hiding,” the archeologist concluded. “I’ll take a look. You wait here in case I get stuck.”

Brandon started to point out that his was the slimmer frame, but already Kenlaw had plunged headfirst into the tunnel—his thick buttocks blocking Brandon’s view as he squeezed his way through. Brandon thought of a fat old badger ducking down a burrow. He kept his light on the shaft. Wheezing and scuffling, the other man managed to force his bulk through the passage. He paused at the far end and called back something, but his words were too muffled for Brandon to catch.

A moment later Kenlaw’s legs disappeared from view, and then his flushed face bobbed into Brandon’s light. “I’m in another chamber about like the one you’re standing in,” he called back. “I’ll take a look around.”

Brandon sat down to wait impatiently. He glanced at his watch. To his surprise, they had been in the cavern some hours. The beam of his flashlight was yellowing; Brandon cut the switch to save the batteries, although he carried spares in his pockets. The blackness was as total as the inside of a grave, except for an occasional wan flash as Kenlaw shined his light past the tunnel mouth from the pit beyond. Brandon held his hand before his face, noted that he could dimly make out its outline. The albino had always known he could see better in the dark than others could, and it had seemed a sort of recompense for the fact that bright light tormented his pink eyes. He had read that hemeralopia did not necessarily coincide with increased night vision, and his use of infrared rifle scopes had caused him to wonder whether his eyes might not be unusually receptive to light from the infrared end of the spectrum.

Kenlaw seemed to be taking his time. At first Brandon had heard the sharp tapping of his geologist’s pick from time to time. Now there was only silence. Brandon flipped his light back on, consul ted his watch. It had been half an hour.

“Dr Kenlaw?” he called. He thrust his shoulders into the passage and called again, louder. There came no reply.

Less anxious than impatient, Brandon crawled into the tunnel and began to wriggle forward, pushing his light ahead of him. Brandon was stocky, and it was a tight enough squeeze. The crawl space couldn’t be much more than two feet square at its widest point. Brandon reflected that it was fortunate that he was not one of those bothered by claustrophobia.

Halfway through the tunnel, Brandon suddenly halted to study its walls. No natural passage; those were tool marks upon the stone—not even Kenlaw could doubt now. The regularity of the passage had already made Brandon suspicious. Cramped as it was, it reminded him of a mine shaft, and he thought again about the mention in Creecy’s Grandfather’s Tales of the interconnecting tunnels found at the Sink Hole pits.

The tunnel opened onto another chamber much like the one he had just quitted. It was a short drop to the floor, and Brandon lowered himself headfirst from the shaft. There was no sign of Kenlaw’s light. He stood for a moment uneasily, swinging his flash about the cavern. Perhaps the archeologist had fallen into a hidden pit, smashed his light.

“Dr Kenlaw?” Brandon called again. Only echoes answered.

No. There was another sound. Carried through the rock in the subterranean stillness. A sharp tapping. Kenlaw’s geologist’s pick.

Brandon killed his flash. A moment passed while his eyes adjusted to the blackness, then he discerned a faint haze of light—visible only because of the total darkness. Switching his own light back on, Brandon directed it toward the glimmer. It came from the mouth of yet another passageway cut against the wall opposite.

He swung his light about the pit. Knowing what to look for now, Brandon thought he could see other such passages, piercing the rock face at all levels. It came to him that they began to run a real risk of losing their way if they were able to progress much farther within these caverns. Best to get Kenlaw and keep together after this, he decided.

The new shaft was a close copy of the previous one—albeit somewhat more cramped. Brandon scraped skin against its confines as he crawled toward the sound of Kenlaw’s pick.

The archeologist was so engrossed in what he was doing that he hadn’t noticed Brandon’s presence, until the other wriggled out onto the floor of the pit and hailed him. Spotlighted by Brandon’s flash, Kenlaw glowered truculently. The rock face where he was hammering threw back a crystalline reflection.

“I was worried something had happened,” Brandon said, approaching.

“Sorry. I called to you that I was going on, but you must not have heard.” Kenlaw swept up handfuls of rock samples and stuffed them into the already bulging pockets of his paratrooper’s jacket. “We’d best be getting back before we get lost. Reynolds will be wondering about us.”

“What is this place? Don’t tell me all of this is due to natural formation!” Brandon swept his light around. More diminutive tunnels pierced the sides of this pit also. He considered the broken rock that littered the floor.

“This is a mine of some sort, isn’t it. Congratulations, Dr Kenlaw—you really have found one of the lost mines of the ancients! Christ, you’ll need a team of spelunkers to explore these pits if they keep going on deeper into the mountain!”

Kenlaw laughed gruffly. “Lost mines to the romantic imagination, I suppose—but not to the trained mind. This is a common enough formation—underground streams have forced their way through faults in the rock, hollowed out big chambers wherever they’ve encountered softer stone. Come on, we’ve wasted enough time on this one.”

“Soft rock? ” Brandon pushed past him. “Hell, this is quartz!”

