Racing Storm Mountain, page 9
“Yeah,” Hunter grunted. Swann felt a little better knowing he was struggling with Kelton too. “This is Idaho. Where do you think all that cowboy stuff happened?”
Swann turned her phone light on and they walked into a gently downward-sloping dark cave that had been chiseled into the mountain. Snow had blown in close to the entrance, and either some earlier snow had melted and refrozen or water had flowed inside some other way, because a lot of the floor was covered in a thick layer of ice.
“Careful,” Swann said, her voice echoing a little in the cave. “It’s slippery.”
Hunter almost fell. “No kidding. Let’s set him down here.”
They eased Kelton to a sitting position with his back to the wall. The poor guy, slow and shaking, moved his arms to hug himself.
“Little warmer in here,” Hunter said.
“And dark,” Swann said. “Did you bring your phone?”
Hunter shook his head. “Like I said. No reception out here. Plus, it’s kind of a nice phone and I didn’t want to risk losing it.” He shrugged. “Sorry, but this race wasn’t supposed to last that long. I didn’t know I’d need my phone for a light in a mine.”
Kelton patted himself. “My ch-cheap phone. Must fallen outta my p-pocket in the avalanche.”
“OK, forget the phones,” Swann said, worrying at the sight of thirty-two percent battery remaining. She shivered. “We have to get a fire going somehow. Does anyone have any matches?” Only the wind whistling at the mine’s entrance answered, the most frightening response she could have imagined. “Nobody? What are we going to do?” She started pacing, but slipped on the ice and nearly fell. “What did we come here for if we can’t light a fire?” She could barely see the guys now. Darkness was falling outside, and coming on even faster in the mine.
“Emergency k-kit,” Kelton said quietly. “On my s-sled. T-tried to tell you.”
Swann looked out into the storm. She twisted a lock of hair around her finger, gazing into the deepening darkness.
“On his . . .” Hunter began. “We can’t go back looking for his snowmobile. We barely found our way up here in the first place. We’ll get lost out there with no cover at all.”
“We have to try,” Swann insisted.
Hunter sighed. “Do you know what people call this mountain? The old guys anyway?”
Swann folded her arms. “Mount McCall. Big McCall and Little McCall.”
“That’s what it says on the map. But the old hunters and trappers have passed on a different name. They call it Storm Mountain. It’s something to do with the way moisture blows through the pass and the colder temperatures at elevation.” Hunter shrugged. “I don’t know. But tons of snow get dumped on this part of the mountain. Over a hundred years ago, the miners who were working up here were all caught in a freak early blizzard. They all froze to death or starved. Bad winter. Nobody could get up here to find the bodies until spring.”
“Great,” Swann said. “That’s a real encouraging story, Hunter. So we’re out of the snowmobile race. Now we’re just racing Storm Mountain.”
“Swann,” Hunter tried.
“There is no other way,” Swann said. “Without a fire, he’ll freeze. We all will. We need to bring his snowmobile up here. To do that, we both have to go.”
“If we go out there, we could die,” Hunter said.
Swann took a deep breath, getting ready to slide on her helmet. “If we don’t go out, we’ll almost certainly die.”
CHAPTER 9
SWANN TOOK ONE LAST LOOK AT KELTON, SHIVERING ON the ground, before she pushed on her helmet and stepped out into the biting wind. Almost instantly, snow plastered her whole front side.
“It’s so dark out here.” Hunter shouted to be heard.
“Then we have to hurry,” Swann called back. In two pulls, she’d started her snowmobile.
Hunter kind of raised a hand in objection. “Maybe I should—”
Swann jumped on the snowmobile, gripping the handlebars and giving the throttle a little boost to turn the machine around.
“Yeah, you drive,” he finished, climbing on behind her.
A moment later they were out shredding the powder again. Swann drove her snowmobile faster than she had all day, abandoning caution and forgetting safety. She was feeling a little numb in her fingers and toes. The cold crept in everywhere. If she felt that bad, what must this be like for Kelton?
