Blood Wedding

14

Fargo stuck his knife back in his boot, and he and Molly limped to the back wall of the room, where they started feeling their way in opposite directions: Fargo to the right and Molly to the left. Judging from the glow that Fargo could see across from them, the room was a fairly large one, though that didn’t mean there was another exit or that it would be large enough for them to squeeze through even if it existed. And if there was an exit from the room, it might not lead them out of the cave. It could just as easily lead them deeper underground and have no outlet. Still, Fargo figured the risk was worth it. The outcome of facing Murray without a weapon other than a knife was pretty much a certainty. At least this way there was a chance, no matter how small it was.

“I found something here,” Molly said after Fargo had gone only a few feet. “It’s not very big, though.”

“It might not be the only way out,” Fargo said. “Keep looking.”

They looked, but neither of them found any other way out. They met at the opening Molly had located, and Fargo tried to gauge its size by running his hand around the edges.

“I can see why Murray didn’t bother to put a guard on us,” he said. “He didn’t think we could get out through here even if we did get loose.”

“Was he right?” Molly asked. “Usually I don’t mind being big, but there are times when I wish I was as small as Abby. This is one of them.”

Fargo judged that the opening, which started almost at the level of the floor, was at most a couple of feet high and not much wider. They could snake along through it if it didn’t get any narrower. Maybe it would widen out. Maybe not. If it didn’t, they’d be stuck. But it was the best chance they had.

“I’ll go first,” he said. “If it gets too tight, you can back out.”

“Not if I’m stuck.”

“You won’t get stuck,” Fargo said with more confidence than he felt. “If I can make it through, so can you. Or you can stay here. That’s up to you.”

Fargo lay down on the floor and scooted into the opening. His shoulders cleared the sides by only a few inches, and it was even darker in there than where he’d just been. The absence of light was total. God only knew what he was getting into. Somebody had told him once that it was better to face the devil you knew than to take a chance of facing the devil you didn’t know. He’d always thought that was a pretty craven way of thinking, but right now he wasn’t so sure that it wasn’t good advice.

Too late to worry about that, though. He slithered along as best he could, keeping his head low so as not to hit it on the rock above him. He didn’t think he could help yelling if he did, since his head was still as sore as if he’d been scalped.

After a few minutes, he stopped moving and listened. He could hear Molly scraping along behind him. He didn’t say anything. He just moved on.

It wasn’t long before he lost all track of time. All he knew was that there was rock above him and rock below him and darkness all around him. It was like being buried alive. Now and then something like that happened to people, if you were to believe the stories that you heard around the campfire.

He could hear Molly’s breathing now. It was too fast, and too shallow. She was getting close to panicking, Fargo thought, and he didn’t much blame her. They were too far into the tunnel to go back.

The floor of the tunnel seemed to be sloping downward, and Fargo didn’t know if that was good or bad. Bad, he guessed. The way out seemed more likely to be up than down. On the other hand, there probably weren’t any bats down there on the lower levels. He kept moving forward, pulling himself with his elbows and pushing with his toes.

After another couple of minutes, he thought that something seemed different, and he raised up carefully. Sure enough, the roof of the tunnel was higher. He could get on his hands and knees and crawl. Better yet, if he slouched over, he could even sit up.

“We have a little more room,” he told Molly. “Time for a rest.”

Molly didn’t say anything. She was panting. She sounded like a dog after a long run.

“We’ll be fine,” Fargo said, not knowing if he was lying. He put out a hand and touched Molly’s arm. “We have some room to move around in now.”

“It’s . . . so dark. Can’t see . . . anything. We can’t . . . get out.”

She was right about not being able to see. Fargo could have held his hand an inch from his nose, and he wouldn’t have seen it at all. Molly wasn’t worried about the bats anymore, though, and that was good.

“We’ll get out,” Fargo said. “It’s no worse in here than having your eyes closed on a dark night.”

“It’s . . . worse.”

Fargo moved closer to Molly and put his arms around her. He didn’t talk. He just sat there and held her until her breathing returned to normal. It was eerie to have a woman in your arms and not be able to see her. It was almost like holding a ghost, but ghosts weren’t solid, or so Fargo had heard tell.

After a while Molly’s breathing slowed and then became normal again.

“If we do get out of here,” Molly said, “are you sure you don’t want to settle down and be a farmer? I think I can make a go of it on Tally’s place.”

Fargo grinned in the darkness. “I’m no farmer. And we aren’t out of here yet.”

“You said we’d get out. I’m almost starting to believe you.”

Fargo wished he believed it himself. He said, “We’d better start moving again. Try not to skin your hands and knees too bad.”

“When can we stand up?”

“Later,” Fargo said. “When we get out of this tunnel.”

It seemed like a long time. It seemed almost like forever. But finally they did come out of the tunnel. They practically fell out of it, in fact, which proved that Fargo had been right. They were going downward.

