“Fuck yeah, fine. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I’ll be fine.” Silas walked back up the stope, scanning the ceiling and walls as he went. In a few minutes he found what he was looking for. He turned and walked back to Hayduke.
“What did you find?”
“Maybe a way out. Maybe a nest of angry scorpions and certain death by their poisonous bites.”
“You have a shitty sense of humor.”
“That’s what my students always said when I handed back their term papers. On your feet. We have some climbing to do.”
SILAS DRAGGED A barrel along the rocky stope and positioned it between two rickety pit props. “I think this is some kind of ventilation shaft that might go to the surface.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I think there’s air movement here.” Silas waved his hand around the opening. “Can you climb?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Sure, yeah. I mean, what choice do I have?”
“I’m going to rig a couple of harnesses with this webbing. I’ve got two carabiners that I can use as a belay device. I’ll climb up half a rope length and belay you up.”
“I weigh two hundred twenty pounds, Doc. If I take a hard fall, and you’re not tied in, I’m going to pull you down with me.”
Silas looked up at the narrow tunnel above him. “Then don’t fall.”
SILAS STOOD ON the barrel and shone his headlamp into the shaft. It was about two feet wide at the mouth but seemed to narrow as he climbed through the sandy rock. Silas had looped one of the slings around his waist and legs to create a makeshift harness and clipped them together with the carabiners. He did the same for Hayduke, gingerly slipping the webbing around his bloody leg. He noticed that the young man’s pant leg was soaked with blood. He knew that he had to get a move on.
The rope was looped through Silas’s harness and on the far end he had tied his pack, which he would haul up before Hayduke climbed. Silas was aware that they might not be able to climb out in one pitch; they’d cross that bridge when they came to it, he figured. He’d have to find a safe place to belay Hayduke from.
He reached up with both hands, found a decent hand-hold on the sandstone on either side, and began to pull himself up. The rock that his left hand was holding on to broke. Silas fell, colliding with the empty barrel below him. He crashed to the ground, his headlamp going out again.
“You alright?”
Silas lay in the dirt for a moment. He had landed on his left arm, which was screaming in pain, but he could move it and he decided it wasn’t broken. “Just fine.”
“Dark in here.”
Silas fumbled with the headlamp. It flickered on and off and on again.
“You wanna try again, or do you want me to have a go at it?”
“Your leg still shot?”
“Yeah.”
“Then shut up.”
“Right.”
Silas righted the barrel and climbed back up. “That’s right,” encouraged Hayduke. “Right back on the horse.”
“What part of shut up didn’t you understand?” Silas reached for the secure hold on the right and felt around for another for his left hand. He found one, a narrow ledge, and pulled once more. This time he managed to get his body up into the shaft, his left arm smarting but holding his weight. He wedged his knees into the opening and reached up again. He moved ten, then twenty feet into the shaft this way, using his hands to pull and wedging himself into the narrow confines of the chimney-like air shaft. Dust floated all around him and his headlamp caught the glint of a scorpion’s sheen on two occasions. Silas yelled to Hayduke, “Incoming” and brushed the arachnid down the shaft. He heard Hayduke yell from below but was high enough now that the young man’s profanity was muffled.
He was looking down, trying to find a place to put his feet, when he hit his head on something. He felt a trickle of blood seep into his eye. Making sure his feet were secure he reached up and smeared the blood away from his eye and felt above him. A heavy chock stone blocked the way forward. The shaft was less than eighteen inches wide here, and the stone blocked two thirds of it. Beyond he thought he could see a faint glow of light through the dust.
He pushed up on the stone and it moved slightly. He tried again. He was able to move the rock by bracing his legs on either side of the shaft and using his shoulder to push. He stopped. If the rock fell down the shaft, it would crush the young man beneath him. He tried to see beyond the stone. What looked like a ledge was just ten feet above him.