They hadn’t been in the mine for very long, so they were blessed with fresher snowmobile tracks to guide them, but it still wasn’t easy. Like Hunter had said earlier, the landscape seemed to change depending on what direction one was traveling, and now the darkness and blowing snow made it even more of a challenge. She slowed down, but only a little.
Finally she hit the brake and skidded to a halt.
“What?” Hunter asked.
Swann had almost missed it too. The snowdrift on their left had just a few gaps, revealing Kelton’s snowmobile underneath. “The snow’s blowing in fast!” she called to Hunter. “A few more minutes, and it would be totally buried.” She got up and started brushing the snow off the machine.
Hunter helped. When it was mostly cleared off, he flipped up the seat, revealing the compartment underneath, packed with extra clothes and a few plastic bags filled with different supplies. Swann hadn’t even known snowmobiles had storage space like that. Hunter slammed the seat back into place. “Kelton has been talking about this snowmobile forever. How he’s been working on it. Let’s hope he did a good job and we can get it started and back to the mine.”
“If not, we’ll just take the stuff back with us,” Swann said.
But in four pulls, Hunter had Kelton’s snowmobile started.
“Let’s get back there,” said Swann. “I hope we’re in time.”
After another hard ride to the mine, they found Kelton had rolled or fallen over on his side and lay there curled up in a little ball.
For a moment Swann was terrified he was dead, but then she saw him shivering, and she rushed to his side. “Kelton, we’re back. We brought your snowmobile.” She glanced out into the dark where Hunter had gone. “Hunter’s bringing your stuff. You have matches or something?”
“Innabagsh,” Kelton said. He groaned as he struggled to get up. “Gotta lighter inder.”
Hunter returned, shining a flashlight up in his face the way some people did when telling scary stories. “Flashlight. Good call, Kelton.”
“It’ll give my phone light a rest, save the battery,” Swann added.
Hunter continued, “Plus, looks like a lighter, a rope, some bandage stuff, and in this other bag, dry socks, sweatshirt, and sweatpants. Fresh gloves.”
“That ain’t it. You trynta hog it all,” Kelton said.
“Dude.” Hunter pulled a Snickers bar out of his pocket. “I wasn’t going to eat it myself.”
“Forget the candy,” Swann said. “We have a lighter. Let’s get a fire going.”
“Burning what?” Hunter asked. “Trees out there all covered with snow.”
Swann reached for the flashlight and Hunter handed it over. “You help him change into his dry clothes. I’ll see if there’s anything in this mine we can burn.”
“Why should I have to help him with his clothes?” Hunter asked.
“Are you serious right now?” Swann said. “It’d be weird if I did it.” Kelton already had his gloves off and was fumbling helplessly with the zipper on his coat. “Just help him, Hunter!”
“Well, keep the light over here, then!”
Swann kept the light on Kelton so Hunter could see what he was doing, but she looked around the cave. About twelve feet back from the entrance, a second cave branched out in shadow off the main tunnel. How big was this mine? “I can’t believe we’re in a real mine, that it’s just out here, for no reason. No fence or anything.”
“Might have been a fence—Kelton, can you push your hand through, yeah, through the sleeve there?—before. Maybe some old barbed-wire fence, wooden fence posts rotted out and the whole thing buried in the snow.”
“OK, but if they’re so dangerous, why didn’t someone just fill this in?” Swann asked. She risked a look behind her. Hunter was getting Kelton into dry sweatpants.
“There’s another mine not far past the fence behind my family’s hunting property, on state land. My grandpa said he’d destroy my whole life if he ever found out I’d tried to go down in it. But he talked about an article he read about abandoned Idaho mines. There are abandoned mines all over the state. Some government group was guessing there could be thousands more they don’t know about.”
“Thanks, Hunter,” Kelton said quietly. “K-kind of em-embarrassing needing help to—”
“No big deal,” Hunter said quickly.
