Yeti Unleashed Page 13

  He continued crawling.

  The throbbing in his leg caused his entire body to convulse. He tried putting his mind elsewhere but it was difficult--it kept returning to his leg. Had he broken something? His mind became a swirl of jumbled thoughts, a nightmare of past events in his life. He saw his mother, his abusive father, his estranged brother. His body shook again with a painful chill that brought him back to the present.

  And the pain.

  Still, he continued on.

  The ground over which he crawled turned to mud, a thick sticky, gooey mess that made his progress difficult. The stuff clung to his clothes, creating a sucking sound with each movement of his limbs. The afternoon had turned dark, menacing, and he began to doubt his chances for survival. If he didn’t find shelter soon, those chances would diminish even further. Funny how, out here on the desert, the weather could be just fine one minute and harrowing the next. All he wanted to do was to crawl into a ball and forget everything, but he knew that would spell disaster. If I don’t find shelter soon, he thought, I’m going to die out here. His teeth chattered from the chill.

  Ahead, he saw nothing but a continuum of rolling hills, buttes, rock outcroppings, endless miles of sagebrush, and mesquite. Harry searched in vain for a rock formation large enough to huddle under or a cave to crawl into. The raindrops pelted his skin, stung his face. With every few yards, he felt his strength ebbing.

  To his right he thought he saw a ledge so he inched his way to it but when he pulled himself there, he found it did not provide any protection from the driving rain. He continued on, his arms now aching.

  God help me, he thought.

  He moved on.

  The rain was less now, down to a drizzle, but the sky was dark, approaching black. Then up ahead he thought he saw something through the mist--a series of vague gray shapes. Forcing the pain away, he doubled his efforts and pushed his way toward them. Closer, he saw the shapes were a group of mounds and low adobe walls.

  The ruins.

  He had found the ruins.

  They were in a shallow canyon with rugged walls on the east and west that protected the ancient village from the elements. For about a thousand years, from about 500 CE until their dispersal around 1500, the Anasazi, whose name was a Navajo word that means the ancient ones, lived in pueblos and cliff dwellings built in the canyons and high mesas of the Four Corners region where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah meet.

  The ruins were those of the Anasazi that occupied the region, originally by the Basketmaker people sometime after the first century, and later by the Puebloans from 700 to 1150. The Paiute Indians moved into the area after 1000. The Basketmakers lived in sub-terrain pit houses that were ten to fifteen feet in diameter and approximately six feet deep. They used spears for hunting and their name was derived from their use of baskets as storage vessels. The later Puebloans lived in above ground pueblos--nothing more than houses made of sticks and adobe. They had the additional knowledge of the bow and arrow and manufactured ceramic vessels for storage and cooking.

  The Anasazi farmed corn, beans, squash, and cotton on the marshy valley floor and built multi-roomed pueblos on the gravel benches along the valley margins. In addition to farming and hunting natural resources, the Anasazi mined salt and turquoise both for their own personal use and as a prized trade item.

  More advanced was the pit dwelling with an encircling wall of adobe, or adobe and stone. The pit, in this case, yielded the remains of the fallen wall. In some places there were isolated pit-dwellings, in others whole groups were placed in a more or less haphazard way, while in still others, the pits were arranged in a row, side by side, with a narrow space between.

  And it was from rows of pit-dwellings like this that true houses developed, when some enterprising pit-dweller conceived the brilliant idea that he might make a single party-wall answer for two adjoining pit-dwellings, simply by digging them close together and making the intervening wall straight instead of curved. However, the true rectangular room came later.

  In most of the houses, the rooms remained more like ovals, cut straight across at the ends, than like rectangles--that is, the end walls only were straight, while the side walls remained curved to a greater or lesser extent, and the floors were still more or less sunken below the surface of the ground.

  It all formed an exquisitely planned city, its form aligned with the canyon wall behind it and the pattern of its connected chambers as complex and finely articulated as a honeycomb.