He couldn’t call down to Hayduke. The distance was now too far to communicate his intent. The idea of climbing all the way back down, and then up again, left him feeling exhausted. Instead, he pushed. Bracing both feet on the sides of the shaft, he used his body like a fulcrum and started to wedge the stone upward. He muscled the rock before him one foot at a time. It slipped once, but he was able to use his back to arrest its descent. Bleeding, bruised, and hungry, he reached a place where the stone could safely be pushed aside. He climbed on, another twenty feet, and found himself in a constriction with a few deep cuts made in the rock that gave him decent purchase and lots of room below him for a second person.
He yelled down. “Hauling my pack!” He started to pull on the rope and hoisted his bag. When he had it pulled to him it was coated in rock and dust and a few small harmless spiders. He wedged it into a cleft in the rock and then yelled again, “Rope!” After double checking that he had it tied off to his harness he let the rope back down.
Hayduke yelled something up the shaft. Silas took that to mean he was tied in.
“Setting belay!” Silas threaded the rope through the two carabiners and tested the brake. It was a little loose so he adjusted the braking device, turning one around so it created more friction. He tested it again, pulling the rope hard through the metal lockers so that they snapped together. Satisfied, he yelled, “Belay on!”
Silas heard Hayduke yell something much more audibly. “Already climbing!” Hayduke sounded like he was halfway up already. Silas took up the slack on the line and listened for any sign of Hayduke’s progress below him. It took five minutes for the young man to close the distance, and in that time Silas had constructed his own theory of the crime. It seemed clear that Jane Vaughn had stumbled on Aldershot and Zahn’s scheme to bilk the US federal government, and the Arizona Trust for Wildlands, out of millions of dollars by fabricating proof that Patriot One was an operating mine. They hadn’t been hauling waste rock to the Atlas Mill—at least not exclusively—they had been hauling uranium-laced material back to Arizona to give the impression that the mine was in production. Jane had found out and maybe had—like Hayduke and Silas—come to the site to investigate for herself. Had Terry or Balin or Slim Jim found out and killed her here, in the middle of the Kanab Creek hinterlands? Then they dumped her body with a load of overburden or waste rock in Ted’s truck and instructed him to transport the load to the Atlas Mill site. Nobody should have found her.
But Silas had.
And what about Darcy McFarland? And Kiel Pearce? Had they both known about this and paid the ultimate price for their knowledge as well? There seemed to be no connection. Darcy had been killed before Jane had gone missing. Kiel’s death was only two weeks ago now. Unless he had somehow come into this knowledge just recently and confronted the trio of would-be thieves, then his death too seemed unrelated. Maybe the FBI was right: maybe there were two separate killers.
Silas could hear Hayduke right below him. “How you doing?” Silas asked.
“Fine. Just fine. Shit man, I was halfway up before you put me on belay.” The shaggy head appeared. His face was covered in red dust. He used a free hand to push the grit from around his eyes.
“Next time wait for my okay.”
“You really think there’s going to be a next time?”
“I think we got one more pitch of climbing.”
Silas opened a bottle of water from his pack and both men drank and ate some beef je
rky before climbing the next pitch. “I don’t see any light up there,” said Hayduke.
“I was trying not to notice that,” Silas said, starting up the shaft again. “I thought I saw some light when I was down by the chock stone.”
The climbing got harder. The shaft grew narrower and Silas had to wedge himself in places, the darkness pressing on his mind as the sandstone seemed to enclose around him. He climbed forty feet and came to a place where the tunnel was partly sealed by a heavy rock. Silas turned sideways, drawing a deep breath to shimmy around the stone. He tore his shirt and felt the heat of blood on his stomach. For a moment he felt like he was stuck but managed to reach above him and find a secure hold. With all his might, he pulled and got over the obstacle. He had no idea how Hayduke would do the same. Silas decided to set another belay at this point, found a place where he could stand on two slabs of stone, and called down again.
Hayduke climbed up, grunting, and when his face appeared in Silas’s halo of light below, his face was red and streaked with sweat. “Sucks being the second on shit like this. You realize how much dust you kick down?”
