The High Country Rancher by Jan Hambright Read Free Book Online Page A

up and pulled his flashlight out of his pocket. Dust polluted his lungs and he coughed, trying to clear them.
    Turning on the light, he inched the beam along therock walls of the tunnel. It was narrow, maybe three feet wide. The debris from the collapsed air shaft blocked off the passageway in one direction.
    Caution burned through him as he shined the light down the dark tunnel in the opposite direction. For the first time he considered the idea that this could be their final resting place.
    “Come on, we’ve got to find the saddlebags if we can.” Clamping the flashlight in his teeth, he started digging with his bare hands.
    Mariah moved in next to him, digging, too.
    “I found something.” She pulled her compact up out of the dirt. “Just what every girl needs in the dark. A mirror. Damn.”
    She shoved it into her pocket, and went back to work digging. “This is better.” She dragged up the saddlebags and dusted them off.
    Baylor took the light out of his teeth. “Good job. We can live without the gum and my hat.” He saw her smile in the scant lighting. She pulled her shoes out of her waistband and slipped them on.
    “That way?” She pointed at the black hole to the north, as near as he could tell it was north.
    “Yeah.” Baylor stood up, slung the saddlebags over his shoulder and took her hand. He’d explored some of the tunnels as a teenager, but once his mom found out he’d been underground, she’d insisted the openings be sealed. Permanently.
    He tamped down the worry that rocked throughhim. They would find a way out, but for the time being they were safe down here from the shooter aboveground.
    “Watch your step,” he warned her as he shined the light on the uneven rock beneath their feet.
    “Who made these tunnels?” Mariah asked, her grip tightening on his hand.
    “Haven’t you ever heard of the Montgomery Find Mine?”
    “I didn’t pay attention in Idaho history.”
    “Fifty years ago they hit a vein of gold down here a quarter of a mile wide, but it petered out five years later, and they abandoned the site.”
    Caution sluiced in Baylor’s veins as they progressed along the tunnel, his flashlight beam shining on freshly drilled holes in the bedrock, ready to be plugged with dynamite and blasted. Sequential piles of ore lay ready to be transported out of the tunnel. Someone had been down here.
    Recently.
    He owned the mineral rights to the Bellwether, and as far as he knew, they were on Bellwether property.
    The tunnel forked twenty feet ahead and they stopped.
    “Which way?” Mariah asked, stepping forward.
    “I’m not sure.” He shined the light down the tunnel on the left, noting the downward slope of the rock floor. He did the same for the tunnel on the right, which looked level.
    “Let’s take the right tunnel, we don’t want to go deeper underground.”
    “Sounds good.” She latched on to his hand again, and he gave it a squeeze.
    Baylor stepped into the tunnel, and paused. “Do you feel that?” A hint of air current pushed from out of the opening, moving the hair lying against his forehead. “It must open to the surface somewhere.”
    The beam coming from the flashlight dimmed. Baylor smacked it against his palm a couple of times and it glowed bright again. Relief spread through him. They’d be in real trouble without a light source.
    Mariah dared to believe for the second time in the past hour. She didn’t want to suffocate down here, and the brush of the breeze against her skin gave her hope.
    “Thank God.” The feel of Baylor next to her was the only thing that made the situation bearable. If she’d been down here alone, she’d have lost it by now.
    Gingerly she followed him into the tunnel. Twenty feet, thirty feet, fifty feet. Ahead in the distance, she spotted a patch of light.
    “Look at that!” Excitement surged in her veins and she fought the urge to race toward it, held back only by the feel of Baylor’s hand holding hers, and a wave of tension in