  But it was nothing more than a series of ruins now, when Harry pulled himself into the shelter of an adobe wall. The rain had let up and the wind was only a gentle breeze. He sucked the rainwater out of his shirt, and it quenched his thirst. He looked around the low, crumbling walls and noticed a few pits with collapsed sides, the bricks scattered about as if a tornado had blown through the ancient village. To the west, a soft glow indicated a setting sun, and Harry prepared himself for a cold night on the desert plain.

  Exhausted from all his crawling, he allowed his body to relax. Somewhat drier, he was a little warmer. He hunkered down, wrapped his arms about himself, and tried to forget his aching leg.

  ***

  He was in a black cave, black as obsidian, and he was unable to see beyond his own body. He felt around and found Dixie next to him, asleep. In the darkness, he could hear something moving about with a shuffling gait. No, there was more than one. He couldn’t make them out but he could hear them. By the sound they made, he knew they were large. His pulse quickened at the thought that they were readying themselves for an attack, an attack he and Dixie were ill suited to repel. He reached out and pulled Dixie closer. They didn’t stand a chance against them for they were bigger, more powerful.

  Evil.

  Then he thought he saw something in the darkness beyond. Just an imperceptible flicker but it was surely there. A reddish glow momentarily seen then gone. He knew what the glow was. He had seen it before. It was the creature’s eye. The beast or beasts that roamed the depths of the cave. A roar went up, out of the black void, sending a wave of panic through his body. He stiffened and prepared himself for the attack.

  Harry jolted awake. God, it had been a dream. His entire body now ached from lying in an awkward position on the hard ground. He gazed upward and noticed that stars were out, twinkling like tiny jewels on a black velvet cloth. He shivered.

  The night was not yet over.

  Chapter 14

  Rupert Lowell was on the track of a line of quartz that extended into a rocky gorge covered with dense brush and small trees. It had been rough going after Yarak stumbled onto the shiny crystals to one side of a small tributary of the Taber River in Mule Valley. Earlier in the week, they had followed another tributary without any luck so Yarak’s find sent a wave of jubilation through Lowell.

  The fact that, the Lost Coyote Creek Mine might still remain elusive and undiscoverable, occasioned a feeling of dolefulness to alter his mood.

  Yarak, along with Garby and Terkel, led the way, blazing a trail for Lowell with their machetes. The quartz was difficult to follow, with many areas along its line devoid of any crystal. Most of it lay below the surface, Lowell knew, but following its surface projections, he hoped, would lead to a vein of gold.

  Gold deposits formed at many different times during Earth’s history. Those in the western United States were believed to have formed about 2400 million years ago, during a period of intense metamorphism and intrusion of igneous rocks. The gold-bearing quartz reefs in Nevada were significantly younger, about 400 million years, but also owed their origin to a period of intense metamorphism in the region.

  As chemical weathering and erosion gradually broke down the host rocks and lowered the land surface, the quartz and gold veins were eventually exposed to the atmosphere. The veins provided far more resistance to chemical attack than the surrounding rocks, so that mechanical weathering was required to fragment the quartz, thereby releasing the gold. Because they were relatively heavy, particle
s of gold were more difficult to move and so became naturally concentrated in the soil or in adjacent gullies or streambeds. These concentrations were known as alluvial or placer deposits and had yielded incredible riches on some goldfields, such as those in California and Colorado.

  Alluvial deposits took many forms, including sands and gravels in the beds of modern-day streams, in old river valleys buried under lava flows, or perched on hilltops due to uplift of the land surface. The terms shallow and deep leads meant gold-bearing gravels covered by younger sedimentary layers or lava flows.

  Gold would filter down a mountainside or canyon, eventually coming to rest in streams and rivers where it could be panned as placer deposits. But Lowell searched for the richer lode, the source of the deposits below. It was here that the Lost Coyote Creek Mine would be found.

  He continued up the side of the gorge, struggling to keep up with the men ahead. It was rugged, hard work. Lowell understood why gold was worth so much. It was hell getting to it, finding it. Sweat poured off him, necessitating a periodic pause to wipe his brow and take a sip water.

  A shout from Yarak pierced the quiet.

  He looked ahead and saw Yarak waving at him, beckoning him up. Lowell hurried up the side of the gorge, stumbling along the way, tripping over a root or rock that he did not see, until he stood alongside his assistant.

