“Hey,” I said, struggling to my feet. “What’s the—”
The world was suddenly ripped apart. The prior explosion in the crevasse had been loud, but nothing compared to this deafening roar. One successive boom followed after another. I covered my ears, but it did little to dampen the sound. The shaking of the ground caused me to fall over again. Plumes of flame rolled up into the air from the equipment pile, soon leaving black smoke in their wake.
A hand on my arm tugged me up, and I found Warren looking down at me solicitously. At first, my ears rang too much to make sense of what he said. Then I finally heard: “Are you okay?”
I gave a shaky nod and looked around. All of his men were grouped not far from us, over by the outcropping and well away from the pile of explosives that had just gone off. Being on open ground like that, the blast had thrown up little debris short of dirt. My real panic, of course, came at seeing Cedric. He stood up on wobbly legs, having also been knocked over by a shock wave, and moved about unsteadily. I started to head toward him, but my own balance was still off.
“Easy there,” said Warren, holding me again so I wouldn’t fall.
I started to protest, but then Sully rode up to Cedric and dismounted. The older man said something, and Cedric nodded. As I watched, his steps grew surer, and his balance returned.
“Get some water on that!” shouted Elias.
Most of the fire from the explosions was already out. A little of the surrounding grass still smoldered, but all that remained of the initial blast was a shallow crater. Warren’s men all had canteens and used them to put out the residual flames. This just created more smoke, and for a few minutes, we all coughed and wiped tears out of our eyes.
“Having a little trouble with your charges?” asked Sully conversationally. He was a stereotypical prospector, long and lanky with shaggy gray hair and an unkempt beard.
Elias turned on Cedric angrily. “This is what comes of letting you near those! You never should have been let near any of this! A coddled city boy has no business out here around real work—deadly work for those too stupid to know what they’re doing!”
Cedric took an angry step forward, fists clenched at his sides. “I did know what I was doing. I handled every one of those components perfectly, and then I checked them over twice. No pins were out. Something in the explosives was faulty—just like that harness you brought me.”
“Don’t blame your continued incompetence on me!” exclaimed Elias.
“And don’t act like I can’t see this sabotage!” returned Cedric. “There was nothing wrong with the canisters I assembled.”
I was rubbing my head, still recovering from the blast. Slowly, memories surfaced to the front of my mind. “But you didn’t assemble them all,” I said. Everyone turned to me, and I pointed at Elias. “When you brought the rope, you added more explosives to Cedric’s pile.”
“Leftovers that weren’t needed in the first wave,” said Elias. “Safer to keep them in one place rather than—”
“Leftovers that Cedric didn’t put together,” I interrupted. “I don’t fully understand their mechanics, but they must have been tampered with from the inside to do a slow mix and eventually combust.”
Warren placed a gentle hand on my arm. “Adelaide, you need to rest. That blast was harder on you than you realize.”
I pulled away from him. “Elias knew! It’s why he pushed me away when I started to get close to the explosives. He steered everyone away. He knew they were going to go off. If Sully hadn’t arrived, Cedric would’ve been right there.” I choked for a moment, unable to comprehend such a terrible outcome. Then, a new realization hit me as I met Warren’s eyes. “And you knew too. Elias turned to you when Cedric left. And you made sure to keep me away too. You were in on it.”
Cedric moved forward, putting himself between Warren and me. “What’s your endgame been? Why did you bring us out here? Has this really all been some sort of elaborate revenge scheme?”
Several heated moments hung in the air as we all sized each other up. Then Warren gave a simple nod, and two men lunged forward and tackled Cedric to the ground. I screamed and moved forward, but Elias grabbed hold of me. Sully also started to come to the rescue, but Cedric managed to lift his head through his assault and cry out, “Go, get help!”