When he reached the bottom and detached, he signaled and she started down. A few minutes later, they both stood in front of the mine entrance.

“So you think the guy explored, or intended to explore, this mine?” Huckey asked.

“I do.”

“Well, let’s see if we can find what he was looking for. Maybe he was trying to get to the bodies of those miners.”

They both put on headlamps and entered the tunnel. Huckey went first, and Corrie followed. It was a crude horizontal passageway drilled and blasted straight into the rock, with no timbering or bracing. A set of rails for ore carts ran down the middle.

“Imagine,” Huckey said. “Trapped by a cave-in. No food, no light, no air. I wonder what got them first.” He sniffed. “At least it doesn’t stink in here. I was afraid it might smell like beef jerky.” He snickered.

“A dozen men lost their lives,” Corrie said. “Have a little respect.”

Huckey muttered something under his breath, but his speculations on the fate of the miners ceased.

About fifty feet in, the natural light started dimming. Huckey stopped and shined his light around on the floor, covered with wind-blown sand and dust.

“I don’t see any footprints. Doesn’t look like anybody’s been in here for a long, long time,” he said.

Corrie nodded, then paused to take a few pictures with her FBI-issued camera.

They moved forward, Corrie stopping every few minutes to take photographs. Aside from the tracks, the tunnel was empty, until after about a hundred yards they came across a derailed wooden and iron cart, half full of rocks. Corrie took another series of photos and collected two samples of rock for analysis. Beyond the cart stood a rusted iron machine outfitted with a cylindrical hammer, screw, and lever.

“Bet you’ve never seen one of those before,” Huckey said.

“What is it?”

“Portable ore crusher. You put a big piece of rock in there, turn the screw, and break it into pieces that can be lifted and sorted more easily.”

“Right.”

They went deeper, moving slowly. The air seemed to get colder and thicker, and the only light was now their headlamps: a gradual turn in the tunnel had put the entrance out of sight. They continued down the tunnel for another hundred yards or so before arriving at a massive cave-in. Here and there, Corrie could see the remnants of what looked like fruitless, almost pitiful attempts to dig past it.

She stared at the pile of wood and broken stone, at the collapsed ceiling, recalling what Fountain, the lawyer, had said back at the High Lonesome graveyard. The bodies, she knew, must still lie somewhere behind this rubble. Even though they were deep in the horizontal shaft, a chill wind seemed to stir her hair, and she shivered in the close and listening dark.

“Guess the jerky’s beyond that rockfall,” Huckey said. She could see him glancing sideways at her, waiting for a reaction.

She took a deep breath and managed to stay silent.

“Uh-oh.” Huckey’s flashlight illuminated a rotting wooden box, stenciled with Atlas Mining Co. on the side, followed by tnt.

“This is probably the cause of that cave-in,” Huckey said. “It’s a cinch they wouldn’t have tried using it to free the miners—that would have just made things worse.”

He leaned over and gave the box lid a nudge with his foot. It came off, exposing decayed wax-covered sticks and bundles of wire.

“Jesus,” said Corrie, taking a step back.

“Watch out,” said Huckey, glancing at her. “It could go off at any moment. Let me move it.”

“Wait … you’re going to pick it up? I don’t think that’s a good idea—”

But Huckey was already hoisting the rotten box. Gripping it in both arms, he stomped across the ground past her … and then tripped on a rock, dropping the box at Corrie’s feet. With a crash of splintering wood, sticks of TNT flew everywhere.

Corrie leapt back with a scream, falling in her panic to get away and ending up with her ass in the sand and her back against the fallen rubble—only to hear Huckey laughing uproariously amid the rising cloud of dust.

“What the fuck!” she yelled.

Huckey was laughing so hard it took him a moment to get enough breath to speak. “You should have seen the expression on your face when I dropped that box! You looked like a sheep struck by lightning!” He gasped and roared, doubling over. “I figured you didn’t know squat about TNT—and obviously I figured right. That stuff isn’t like dynamite; it won’t go off without a blasting cap. And the older it gets, the more inert it becomes. Sure you don’t want to spend another year or two at the Academy before venturing out here into the field, Corinne?”

Corrie steadied herself and got to her feet, the manic pounding of her heart quickly dying down, her terror rapidly replaced by an anger that could no longer be contained. She turned to face Huckey. “You bastard,” she said.

“Hey, I was just having a little fun. Come on—because you’re in the FBI, you aren’t allowed to take a joke? If you’re going to hang with the guys, you’d better get used to a little ribbing.”

“The guys?” Corrie replied. “You mean, the ones with a dick between their legs? ’Cause that sure doesn’t apply to you. Only a dickless wonder would find that schoolboy prank so hilarious, especially in a setting like this. You’re pissed because I pointed out that bone you found was from a sheep—which it is—and you can’t stand a woman showing you up. You’re the one who’d better get used to it, because I’m going to be director of the FBI when your paleo-troglodyte ass is still digging up ancient shit piles and bashing down walls.”