  “What’s up, Yarak?” he said, out of breath.

  “Look here, boss.” Yarak led Lowell to a rock overhang bordered by thick thorny brush. He pointed with a dirty finger. “There,” he said. “Look there.”

  Lowell looked into the dark recess under the overhand and noticed a black hole, its sides braced by thick, heavy, rotting timbers.

  “What is it? An old mine entrance?” he said.

  Yarak, Garby, and Terkel were smiling at each other, as if proud of their achievement.

  “Looks like it,” Yarak said. “What else would be braced by timbers like that?”

  “They’re certainly old,” Garby said.

  “And the quartz extends right up to it,” Terkel added.

  Lowell looked back down the side of the gorge to the stream. They had hiked all morning, and he was hungry. “If this is a mine, it would make sense,” he said. “Especially if there are placer gold deposits in that stream down there. Nash, think you can get the jeeps and equipment up to the stream? We could eat lunch then explore this mine.”

  “It would be rough going, Mr. Lowell, but we can try. Both vehicles have a high clearance.”

  “Good. Why don’t you and the boys give it a go while I wait down at the stream and rest? That climb wore out my legs.”

  “Fine,” Yarak said, and the group slogged back to the stream where Lowell sat under a short tree and rested.

  Gold might occur as deposits called lodes, or veins, in fractured rock. It might also be dispersed within Earth’s crust. Most lode deposits formed when heated fluids circulated through gold-bearing rocks, picked up gold, and concentrated it in new locations in the crust. Chemical differences in the fluids and the rocks, as well as physical differences in the rocks, created many different types of lode deposits.

  Over millions of years, gold flakes and nuggets worn away from veins were swept into bodies of water. The heavy gold settled in streams, lakes, and riverbeds, and on the sea floor, forming placer deposits.

  Several mechanisms were at work. Superheated waters emerged from spring-like vents in the seafloor. This occurred where tectonic activity forced the spreading of the oceanic crust. Metal-rich minerals, including small amounts of gold, were deposited as the heated gold-laden water mixed with the cold seawater.

  Alternatively, gold-laden water heated by magma-molten rock in the Earth’s shallow crust formed a variety of lode gold deposits. Hydrothermal-hot water-fluids rich in sulfur could form gold ores in rocks of active volcanoes. Gold minerals formed in hot rocks in and around volcanoes. Low sulfur, gold-bearing hydrothermal fluids formed when hot rocks heated ground water.

  Finally, fractures formed in Earth’s crust as mountains rose. Hydrothermal fluids flowed into these spaces and formed gold-bearing quartz veins. These fluids were created by hot, deeply buried metamorphic rocks.

  Placer deposits formed at Earth’s surface when weathering action exposed gold from other, older lode deposits. The gold was swept into, and settled in, streams, lakes, rivers, or the sea floor. Many placer deposits were of recent geologic age, but some were billions of years old.

  Lowell looked up when he heard a rumbling from downstream and saw the two jeeps bouncing over the rough terrain. At their approach, he stood and waited. When the jeeps were alongside Lowell, they stopped and Yarak jumped out.

  “Made it,” he said. “It was rough going, for sure. But here we are.”

  Garby and Terkel exited the other jeep and dropped onto the ground while Lowell rummaged in an ice chest and found the sandwiches and water. As the men ate, they chatted about the mine’s entrance.

  “Are we going in that thing?” Terkel asked. “Isn’t it dangerous?”

  “I’ve heard about these abandoned mines,” Garby said. “They can collapse at any moment.”

  “Yes,” Lowell said, glancing up the gorge. “Over the years the state of Nevada has worked hard at closing the entrances to these old mines but there’s a lot of them they haven’t located. Looks like this is one of them.”

  After eating and rehydrating themselves, the men hiked back up to the mine entrance with flashlights. Once there, they stood for a moment staring into the black hole.

  “I’ll lead.” Lowell said.

  He switched on his flashlight and stepped into the mine. Immediately, he noticed a drop in air temperature, the coolness caressing his face like a refreshing wave. Garby and Terkel followed, with Yarak bringing up the rear. The lights from their flashlights cast flickering beams against the walls and down the shaft. At regular intervals heavy wooden timbers braced the walls and ceiling of the mineshaft. A strange musty odor tickled Lowell’s nose.