Swann swung the flashlight around, checking out the side tunnel. “I wonder what’s in—” She stopped. The branch line didn’t go far off the entrance. It was some kind of storage room. The rock wall had a natural or carved-in stone ledge with a wooden shelf upon it, and resting on that, a wooden box. “In here. At least one thing we can burn.” She stepped closer and started rubbing the dust off the side of the crate. “It’s pretty dirty,” she called back to the guys.
“Well,” Hunter said, joining her in the storage chamber, “this will be a start.”
Swann brushed more dust. “Hey, something written on the box. Dangerous. High . . . explo . . .” She trailed off staring at the word EXPLOSIVES. She was about to brush off more dust when Hunter caught her hand.
“Hey, Swann,” he whispered, gently tugging at her arm. “We probably shouldn’t mess with this.”
“Why are you whispering?”
Hunter pulled her all the way back to Kelton. He still spoke quietly. “There’s some type of explosives in that box. Dynamite. Maybe black powder. Grandpa said sometimes people find old blasting caps in mines like this.”
“So?”
“So?” Hunter said. “For all we know, that stuff’s been here a hundred years or more.”
“It doesn’t look like anyone’s messed with it,” Swann said. “Been sitting on a dry shelf. It’s not like we’re going to light the fuses or anything.”
“That’s what I said to my grandpa when he was talking about this. He owns a construction company, does a lot of roadwork. Sometimes his company has to blast rock out of the way. The stuff they use is modern and a lot better. He said the stuff they had for mining in the old cowboy times wasn’t even very good back then. And when it gets older, it can just go off if people mess with it.”
“What do you mean, mess with it?” Swann asked, glancing nervously back at the storage tunnel.
Hunter shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe my grandfather talked more about it, but I wasn’t paying attention. He just said, like, it could go off easily. Maybe if it gets bumped too much?”
“Maybe?” Swann said.
Kelton shivered on the ground near the entrance to the mine.
“What should we do?” Hunter asked.
“We need the wood,” Swann whispered. “If we don’t get Kelton warmed up, he could die.”
“But the explosives,” Hunter protested.
“We’ll move the box out of the way and take the board from underneath it. Maybe the dynamite or whatever will explode.” She gave Hunter a playful pretend punch to the shoulder and smiled. “Maybe it won’t.” She handed the flashlight to Hunter. “You hold the flashlight. I’ll move the box.”
“But I should be the one to—”
Before Hunter could go on about how it was his job as a boy to risk himself, she slapped the flashlight into his hand and went to the storage chamber. There she approached the high explosives box. She let out a deep breath. I’m supposed to be in L.A. I should be surfing right now. Or at a cello lesson. Anything besides messing with boxes of explosives from pioneer times. Swann fought to keep her hands from shaking as she reached out and took hold of the ropes on either side of the box. “I’m going to move the box now, Hunter,” Swann whispered. “You might want to step back, just in case . . . you know.”
“Swann,” Hunter whispered. “If anything blows up down here . . . it won’t matter where we’re standing in the mine.”
Swann swallowed. “Oh yeah.” Very gently, holding her breath, hands sweating, she carefully lifted the crate off the shelf. She’d expected it to be heavier, but then she had no idea how much dynamite weighed. When nothing happened, she slowly and evenly stepped back. One step. Another. The edge of the crate cleared the shelf. If she dropped the box now . . . She bit her lip. There was no time to think about that. Finally, she’d lifted the crate clear.
Hunter beamed the flashlight inside it.
The box was empty. Even so, Swann let out her breath slowly.
“Well, that was a lot of fuss over nothing.” Hunter was still whispering.
“Yeah,” Swann said aloud. “And we’re wasting time. Let’s get anything that can burn out there to get a fire going.”
Moments later she was back in the entry chamber, working to unseal Kelton’s plastic bag with her cold numb fingers. “Kelton, you there?” she said as she pulled out a lighter and some scraps of cardboard.
“Y-yeah,” Kelton said. “Just so cold. You gotta make, like, a pyramid out of the cardboard, right by the wood. B-better to break that box up into s-smaller s-splinters.”