They found themselves in another room. Fargo stood up and breathed deeply. It was good to be out of the tunnel, though he still couldn’t see anything, and he stretched to loosen his cramped limbs.

“How big is this place?” Molly asked.

Fargo said that he didn’t know. He called out and tried to judge by the echo. The sound of his voice reverberated hollowly around them.

“Pretty big, I’d guess,” Molly said. “What do we do now?”

“Find a way out,” Fargo said. “Just like before.”

“I hope it’s not as small as the last way out. I don’t think I could take much more of that.”

“We’ll have to take what we find. Unless you want to go back.”

“It’s a good thing I can’t see you, Fargo. I’d hit you if I could.”

“I’ll try to stay out of your way. Let’s see if we can find a way out of here.”

They started working their way around the wall. The rocks were rough under Fargo’s hands and irritated the cuts from the knife. He ignored the stinging pain and felt carefully, looking for fissure, a wide gap, anything.

After a while he started to wonder if there was any opening at all. Or what if it was above his head? This room of the cave was huge. It was more than a room; it was a cavern, and the ceiling was quite high. There was plenty of room on the high walls above him for an exit that he could easily miss. He told himself not to worry. If they didn’t find anything, they could always go back the way they’d come. It would be difficult, but they knew it could be done. If they could locate the tunnel again.

Fargo was tired, and he was thirsty. The throbbing in his head had settled down to a steady ache, which was some improvement, but not much. He remembered a time when he’d been trapped underground in a mine in Virginia City. He’d gotten out of there, and he’d get out of the cave. No matter how bad things seemed, there was always a way.

He was still telling himself that when he heard a surprised scream from Molly.

The scream lasted for only a couple of seconds, and then it was abruptly cut off by the sound of a body hitting the ground.

Fargo didn’t move. He didn’t know exactly what had happened, but he guessed that Molly had somehow fallen. She hadn’t fallen far, but Fargo had no way of knowing how badly she might have been hurt.

“Molly,” he said. “Can you hear me?”

There was no answer, and Fargo started moving back the way he had come, careful to keep a hand on the wall all the time. He moved faster than he should have, and he stumbled a couple of times, once almost falling himself. It wouldn’t do to have both of them unconscious, so he slowed down and tried to be more careful.

When he came to the tunnel they had entered from, he slowed down even more. He didn’t want to fall into the same hole that Molly had. He went on for a couple of yards and then stopped. The silence in the cavern was almost overwhelming. It seemed to close in around him and press on him like the darkness.

He called Molly’s name again. This time she answered.

“I’m all right, Fargo. Just had the wind knocked out of me.”

“Where are you?”

“How the hell should I know? I was moving along, and all of a sudden there wasn’t anything under my feet. So I fell and landed wherever it is that I am. The ground is different here, I can tell you that much. It’s sandy.”

That explained why she hadn’t been hurt any worse than she had. Fargo said, “I’m going to see if I can get to you. Wait for me.”

“Just where is it you think I’d go? Off to the nearest saloon for a drink?”

Fargo ignored that and moved very slowly in her direction, putting out his foot and feeling for the floor before every step. When he came to a spot where there was nothing under his leading foot but air, he stopped. He seemed to be standing on the verge of some kind of ledge, and he took a few seconds to consider what he could do next.

“Are you still down there?” he said after he’d thought things over.

“That’s right. I haven’t found the saloon yet.”

“Have you looked for a way back up?”

“Looked? Has that bump on your head made you loco, Fargo? I couldn’t look if I wanted to. No, that’s not right. I can look all I want to, but I can’t see a damn thing. Not unless you want to light a lantern for me.”

Molly was getting a little touchy, not that Fargo blamed her.

“I meant had you tried to feel for a way back up.”

“Yeah, I tried that. But there’s no handhold that I can find. The wall is too slick. You can either come down here or go back to Murray. Or keep looking for a way out.”

Fargo thought it over. He wasn’t going back to Murray, and he wasn’t going to leave Molly alone down there below, so it wasn’t as if he really had a choice.

“I’m coming down,” he said. “Move away from the wall.”

“You be careful. I don’t want you breaking a leg. I’m big, but not big enough to carry you out of this place.”

Fargo planned to be careful. He sat down and scooted forward until his legs were dangling over the ledge.

“How far down is it?” he asked.

“I’d tell you if I knew,” Molly said. “Not far, I guess, or I’d be a lot more addled than I am.”

“Here I come, then.”

Fargo pushed himself to the lip of the ledge and went sliding over. He’d done a lot of scary things in his time, but launching himself into pitch-black dark to fall who knew how far had to be one of the worst.

His feet hit the ground before he expected them to and sent a jolt all the way up his body. It nearly blew the top of his head off, but he didn’t have time to think about that as he tumbled forward. He stuck out his hands to catch himself and somersaulted onto his back. When he landed, he put both hands on top of his head as if to hold it on. Then he lay still for a couple of seconds.