“You want to lead?”
“I’m not complaining. Just pointing it out, that’s all.”
“Can you get around that?”
“Do I have a choice?” Hayduke tried to push the rock to one side, his muscled arms straining, his face pinched in effort. “Fucker is wedged pretty good.” Hayduke twisted sideways and drew a deep breath. He reached one hairy arm up and with the other pushed from below and somehow got himself twisted through the narrow constriction. He sat down, sweating and breathing hard on the conquered rock.
“Everything alright?”
“Well, I think so. I’m not sure.” Hayduke rolled up his jeans, now soaked in blood.
“You’re bleeding like a tap.”
“Yeah, the gauze came off and I think I tore the wound a little. And there’s one other thing.”
“What?”
“Something stung me down there. Pretty hard. I think it was a scorpion. I think it was a bark scorpion.”
“That’s bad, right?”
“Well, I should start frothing at the mouth and twitching pretty shortly.”
“ARIZONA BARK SCORPIONS AREN’T FATAL,” said Silas.
“You’re right. Maybe you’d like me to find one and it can sting you. How’s that sound?”
Silas was already preparing to climb again. “Point taken.” It was going to be difficult to ascend the rest of the shaft if Hayduke lost motor function and went into respiratory distress. “It can’t be that much farther,” Silas reassured him. Hayduke said nothing. Silas continued and shortly came to a complete constriction in the tunnel. He pressed his back against the jagged limestone wall and wedged himself with his feet on the opposite side. The flickering light from his headlamp illuminated a set of tightly wedged boards across the gap in the shaft. This was it, the opening—but it had been boarded over. Silas reached up and tried to pry at one of the wooden planks. It had a little give to it, which was reassuring. As he pulled harder on the board, his fingers pinched between the slats. A shower of sand started to pour down.
“Hey!” Silas heard Hayduke yell below him.
“Climb up,” Silas said, taking up the slack in the rope.
In a few minutes Hayduke was next to him. The man was pale and his eyes seemed to be darting around more than usual.
“How you doing?”
“I’ve been shot, blown up, and bitten by a scorpion. How the fuck do you think I’m doing?”
“This is the exit, but it’s boarded over and covered in dirt.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know. It could be a few inches, or a few feet.” Silas looked around. There was a heavy wooden frame around the opening that the boards were nailed into. He pulled up the rope and found a place in the wood frame that he could feed the rope through. He created two large hoops, one of which he secured to Hayduke’s harness and the other to his own. He tied them off with clove hitches. “You’re pretty good at this,” said Hayduke.
Silas looked at him. “I have some experience. The last four and a half years I’ve been in some tight pinches. Usually alone. Usually far from help.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Silas finished the knots and tested them. He looked at Hayduke. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll get out of here, get you to Fredonia or Kanab, and get you to a hospital.”
“I know. I’m fine.” For a moment Hayduke had dropped his persona and was Josh Charleston.
“You know, I like Josh more than I like Hayduke.”
“Yeah, well, don’t get used to it.”
“Ready?”
Hayduke just nodded. Silas reached up and Hayduke did the same. They each got a grip on one of the boards, digging their fingers into the fine red sand that weighed down on the wood, and pulled. Both boards snapped at the same time and a rush of sand and rock poured down on them. Almost immediately the weight of the coursing sand dislodged them from their footholds and both men jolted downwards in the cascade of debris. Silas felt something heavy hit his head. He had his eyes pressed closed, his mouth pursed shut. The two men were caught by the ropes and Silas hoped the entire wooden frame didn’t let go and drop them all the way back down the shaft.
After a few seconds the sand abated. Silas was dangling on the rope, Hayduke pressed against him. He opened his eyes and saw a thin light filtering down on them. They were hanging seven or eight feet below the opening.
“I need a fucking beer,” said Hayduke.
“Maybe Slim Jim left a couple for us in case we got out.”
