She heard water dripping.
Harness bells.
The clap of metal into rock.
Her eyes discerned movement in the dark, something coming toward her up the passage, and she’d started to retreat when the first burro moved by, out of the mine, back down the slope toward Abandon.
It took a minute for the pack train to depart the mine, and as the last burro ambled past, a man shrieked from someplace deep inside the mountain.
Lana ventured three steps into the mine.
A speck of firelight flickered a ways down the tunnel and a door slammed shut.
Someone knocked on it.
Someone wept and whispered and then abruptly hushed.
Water dripped.
Metal clanged into metal.
Outside, the jingle of harness bells dwindled.
Then footsteps pounded up the tunnel again, and not a hooved animal, but the softer squeak of boots on wet rock. Lana began backpedaling toward the opening, glancing over her shoulder into the snowstorm and the blue dusk.
“No, don’t be afraid.”
The footsteps coming faster now.
She knew this voice.
The preacher, Stephen Cole, emerged from the shadows, geed up, utterly wasted, gray-skinned, eyes bloodshot and black-ringed, hair unwashed, more like a creature sprung from the innards of the mountain than Abandon’s spiritual compass.
“Miss Hartman, what are you doing out here?” He’d stopped just a few feet away, both of them close enough to the opening to be stung with the razor cold of stray snowflakes. “Weren’t you in the mine with everyone else Christmas night?”
Lana nodded.
“A band of heathens rode through town just a couple hours ago. They’re on the peck. Nearly raised my scalp. Everyone’s still in the mine. I’ve been bringing food and water, extra candles. Packer’s gold’s in there, too. That’s what all the burros were carrying.”
It suddenly clicked. Stephen had hidden in Abandon since Christmas night, eluding the heathens, waiting for an opportunity to bring provisions to those who had holed up in the mountain. She felt a shot of relief and admiration, hoped Joss had made it back to everyone else in the main cavern.
“Come with me. We’re not safe out here, particularly with night coming on.”
Lana looked once more down into Abandon, nothing to see but snow and darkness and—
A single grain of light burned on the other side of the canyon—a firelit cabin.
When she turned back, the preacher had lit a shadowgee, and he stared intently into her eyes, offering his hand.
“Don’t be ringey. You need to come with me right now.”
She didn’t take his hand, but she did walk beside him into the passage, and as they went on, candlelight glinting on the slickensides of the day hole, a strange thing happened. Her mouth ran dry and her heart raced, and as rays of firelight reached the iron door at the tunnel’s end, she realized what it was—the preacher’s eyes, his voice.
They reached the door and Stephen fished a key out of his pocket, slid it into the keyhole of a large padlock.
He turned just as she lunged at his back, the blade refracting shards of firelight. Stephen swung his arm down onto her wrist, and it might have knocked the bowie to the rock, but Lana had momentum and a ferocious grip.
The blade sank into his thigh.
The preacher screamed and Lana saw him reach into his frock coat.
Lana was running now, enveloped in darkness. She tripped on the uneven rock, fell as a revolver thundered. Her ears ringing, she scrambled back onto her feet and hauled toward that oval of dark gray in the distance, glancing back—flare of fire, another gunshot shattering the passage.
Ten seconds of hard running brought her out of the tunnel and into the early-evening light.
She followed the burro tracks under the rimrock, moving as fast as she could manage downhill toward Abandon, the hood of her cape blown back, snow pouring into her hair, down her neck.
It was the preacher’s cabin glowing on the west slope, she figured. Had he lied about the heathens? Devised some way to murder the entire town?
On Main Street, Lana bent over, gasping, petered out, saw the preacher already halfway down the slope.