Although the empty explosives crate was super-old, it was still pretty solid. Swann leaned it against a rock by the wall and stomped it, busting it under her boot. She kept stomping the pieces smaller and smaller until she figured that had to be enough, then set to work arranging the bits around the cardboard.
“You want t-to g-get it shaped like—”
Swann turned away from her work. “I’ve seen them build fires in the movies. I’m not totally helpless, you know.”
But when it came time to light the cardboard, the lighter wouldn’t work. She kept pressing the button, but absolutely nothing happened. “Oh no,” she breathed. If this lighter wouldn’t work, it would be a dangerous-cold night for all of them.
“What’s the problem?” Kelton asked.
Swann pressed the button again and again. “This worthless . . . it won’t work! It doesn’t do anything!” She held the lighter up before him and pressed the little button on top. “I keep pressing the . . .” She trailed off as Kelton started shaking even more than he had been. “What’s the matter? Are you OK?” Was he going into some kind of hypothermic shock? “Kelton? Talk to me.”
“I can’t breathe,” Kelton gasped as he shook.
Swann put her hands on his shoulders. Was he dying? “What’s the matter? What can I do?”
Kelton sucked in a huge breath. “You can flick your finger along that silver wheel at the top!”
Swann frowned. He was OK? “Are you . . . are you laughing at me?” A strange mix of annoyance and relief swirled inside her. He was laughing. It had returned some color to his cheeks.
“Oh my gosh. SuperPop! Have you ever used a lighter?”
She shoved Kelton’s shoulder. “Shut up! Of course I’ve used a lighter. But not this kind. My father let me use a kind of almost gun-shaped lighter to light a gas fireplace once. What’s the big deal? I just pulled the black trigger or button or whatever and it clicked and fire came out the end. This button doesn’t even click.”
Kelton held his glove over his mouth and squinted his eyes as though trying to contain his laughter. “It’s OK. I get it. Different backgrounds.”
“I’m not helpless!” She was trying to help him and he was laughing at her like she was stupid. Who did this . . . this weirdo think he was?
“I know you’re not,” Kelton said. “You didn’t grow up with smokers in the house and lighters all over. I get it.” He nodded toward the lighter. “You gotta flick your thumb down that silver wheel real quick, then hold that button down. While you hold the button down, fire will keep coming out.”
“Well, how was I supposed to know?” Swann flicked on the lighter and held the little yellow flame to a the edge of a piece of cardboard, which darkened and curled. She lit another piece and a third. Swann watched carefully, desperately hoping the little bits of wood would ignite. She helped by flicking the lighter on a thin splinter, holding the flame there until the tan wood darkened. Had the fire caught? Was the splinter burning? This had to work.
“Swann,” Kelton said from behind her.
“What?” she said sharply. “What else am I doing wrong?”
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
She spun away from the growing fire, the flickering flames dancing patterns of shadow and light around the room and around Kelton. “For what? The avalanche wasn’t—”
“I didn’t mean to make fun of you about the lighter.”
The only thing worse than mockery from a guy like Kelton Fielding was his pity. She shrugged. “I don’t care.”
“I know,” he said, edging closer to the fire. “Still, it was mean. Rich people probably don’t use cheap lighters like that. Why would you have used one?”
She wanted to argue against the idea that she was any different from him just because her parents were wealthier, but she knew a lot about McCall, Idaho, and a little about Kelton’s background—enough to know there were certain differences in the way they lived. “I’m not a stupid useless rich girl.”
“Naw,” Kelton said. “It wasn’t stupid.”
Swann rolled her eyes, and turned back toward the growing flames, feeling the heat flaring against her cheeks.
CHAPTER 10
IRON MIKE STEPPED INTO THE BEAR STONE BREWERY, stomping his boots in the entryway, not that it mattered. During Winter Carnival, so many snowy people came in and out of this place that the wood floor was quite a wet mess. He tugged his beard, frustrated that his early search had come up fruitless, and not happy about what he had to do here at Bear Stone.
“Iron Mike!” Eddie Ferson, a guy at the bar who’d graduated a few years after Mike, whom everyone called Fireball, raised a glass.
