Chapter 1

I was in Colorado for summer vacation before my final year in high school, and my Uncle Willard had taken me to see his gold mine.

Having an uncle who owned a gold mine might sound pretty exotic, but Uncle Willard's mine wasn't the kind of gold mine that made a person rich. It was an old, mostly played-out corporate operation that had sold out to him when the amount of ore being extracted was no longer adequate to support mass production.

What once had been an operation employing upwards of twenty workers now was a one-man affair. How much money did Willard derive from working in his mine? Beats me. Enough, evidently, to make a living, although I know he and his wife lived pretty modestly, there in the old mining town of Cripple Creek, Colorado.

The mine had an elaborate steel structure over the narrow shaft that led to the underground chamber the two of us were in now. This was where Uncle Willard was currently extracting gold-bearing ore.

The actual "elevator" that had taken us more than 150 feet straight down into the mountain was nothing more than a very large barrel-shaped contraption hanging from some sturdy-looking ropes mounted on a pulley.

The "barrel" had taken the two of us, together, down into the mine, and the clearance around the vertical shaft wasn't much more than a foot or a foot and a half larger in diameter than the barrel. I wondered, but didn't ask, whether something more elaborate had been in use for an elevator, back when the mine had been operated by a corporation.

Down in the chamber where Willard and I stopped and left the barrel, he had electric lights that showed me what the mine looked like, inside. The chamber we were in was apparently one of several, but it seemed to be the farthest one down. It was big enough to stand up in, at least at the center, although the total area wasn't much wider or longer than a large room. There was broken-up rock everywhere, and jagged chunks of rock made up the roof of the chamber, but the whole thing seemed so solid and secure that I didn't worry, much, about such things as a cave-in.

It was interesting, being down there so far underground, and we spent more than an hour looking at the gold ore, with Uncle Willard explaining to me how to distinguish gold-bearing rock from plain old rock.

He promised, later when we went back up-top, to take me to see the gold ore refinery where he and other miners took their ore to sell. We had a lunch down there, underground, and were just about ready to go back up-top when Willard suddenly grabbed himself at the chest and keeled over.

He was having some kind of heart attack or stroke, and I started to panic, but in a minute I got hold of myself a little bit and did what I could for him. I tore open his shirt at the neck and tried to pound on his chest with my fist, trying to help him to overcome the enormous pain he was obviously experiencing.

Nothing I could do helped, though, and in less time than it takes to tell you about it, Uncle Willard got all still, and I knew he was gone.

Well, Jesus, he was a big guy -- well over 200 pounds -- and I tried to move his body but I realized pretty soon that I couldn't. Even if I could have gotten him over those sharp rocks on the surface of the little chamber, there was no way I was going to be able to lift him into that barrel and pull us both back up that mineshaft. I wasn't even sure how you were supposed to do it. I hadn't paid that much attention, on the way down, to what Uncle Willard had done.

The best I could do, I thought, would be just to go on up by myself, and find somebody and tell them what had happened. Jeez, I was going to have to tell Aunt Rachel, Uncle Willard's wife, that he had died! Man, I dreaded that.

Anyway, I got into the barrel contraption and looked at the ropes, there, that Willard had mounted on some kind of hook installed on the side of the mineshaft, but when I loosened the rope from the hook, I right away lost control of the barrel and it fell on down further into the shaft, with me in it! I was scared out of my mind for a moment while I was in freefall in that damned barrel, and I had completely lost control. But then it hit something -- hard -- below me and stopped moving.

The barrel was partially broken at the bottom, though, from the impact, and it was pitch dark down there besides.

My heart was in my throat because that freefall had scared me shitless, but I realized, pretty soon, that the fall hadn't been very far. I could see, about 25 feet above me, the lights from the chamber where Willard and I had been. Evidently I was now at the very bottom of the shaft, or at least something in the shaft, below the barrel, had stopped it from falling any farther.

The rope, however, had slipped out of my grasp altogether, and was nowhere to be found. I felt all around for it, and couldn't find it. I began to feel a little panic. Then I remembered that I was wearing a helmet with a light mounted on it, and I was able to turn on the light and see my immediate surroundings.

As far as I could tell, the partially broken barrel was resting on solid rock below my feet. I could tell because I could see the rock floor where half of the bottom of the barrel had been. OK, so at least I wasn't likely to fall any farther.