“Oh my God,” she quietly said, grabbing Peter’s coat sleeve. “Somebody’s in there!”
“Good,” he said, unconcerned. “Time to get to the bottom of this.”
She looked down the dirt road toward the chained gate that led to the covered bridge. The gate was chained tightly shut, and there were no footprints in the snow coming up the dirt road, other than a few windblown traces of her previous visit and encounter with the mountain lion.
“Whoever they are, they came up another way,” she determined. “Let’s go hide in the office and watch to see who comes out of the mine.”
“They’ll see the tracks in the snow going to the office,” he observed. “Go wait there if you want to, but I’m going into the mine. I’ll have the element of surprise.”
“You’re gonna leave me out here alone?” she protested.
“Then come with me,” he said. He pulled his .45 caliber army-issue pistol out of his winter coat pocket. “Nothing’s going to happen to you, Goldie. I promise.”
“I’m gonna hold you to that,” she said.
He put the weapon away, and they moved carefully toward the mine entrance as the day was getting brighter. They bent down, stepped over a couple of permanently affixed ties, and went into the mine.
“Whoa,” Peter whispered, seeing the seemingly endless string of lit electric lights that hung from spikes on the left-hand side of the mine wall. “How far does this go?”
“Pretty far,” she answered softly. “We’d better keep quiet. Who knows how much voices carry? Just follow the lights.”
“Okay,” he nodded. “Lead the way, since you’ve been here before.”
They silently descended deeper and deeper into the mine, passing a maze of interconnecting tunnels on either side for both miners and push carts with numbers painted on the walls outside of them. After several minutes, they came to a connecting tunnel where the lights turned left into tunnel “22.”
“We just keep followin’ the lights?” he whispered.
“Yes.”
“The air’s getting thin,” he said, breathing heavier.
“Tough it out, Mary,” she cracked.“You’rethe one who wanted to come down here.”
After about a minute’s walk in tunnel “22,” Peter noticed little trickles of water dribbling down the rock walls to the wet ground.
“We’re goin’ underneath the river,” Goldie quietly explained.
About fifty yards beyond that, she suddenly stopped.
“There are people up ahead,” she whispered.
“Yes,” he agreed in a normal voice. “Time to go meet them.”
“Sshh,” she urged, turning to him. It was at this point that she noticed he had pulled the pistol out of his pocket again. He cocked it, then pointed it at her.
“What’re you doing?” she asked, still whispering.
“Move!” Peter said, sternly, gesturing with the gun that she should keep going.
Suddenly realizing she’d been betrayed by her leap of faith in Peter, Goldie expelled a deep breath, closed her green eyes, then reopened them with a wiser perspective.
“You’re in this with your father, aren’t you?”
“Uh-huh,” he confirmed. “Keep moving. Let’s go.”
She shook her head regrettably, then continued on.
“Oh, Peter—and you were such a good writer.”