“You all right, Fargo?” Molly asked.

“I’d say that depends on what you mean by ‘all right.’ I’m alive, anyway.”

“You might be better off dead. This is a hell of a place.”

Fargo recalled his earlier notion about being in hell. “It’s not hot enough,” he said. “And if we were in hell, there’d at least be some light.”

“Fine. This place is worse than hell, then. Are you going to get us out of it or not? I’d just as soon not spend any more time here than we have to.”

Fargo sat up. His head didn’t hurt any more than it had before. It didn’t hurt any less, either.

He took his hands off his head and touched the ground. Molly had been right. It was more like coarse sand than rock, quite different from the floor of the cavern above them. He stood up. It took him a second or two to get his balance, and even then he felt a little bit unsteady.

“Does the ground slope?” he asked. “Or is it just me?”

“It slopes, all right,” Molly said. “I don’t know what that means, though. We’d better be more careful from here on out. The next fall might be a long one. There are a lot of caves down south of here, and some of them are supposed to have bottomless holes in them.”

“People say that about caves,” Fargo told her. “I don’t much believe it. How could there be a hole without a bottom?”

“Maybe there’s not, but I don’t want to be the one to find out if those stories are right or wrong.”

“We’ll be careful,” Fargo said.

He tried to decide whether to follow the wall or the slope of the ground. While he was thinking, he sniffed the air.

“Do you smell that?” he asked.

“I don’t smell anything. Is there a skunk in here? We aren’t around those bats, are we?”

“There aren’t any bats here. I smell water. Where are you?”

“Right over here. And I don’t smell any water.”

“Stay right where you are and keep talking. I’m coming over to you.”

Molly kept talking, mostly about bats, while Fargo made his way over to her. He took her hand and said, “Now, let’s go down this little slope. Slowly.”

“I hope you don’t think I’m about to make any fast moves. I might be big, but I’m not crazy.”

“Nobody think you’re crazy. Come on.”

Fargo tugged at her hand and shuffled his boots across the grainy floor, moving carefully down the slope, which went on for yard after yard. Finally Fargo stopped.

“Can you hear that?” he asked.

The slightest of noises broke the silence that hovered all around them. It was the trickle of water.

“You were right, Fargo,” Molly said. “There’s water here.”

“And I can use some of it.”

He pulled her hand again, and they went on toward the sound. After a few steps, Fargo’s boots sloshed in water. Fargo let go of Molly’s hand and knelt down, feeling around him. There was a shallow rivulet not more than two or three inches deep running through the sand. Cold water stung the cuts on his hands.

“There must be a spring down here,” he said, scooping water up into his hands.

“I can’t see what you’re doing, Fargo,” Molly said. “Are you going to drink any of that water? It might be poison.”

“And it might not. I don’t see how it could be, and I’m too thirsty not to give it a try. If I die, you can pass it up.”

“To hell with that. I’m as thirsty as you are.”

Fargo felt Molly kneel down beside him as he brought the water to his lips. It was cold and tasted as sweet as any water he’d ever drunk.

When he’d drunk his fill, he said, “Now, let’s get out of here.”

“How are we going to get out?” Molly said. “I don’t see any doors opening anywhere around here.”

“This water has to go somewhere,” Fargo told her. “We’ll follow it.”

“What if it just goes into a hole in the ground? What if it flows into some big underground lake? What if it just disappears under a wall?”

Fargo knew that any of those things was possible. But he said, “I think it must go out of here. Maybe it even goes to the river.”

“It’s just a trickle. I’m not even sure you can tell which way it’s moving.”

Fargo put his hand in the water and waited. It flowed slowly but definitely to his right.

“I can tell,” he said. He took Molly’s hand and stood up, bringing her along with him. “We’re going this way.”

It wasn’t easy to walk in a straight line in the total darkness. In fact, it would have been impossible if Fargo hadn’t kept right to the edge of the water, splashing his boot in it to be sure he didn’t stray.

They walked for a while and then had another drink and rested. Fargo could tell that Molly was tiring, but he was determined not to rest for long. He got back to his feet. He wanted to get out of the cave, if that was possible, and the sooner, the better. He gave Molly a tug, and they started walking again.

After they had been moving along for quite a while, Molly said, “Now I smell something. It stinks.”

Fargo smelled it, too, and he knew what it had to be.

“Bat shit,” he said.

“Bats? Oh, my sweet Jesus.”

“You should be glad we’re getting close to them,” Fargo said.

“They’ll get all over us. They’ll tangle in my hair. Why should I be glad?”

“Because the bats will have a way to get outside. If they can get out, we can get out.”

Molly thought that over for a minute. “I never thought I’d be glad to smell bat shit, but I guess I am.”

And then they walked head-on into a wall of rock.