They opened the doorway to Hell and all the chickens got out.
Yes. That’s what she said.
The tracks on the steps were not made by a human foot. Not even the risen dead. These were much smaller and stranger.
Chicken tracks?
No.
They were a little too big and they were…
Strange was the only word that would fit into his mind.
So strange.
Little birdlike feet running through blood down into darkness.
Chickens had four toes.
These prints had two, and both toes had wicked claws.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Looks Away climbed heavily to his feet, pawing at the tears on his face.
“I didn’t realize you two were this close,” said Grey awkwardly.
The Sioux gazed down at the dead woman and then at Grey.
“The thing is… we weren’t,” he said softly. “We were lovers, but that was mostly intrigue. An escape for her and some compassion on my part. It was fun to make a fool of her husband and make fanciful plans about a future neither of us thought we’d ever share. But…”
Grey waited.
“But,” continued Looks Away sadly, “how close do two people really need to be before it’s appropriate to grieve for them? She was a good person who deserved better than this.”
“Yes,” Grey agreed.
“Her husband can rot for all of me, but Veronica… she was truly an innocent in this. Her only crime was trying to help and wanting to be free of domestic oppression.” He sniffed again, then his sharp eye caught the footprints. “What the bloody hell is that?”
“Veronica said something about chickens…”
“Those aren’t chicken tracks. A blind man could see that.”
“I know,” said Grey, “so what are they?”
“I’ll be buggered if I know. They’re as big as an ostrich, but it’s not one of those either.”
“What’s an ostrich?”
“A bloody big bird from Africa. Ugly as sin and cranky as a—. Hello! What’s that?” He jogged down five steps and bent to retrieve an object Grey hadn’t even seen. Looks Away held it out.
It was a feather. Long and stiff, colored a dark orange with a band of black.
“Do you recognize it?” asked Grey.
“No… I don’t, and that’s rather an odd thing. I’m no ornithologist, but I know my local birds, and I’ve never seen these markings. And certainly nothing similar on any bird that could have left tracks that big. Those prints look almost reptilian.”
“Can’t be. They’re in sets of two. No lizard I ever saw walks on two legs. And no bird I can think of could slash a person up like it did to your lady friend.”
Looks Away said nothing, but he let the feather drop from his hand and went back up the stairs to retrieve his shotgun.
They stood for a moment, glancing back the way they had come and then down into shadows.
“We came out here to try and talk sense to Nolan Chesterfield,” said Looks Away.
“Yup.”
“Not to go searching through catacombs.”
“Nope.”
“Our moral responsibility would be to return to town; organize a wagon train; take as much of the gold, silver, and platinum as we can carry; and brush the dust of this town off our feet.”
“That’s smart thinking,” said Grey, nodding.
“There is no sane or intelligent reason to go down these stairs.”
“None that I can think of.”
They stood there.
“Shite,” said Looks Away.
“Shit,” agreed Grey.
Guns in hand, they started down the stairs.
Chapter Fifty
It was a long way down.
The stone steps curved around and around, and soon Grey lost all track of how far they’d descended. At one point Looks Away stopped and bent with his lantern to inspect the steps.
“These are new,” he said.
“New?”
“I think they were made since the Quake.”
“How can you tell? The house might have been built over one of those old Spanish missions. Those guys used to build all kinds of cellars and sub-cellars.”
“No, that’s not what this is,” said Looks Away. “I know my geology and I’ve been to enough ruins to know one style of stonework from another. The Spanish used broader, flatter stairs. These are narrow and a bit steeper. Much more in the style of French or English castle architecture.”
“If you say so.”
“I do, and I find it rather curious. Chesterfield’s family is from England, and they were rich going back to the time of the Plantagenets. So, while I can see Chesterfield using the building style he’s familiar with, I can’t quite suss out why he cut a staircase so deep into the earth. It must have cost a fortune to do this much excavation through solid rock.”
“He could afford it.”
“Okay, fair enough,” said Looks Away, “but why spend that money on this? What the hell is down here that’s worth all of this effort to conceal it from the world?”
They had no answers.
Until they reached the bottom of the stairs.
The steps ended in another circular chamber. Once more there was a single doorway. Once more it was open.
More than open.
The door had been torn from its heavy iron hinges and smashed to kindling. Pieces of it were scattered all around. There was blood on the floor and walls, and the scuff patterns told of a battle between two men wearing ordinary boots and things that made impressions even Looks Away could not read. Much of the bloody spill was smeared as if someone had dragged something long and heavy from inside the room, through that destroyed door, and then back in again. The small three-toed prints were everywhere, but nothing with feet that small could have torn that door down. The timbers of the door had to be half a foot thick.
“I’m having some serious second thoughts about coming down here,” said Grey quietly.
“I’m having third thoughts,” said Looks Away. “And if we don’t find something useful soon I’m all for getting our bums back up those stairs.”
They approached the open doorway and held their lanterns up to reveal what was inside.
There were three metal carts of the kind miners used. They squatted on wheels, however, not rails. Two of them were piled high with chunks of rock cut unevenly from the ground. The third cart had been knocked over; its contents spilling outward like guts. Grey felt his mouth go dry. The rocks littered the floor. They were mostly crude, a mix of sandstone, volcanic rock, and variegated sedimentary stone. However each piece also contained fragments of a black stone that was streaked with wavering lines of white.
“By the Queens’ lacy…,” began Looks Away, but he couldn’t finish.
Grey estimated that each of the carts could hold a full ton of broken rock. If even after smelting the total yield of all three carts was only a hundredweight of that which was the white-veined black rock, then there was a fortune here to rival two full pallets of gold bars.
“Ghost rock,” he whispered.
And ghost rock it was.
“This is what Chesterfield was hiding,” said Looks Away. “I think he was mining ghost rock and selling it. He was making himself insanely rich.”
“Not sure that makes enough sense for me,” said Grey. “Doesn’t explain why Deray attacked this place. If it was to get the gold and the rock, then why leave it here?”
Suddenly they froze and it took Grey a moment for his mind to catch up with what his senses had recorded.
There it was again.
A sound.
A scuff of a stealthy foot.
Grey raised his lantern and held it so they could see the rest of this chamber.