THEY CLIMBED OUT OF THE shaft and flopped like fish out of water. Silas hauled his pack up with great difficulty against the debris and dirt that had poured down on them. When he got it to the surface he dug a water bottle from the shredded fabric and offered it to Hayduke. Then he took one of his own and drank the entire contents.
The two men lay in the dim sunlight for five minutes, neither moving. Silas sat up and looked around. He could see smoke billowing from nearby. That would be the mine shaft building. He scanned the horizon of red earth and piñon pines for any signs of movement. “It’s going to be dark soon. We need to get a move on.”
“I’m just going to lie here awhile.”
“I need to get your Jeep and take you to a hospital.”
Hayduke sat up. “Shit. My Jeep.”
They walked overland toward the billowing smoke and found the mine site deserted.
“Did you see what they drove here in?”
“There were two vehicles,” said Hayduke. He pointed to the crumbling, smoldering wreck of the mine building. There was the box of an older model Ford, its tires burned and its hood sprung from the heat. “They had the fertilizer and gasoline in the back of that one. I think they had one of those Toyota FJ Cruisers too.”
“They’ve beat town,” said Silas. “We should too. We need to get to Fredonia, call the cops, and get you to help.”
Hayduke was sitting on the ground now. “See if my pack is in that building.” He pointed to the maintenance shed where they had found the maps. Silas went to look. He came back empty-handed. “No pistol either.”
Hayduke just shook his head.
“I’m going to check on the vehicles.”
“Don’t bother. They would have found them.”
“I’m going anyway. Wait here.” It was futile. He ran back to where they had partially hidden the Jeep and the Outback. Both were gone. When he told Hayduke the young man flopped down on his back and closed his eyes. Silas looked around the yard. “Don’t give up yet,” he said. He looked at the half-dozen pickups in the yard. Most looked inoperable, missing either tires or their engines. He found an old Chevy that appeared to be in running condition. He tried the door and it was open. He flipped the sun visor down like he’d seen done in the movies, hoping to catch a set of keys, but there were none. He sat down in the cab and looked around it. He was about to give up when Ha
yduke appeared beside him. He reached across Silas and turned the key in the ignition. Silas stepped on the clutch and the engine sputtered and then started. Hayduke limped around the far side of the cab, got in, slumped against the door, and closed his eyes.
SILAS DROVE THE Chevy along the rutted dirt road toward Fredonia, checking every few minutes for cell phone reception. He talked to Hayduke the whole time, mostly about books. It was what he knew, and he needed to keep the young man awake. At one point Hayduke seemed to be slipping into shock so Silas said, “Edward Abbey was a terrible writer. He was shallow and a misogynist who hated immigrants and Indians. He was a waste of paper.”
Hayduke opened his eyes and smiled. “Ain’t nobody perfect,” he said and closed his eyes again. “You know, Penelope loved Abbey but she loved you more.”
Silas was stone silent. He was gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles felt like they might pop out of their skin. Finally he said, “She told you that?”
“No man, but it was obvious. We’d be out causing trouble or poking around the desert, and she’d be all, ‘I wish my Silas was here.’ Made me sick but then I met you. You seem alright.”
“You’re alright too, Hayduke. Hold on, we’re almost to Fredonia.”
Silas got cell reception just outside of the town and dialed 9-1-1. “I need an ambulance. I’ve got a friend who’s been bitten by an Arizona bark scorpion. He’s in shock.”
They met the ambulance just outside of town and, as they had agreed, Hayduke would wait until he was in the back to tell them about the gunshot wound. “I need to report this to the feds first. I don’t want to have to deal with Mohave County right now.”
As Hayduke was being loaded onto the stretcher, he said, “I guess I owe you one now.”
“We’re even,” said Silas.
The ambulance sped away toward Kanab, Utah, where the nearest hospital was. Silas watched it go. He wondered when he would see Hayduke again.
“SILAS, IT’S ONE in the morning.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m in Page. I have to get up in a few hours to catch a flight for Salt Lake—”
Black Sun Descending Page 19