He stared at the quartz dike where Kenlaw had been working. Under the flashlight beam, golden highlights shimmered from the chipped matrix.

“Oh my god.” Brandon managed to whisper.

These were good words for a final prayer, although Kenlaw probably had no such consideration in mind. The rush of motion from the darkness triggered some instinctive reflex. Brandon started to whirl about, and the pick of the geologist’s hammer only tore a furrow across his scalp instead of plunging into his skull.

The glancing blow was enough; Brandon went down as if poleaxed. Crouching over him, Kenlaw raised the hammer for the coup de grace.

When Brandon made no move, the murderous light in the other man’s eyes subsided to cunning. Brandon was still breathing, although bare bone gleamed beneath the blood-matted hair. Kenlaw balanced the geologist’s pick pensively.

“Got to make this look like an accident,” he muttered. “Can’t risk an investigation. Tell them you took a bad fall. Damn you, Brandon! You would have to butt in the one time I finally found what I was after! This goddamn mountain is made out of gold, and that’s going to be my secret until I can lock up the mining rights.” He hefted a rock—improvising quickly, for all that his attack had been born of the moment. “Just as well the pick only grazed you. Going to have to look like you busted your head on the rocks. Can’t have it happen in here, though—this has to be kept hidden. Out there on the ledge where we first climbed down—that’s where you fell. I’ll block the tunnel entrance back up again. All they’ll know is that we found some old bones in a cave, and you fell to your death climbing back up.”

He raised the rock over Brandon’s head, then threw it aside. “Hell, you may never wake up from that one there. Got to make this look natural as possible. If they don’t suspect now, they might later on. Push you off the top of the ledge headfirst, and it’ll just be a natural accident.”

Working quickly, Kenlaw tied a length of rope to Brandon’s ankles. The man was breathing hoarsely, his pulse erratic. He had a concussion, maybe worse. Kenlaw debated again whether to kill him now, but considered it unlikely that he would regain consciousness before they reached the ledge. An astute coroner might know the difference between injuries suffered through a fatal fall and trauma inflicted upon a lifeless body—they always did on television.

Brandon was heavy, but Kenlaw was no weakling for all his fat. Taking hold of the rope, he dragged the unconscious body across the cavern floor—any minor scrapes would be attributed to the fall. At the mouth of the tunnel he paused to pay out his coil of rope. Once on the other side, he could haul in Brandon’s limp form like a fish on a line. It would only take minutes to finish the job.

The tunnel seemed far more cramped as he wriggled into it. The miners must have had small frames, but then people were smaller four centuries ago. Moreover, the Spaniards, who almost certainly would have used slave labor to drive these shafts, weren’t men to let their slaves grow fat.

It was tighter, Kenlaw realized with growing alarm. For a moment he attempted to pass it off to claustrophobia, but as he reached a narrower section of the tunnel, the crushing pressure on his stout sides could not be denied. Panic whispered through his brain, and then suddenly he understood. He had crammed his baggy jacket pockets with rock samples and chunks of ore from the quartz dike; he was a good twenty pounds heavier and inches bulkier now than when he had crawled through before.

He could back out, but to do so would lose time. Brandon might revive; Reynolds might come looking for them. Gritting his teeth against the pressure on his ribs, Kenlaw pushed his light on ahead and forced his body onward. This was the tightest point, and beyond that the way would be easier. He sucked in his breath and writhed forward another foot or more. His sides ached, but he managed yet another foot with all this strength.

No farther. He was stuck.

His chest aching, Kenlaw found scant breath to curse. No need to panic. Just back out and take off the jacket, push it in ahead of him and try again. He struggled to work his corpulent body backward from the tunnel. The loose folds of his paratrooper’s jacket rolled up as he wriggled backward, bunching against the bulging pockets Jammed even tighter against his flesh and against the rock walls, the laden coat bunched up into a wedge. Kenlaw pushed harder, setting his teeth against the pain, as rock samples gouged into his body.

He couldn’t move an inch farther. Backward or forward.

He was stuck midway in the tunnel.

Still Kenlaw fought down his panic. It was going to cost him some bruises and some torn skin, no doubt, but he’d work his way free in good time. He must above all else remain calm, be patient. A fraction of an inch forward, a fraction of an inch backward. He would take his time, work his way loose bit by bit, tear free of the jacket or smooth out its bunched-up folds. At worst, Reynolds would find him, bring help. Brandon might be dead by then, or have no memory of the blow that felled him; he could claim he was only trying to drag his injured companion to safety.

Kenlaw noticed that the light from his flash was growing dim, He had meant to replace the batteries earlier; now the spares were part of the impedimenta that pinioned him here. No matter; he didn’t need light for this—only to be lighter: Kenlaw laughed shakily at his own joke, then the chuckle died.

The flashlight was fast dwindling, but its yellowing beam was enough to pick out the pink reflections of the many pairs of eyes that watched him from the mouth of the tunnel—barely glimpsed shapes that grew bolder as the light they feared grew dim.

And then Kenlaw panicked.