Part 5
They set out before dawn and left the snowmachine at the station. Owen argued at first, then decided on his own not to drive it over ground with hollows under the snow. They took packs, flashlights, and the map and headed up.
Hump had left tracks in the night again, and these followed an entirely new route. The bear had crossed the draw and climbed onto a rocky ridge.
“Follow him?” Owen asked.
Elias shook his head. “We go the other way.”
“Why?”
Elias took out the map. The thin pencil line ended near the north slope. “I want to check something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know myself.”
Owen sighed heavily. “Your vocabulary’s really something today.”
Elias folded the map. “Owen. If I start doing stupid things, tell me.”
His nephew stopped in his tracks. “Are you serious?”
“I’m serious.”
“Okay.”
Elias took a few steps. “Just not too often.”
“Now that sounds like family.”
By noon the forest had nearly disappeared. The slope turned rocky, and the snow lay in strips between the boulders. The trail kept showing up and vanishing. They found an old overgrown cutline, then a length of rusty cable, and a little farther on a wooden post, almost completely rotted.
Owen knocked on it with his glove. “Geologists?”
Elias frowned. “Looks like it.”
He ran his palm down the rotten post and remembered the trailer by the river. He’d been barely twenty. There was always a man hanging around that trailer, Sawyer, a skinny guy who smoked one cigarette after another and once handed Elias a can of sweetened condensed milk. In more than forty years he hadn’t thought of Sawyer, or of that can with the blue label.
“What are you thinking about?” Owen asked.
Elias blinked. “Geologists worked here. Way back.”
Owen was looking at the rusty cable. “Gold, I bet.”
Elias grunted. “Everybody thinks geologists only look for gold.”
Up ahead Minnow had started sniffing the snow by the rocks. The dog went a few yards and stopped at a rusted iron post.
Owen spotted the metal plate first. “There’s something here.”
It was nearly buried under rust and ice. Owen took out his knife. Elias caught his wrist. “Careful.”
“I’m just cleaning it off.”
He worked slowly. A letter appeared, then a number. Owen brushed the rust flakes away with his mitten, and old lettering came through.
Owen read it out loud. “Adit.”
He scraped with the knife again. Under the rust a number showed. No. 4.
Something tightened inside Elias. He had heard this before, long ago. This number, from someone. With the memory came a sentence he had taken for nonsense for years: after a hard freeze, nobody goes in there.
Owen looked at him. “What’s wrong?”
Behind them Minnow growled low, and from under the north slope came that same dull sound. This time very close.
The rumble passed under their feet and died away so fast it might never have happened. Minnow stared at the slope a few more seconds, then stopped growling.
Owen lowered the flashlight. “Close.”
Elias stood in front of the rusty plate, trying to drag up whatever had lodged in his memory so many years ago. Adit No. 4. Sawyer, the trailer by the river. A hard freeze. Somebody’s words by a campfire: “Don’t go in there after a hard freeze.” Why couldn’t he remember the rest?
“Uncle Eli.” Owen touched his shoulder.
The old man flinched.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I haven’t seen any ghosts.”
Owen shone the light on the plate. “Then what is it?”
Elias ran his mitten over the number. “I remember this number. From the geologists.”
Owen waited. “So what happened with No. 4?”
Elias jerked his shoulder. “That’s the part I don’t remember.”
They moved along the old cutline. Two hundred yards on, the slope came into view: rock, snow, sparse brush. If not for a rusty length of rail sticking out of a drift, you could walk right past the entrance.
The adit was almost completely caved in. A massive rock overhang loomed above it, and at the bottom was a black gap a little over three feet high. The snow by the entrance was churned up.
Owen went closer. “Look.”
Elias had already seen Hump’s tracks. The bear had been here more than once. On a rock by the entrance were deep claw marks. A little lower was a dark stain.
Owen crouched. “Blood.”
It all fit too neatly. Hump came here and tried to squeeze inside. Something collapsed. Rocks caught him. After that he left the draw and didn’t want to go back.
Owen stood and brushed off his knees. “There you go. He crawled in, a rock came down, caught him on the side, and he got scared.”
Elias looked at the black gap. The explanation was simple and logical, and that was exactly why he didn’t trust it.
“What?” Owen said.
“Nothing.”
Owen sighed. “There’s your ‘nothing’ again.”
“You sure the cave-in’s old?”
Owen looked up. Some of the rocks lay on top of the snow, with no frost on them. “Not old.”
Elias nodded toward the slope. “Then why are the trees leaning?”
“The slope shifted because of the cave-in.”
“And the hollow under the snow?”
Owen hesitated. “Could’ve settled too. And the steam—so what? It’s warmer inside the adit.”
Elias nodded. Everything fit. Almost. Hump hadn’t been afraid of the entrance. At night he had looked toward the whole draw, and he had left before the blow came.
“All right,” Elias said. “We go back.”
Owen was surprised. “That’s it?”
Elias had already turned his back to the entrance. “What do you want?”
Owen held the beam on the black gap. “Well, to look inside. We came all this way.”
“A minute ago you had it all figured out.”
Owen smiled. “Well, yeah.”
He glanced into the gap once more, then stepped away. “Fine. Let’s go.”
They had gone maybe ten steps when air from the adit hit them in the back, a short, heavy shove, as if someone inside the tunnel had slammed a huge door. Snow whipped up at the entrance, and small stones rolled across the crust.
Owen spun around. “Was that…”
From deep inside came a cracking sound, long and low, and a few seconds later water appeared in the gap under the rocks. A thin trickle at first, then a second.
Elias moved closer. Owen grabbed his sleeve. “Where are you going?”
“Let go.”
“Something else is going to come down in there.”
Elias stopped. Before, he’d have brushed him off and said he knew what he was doing. This time he crouched where he stood and watched the water. It was coming out of the mountain, and it didn’t freeze right away. It steamed.
“Where’s all that coming from?” Owen asked.
Elias watched the thin streams for a while. “There’s water in there. A lot of it.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know. And I don’t know yet where it came from…”
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