  As they advanced farther into the mine, the shaft began a slow descent and angled toward their left. The walls were sand and rock, and Lowell surmised that whoever built the mine must have used explosives for part of it. Brown lichen and cobwebs covered the walls and their lights sent spiders and other insects scurrying for the darkness.

  At one point, Lowell stopped to inspect a shoring timber. He took a small knife from his pocket and pried a small part of the timber away. The clump of wood fell in a mass of splinters onto the ground.

  “Rotten,” he said. “These timbers could disintegrate into nothing at any time. Cause the walls to come tumbling in on us.”

  “Great,” Garby said. “Just what I need. A nineteenth century burial plot.”

  The shaft angled farther down and back to the right and, as they walked, Lowell had a strange feeling come over him. He couldn’t pinpoint it, just a weird sensation that sent a shiver down his back. Soon they came to a Y, where the shaft branched into two divergent tunnels, around thirty degrees from each other. The group hesitated and shined their lights down each shaft.

  “I haven’t seen anything that looks like a gold vein,” Yarak said. “If this was the lost mine we’re after, where’s the gold?”

  “The Lost Coyote Creek Mine supposedly is worth billions in today’s dollars,” Lowell said. “So, if this is indeed the mine, there should be a lode of gold a yard wide somewhere in here.”

  Terkel laughed. “The Mother Lode.”.

  “I suggest we return to the jeeps, make camp, and come back in the morning. We’d have more time and can bring the bigger lanterns and testing equipment.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” Yarak said.

  The men turned around and headed back to the surface.

  ***

  The evening meal was finished and dusk settled over Cinder Mountain. Harry had not returned and Dixie was worried. She saw Drayton chatting with Radner in the lobby and walked over to them. Radner smiled and sauntered, off leaving her wi
th the security chief. Drayton nodded as she came near.

  “Dr. Olson, I missed you at dinner. Where is that husband of yours, the other Dr. Olson?” He chuckled at his small play on words.

  “Bruce, I’m worried. Harry hasn’t returned from his searching the area north of our mountain.”

  Drayton’s eyes narrowed and he studied Dixie. “Were you expecting him by now?”

  “Yes, I was. The sheriff has been unable to reach him on his walkie-talkie. I’m worried, I must admit.”

  “There was a storm out on the plains earlier today,” Drayton said. “He probably got wet.”

  “Oh dear. He could catch pneumonia. I hope he’s not hurt or something.”

  “Dr. Olson strikes me as the sort that can take care of himself, ma’am. I would try to not worry too much.”

  “But I do.”

  “Tell you what,” Drayton said. “If he’s not back by morning, I’ll contact Sheriff Calder and get him to mount a search for him. Okay?”

  “Think we should wait till morning? Why not search now? I am worried.”

  Drayton took Dixie by an arm and patted her shoulder. “Can’t do anything in the dark, Dr. Olson. He’ll be fine, I’m sure. May have to spend a cold night but he won’t die. If he doesn’t return tonight, we’ll get an early start tomorrow.”

  “Thank you, Bruce.”

  Later, in her dorm room, Dixie sat at a desk and made an entry in her diary. It was short for her thoughts were on Harry and his welfare. He was out on the desert plain, possibly hurt, suffering through a thunderstorm, and there was no telling what he was doing for warmth this night.

  She put her pen down and closed her diary. She wished she had gone with him--at least she could be with him, share whatever he had to endure. She knew from their experiences in Mongolia that her husband was a tough customer and could handle himself, but she worried, nonetheless. God, if he was dead, she would never forgive herself. Dixie tried to quell the fears rising within her mind that he had been hurt or might be unconscious. He had been her rock, her mentor. He had saved her life several times, once when she had fallen into a deep ravine and barely clung to its side, the other when the Yeti had kidnapped her. Both times, Harry had put his life on the line in order to save her own. She was in love with him then, of course, but those brave acts cemented her feelings. When he kissed her, her life changed forever.