“Cassandra, come out and play!” Eustace Daniels calls out, dragging her back from her past. She moves silently through the darkness. The plan is to draw them deeper into the house, so she makes some noise crying out as though afraid. The resulting laughter and sound of heavy footsteps overhead gives her the desired results.
Cassie turns quietly and runs. She quickly passes through the tunnel she had spent two years constructing beneath the house. After she lost the baby, she started to plan. They were waiting on her Father to die, to come for her. If only he had listened. Cassie shakes herself and continues running. The tunnel ends beneath the barn, where she has a horse and bag waiting.
The scent of sulfur fills her nose as she strikes the match and tosses it inside the tunnel. Her eyes follow the amber glow of the match before she turns and mounts her horse.
Cassie had released the horses earlier from the barn, leaving it void of life. The ranch workers were all given money, paid in gold dust to leave. She would make sure no more innocents died on this land.
When the hiss of the gunpowder ignites a fiery trail, a slow smile spreads on her beautiful face. One dimple flashes when the first explosion detonates caving in the floor inside the house, into the tunnels below.
“Wait for it...” she whispers as the screaming begins.
“Easy girl,” she soothes her mare, and she trots out of the barn.
The floor of the tunnel is lined with gunpowder, which leads to the fuses for the explosives she planted on the roof of the tunnel. She planned to cause the floor to cave in, dropping them below, then a second bundle would detonate when Cassie lit it.
She ties the horse to a tree and walks towards the rubble where her family home once stood. The first body, she sees is Eustace. He’s crawling amongst the ruins, burned, bloody and bruised, he attempts to claw his way up the sides of the hole to safety.
“Eustace, do you still want to play?” Cassandra taunts him. The shocked look from his blood-filled eyes causes her to laugh out loud. Color blooms across her pale cheeks and when he reaches up a bloody hand, Cassie's smile fades away replaced by hatred.
“Is that how my Jim looked when you killed him, Eustace? Or my Mother? What about my Father?” She screams at him.
“You will rot in hell you bloated pig, but first you will suffer! Suffer like my Jim did, and my baby!”
At her husband's funeral, she didn't try to block the images; instead she let them flow. Eustace's touch had broken Cassie.
With no filter, she watched as they raped her mother and drowned her in the river. She saw him crush Jim and laugh as he struggled to escape the rocks.
The doctor had said her collapse was due to grief, but the truth was much worse. The resulting trauma caused her to lose the baby she carried and shattered the remains of her soul. Revenge became her reason for living. Her father wouldn't listen to reason, he thought she was just grieving. All of her warnings fell on deaf ears. He needed to believe in the goodness of the people in this town.
They would kill them both if she didn't act. She hatched a plan and paid workers to begin digging beneath the house in secret. Cassie started to save her share of gold dust. When her husband and mother had died, she was given each of their shares in the mine as well.
With her Father's approval, she began saving it. Over the last few years, she managed to save six bags, roughly sixty pounds of gold dust. She would never need to worry about money again. Instead of trading it at Eustace's bank, she portioned it, keeping two bags with her and the remaining was taken someplace safe. She hoped to talk her father into going to San Francisco, but she was too late to save him.
The first batch of explosives ran from the barn to the house, the second ran from the mine to the house. Cassie spins and runs back to her horse. She trots to the next detonation spot at the entrance of the shaft and groans when she sees another horse tied nearby.
“Damn claim jumpers,” she mumbles pulling a stick of dynamite from her bag. She lights it with a match, tossing it as far away as she can. The resulting concussion rocks the ground, and Cassie waits for the jumpers to leave. Only one man comes running, cussing, and stumbling. Then jumps on his horse and rides hard for the trees.
As soon as he leaves, she strikes another match and tosses the lit stick of dynamite inside the entrance where the gunpowder lies snaking its way back into the mine. The entrance collapses in a roar of collapsed rock and debris. The powder ignites leading to multiple fuses for a string of dynamite bundles scattered around the mine and leading back to the house.
“Time to go, Sasha!” She urges the young horse into a run and gallops away to freedom. Cassandra rides to her future and never looks back.
The explosions rock the mine and her family home, lighting up the valley. Cassie turns and rides away feeling free for the first time.
Chapter 2
San Francisco
Rough, bawdy, and dangerous. Those are the words her husband had used to describe this rough town.
Sundays, which should be a day of worship and rest, are just disgraceful. Those who do take the day off, drink, gamble and visit the brothels. The boarding houses offer no privacy or safety for single women. Crime is rampant, and woman
