The keystone gave way.
Instantly, the wall of water behind it struck the breach like a battering ram. Tons of pressurized water exploded through the fissure, sweeping away the gravel plug in a violent, roaring vortex. The sudden drainage created a massive low-pressure vacuum in the cavern chamber.
The air rushed outward with the force of a hurricane.
High above, at the mouth of the drill shaft on the high plateau, the draft reversed violently. The flames from the steam boiler were sucked down into the iron pipe like a river of fire.
A scream echoed down the shaft from the plateau above. “The draft! Cut the cable! CUT THE—”
The sparks hit the descending dynamite cage forty feet above the river.
The world vanished in a blinding flash of white, incandescent fury.
The concussive shockwave hit Caleb like a locomotive, lifting him off his feet and throwing him into the shallow water of the side passage. The roar of the explosion was not a sound; it was a physical blow that ruptured the air, followed instantly by the terrifying, grinding shriek of thousands of tons of limestone tearing free from the cavern ceiling.
“RUN!” Clara screamed through the choking cloud of sulfur and pulverized stone.
They scrambled into the narrow escape tunnel as the roof of the main cavern collapsed behind them in a cataclysmic avalanche. Massive boulders the size of cabins crashed into the riverbed, smashing the drill bit to scrap iron and sealing the subterranean chasm in a tomb of crushed rock.
The mountain groaned beneath their feet as they clawed their way upward through the narrow cleft, emerging onto the high plateau under the starlit sky just as the ground settled into a profound, shuddering silence.
Caleb collapsed onto the dry grass of the mesa, gasping for clean night air, his ears ringing with high, shrill deafening noise.
Beside him, the drilling rig was a shattered wreck of bent iron and twisted cables. Two of Vale’s hired hands were fleeing on foot down the southern ridge, their spirits completely broken by the explosion that had swallowed the shaft.
But the fight was not over.
Standing fifty yards away near the rim of the high bluff, illuminated by the burning remains of the steam engine’s coal box, stood three men.
Jack Vance, his leg bandaged where Clara had struck him with the pliers, stood leaning against a boulder with a Winchester held in one hand. Deputy Roy Tucker was behind him, clutching a double-barreled shotgun with trembling hands.
And between them, his silver wolf-headed cane gripped like a weapon, his charcoal coat torn and stained with soot, stood Gideon Vale.
The old man’s face was twisted into a grotesque mask of murderous, insane hatred.
“You destroyed the shaft,” Vale rasped, his voice whistling through clenched teeth. “You ruined thirty years of work.”
Caleb pushed himself up from the dirt, unbuttoning the leather flap of his holster. Clara stepped up beside him, her face calm, her breathing steady, her eyes reflecting the dying embers of the fire.
“It’s over, Vale,” Caleb said, his voice echoing across the high plateau. “The cave is sealed. The river is running in its natural bed beneath the valley. You have no water to steal, no spring to sell, and your hired rats are running for the border.”
“It’s never over!” Vale screamed, his voice breaking into a manic shriek. “Kill them! Kill them both! I’ll pay five thousand dollars in gold to the man who brings me their heads!”
Jack Vance levered his Winchester with a vicious snarl, raising the barrel toward Caleb’s chest.
Deputy Tucker raised his shotgun.
The wind on the high mesa stopped. The moonlight poured over the limestone like a silver sea. For one eternal heartbeat, the entire history of the Red Hollow Basin—the blood, the drought, the stolen land, the murdered fathers—hung suspended on the finger of a mercenary killer.
CHAPTER 10: THE DESERT’S VERDICT
Jack Vance never pulled the trigger.
From the dark timberline behind the limestone boulders, a rifle shot cracked with the sharp, whip-like report of a high-velocity Sharps sporting rifle.
The heavy lead bullet struck the walnut stock of Vance’s Winchester, shattering the wood into flying splinters and tearing the weapon from his grip with brutal force. Vance screamed, clutching his mangled, bloody fingers to his chest as he spun into the dirt.
Deputy Tucker shrieked like a frightened schoolgirl, dropped his shotgun into the gravel, and threw both hands high into the air. “I surrender! Don't shoot! I’m an officer of the law! Don't shoot!”
Gideon Vale whipped around, his eyes wild, raising his heavy silver cane like a club. “Who’s there? Who fired that shot?”
From the shadows of the twisted mountain pines stepped a tall, solitary figure.
He walked with a slight limp, leaning his weight against the long barrel of an old Model 1874 Sharps buffalo rifle. He wore a weather-beaten coat of smoked buckskin fringed at the shoulders, Apache moccasins that reached to his knees, and a wide-brimmed hat that shaded a lean, leathery face scarred by eighteen years of wind, sun, and solitude. His hair was long, white as cotton, falling in two braided strands bound with rawhide strips.
Clara stopped breathing.
The silver medallion against her throat felt suddenly hot, vibrating in harmony with the blood pounding in her ears.
“Father?” she whispered, her voice barely carrying across the mesa.
The old man lowered the rifle slightly. His dark, weathered face softened, his eyes—obsidian and piercing as Clara’s own—filling with an unbearable, radiant light.
“I heard the mountain speak, Clara,” Samuel Whitaker said, his voice deep, gravelly, but rich with the quiet music of the high canyon country. “And when the mountain roars, an old surveyor knows his daughter has come home.”
Clara broke into a run.