Only 03 - Only You

knees and leaned against the cold wall of the tunnel. Distantly she realized that she was trembling. When Caleb touched her shoulder, she started wildly.
    Rafe’s deep voice boomed through the coyote hole as he called for Reno. Silence followed. Rafe called again. More silence followed. It was no different the third and fourth time Rafe yelled his brother’s name.
    “Cal, Wolfe, cart that gold up to Jessi,” Rafe said after a minute. “It’s just in the way down here.”
    The sound of a steel shovel blade ramming into rocky rubble came back through the tunnel as Rafe began to dig.
    “You’ll need someone to haul rubble out of your way,” Caleb said.
    “It will have to be Eve. Two men just flat won’t fit in here.”
    Wolfe bent, shone the lantern into the coyote hole, and began swearing in a combination of Cheyenne and British English.
    “He’s right, Cal. The bloody thing fits Rafe like a stone skin.”
    Caleb bent, looked, and began picking up the heavy gold ingots, swearing fit to raise blisters on the rock about the connection between fools, gold, and the kind of hell you didn’t have to die to discover.
    The rhythm of the shoveling never varied as Rafe dug through loosely piled stones and crumbling rock, pushing the debris to either side of his body and praying that the rest of the coyote hole would hold.
    While Rafe bored through the darkness like a grim, living drill, Caleb and Wolfe came and wentuntil a stack of big ingots grew at the mouth of the mine. Eve barely noticed the absence of the bars except that it made her job easier as she crawled into the hole and dragged debris out, giving Rafe a bit more room to work.
    “Send Eve when you need someone to spell you,” Wolfe said as he picked up the last ingot.
    Rafe grunted an answer and kept digging.
    In time, the first spectral flickers of lantern light gleamed through the rubble piled in front of Rafe.
    “I see light!” Rafe called back.
    “Is Reno there?” Eve called.
    “Can’t tell. The ceiling keeps—”
    Rafe’s words were cut off by a shower of stones. He cursed in the kind of searing invective learned in the toughest ports on earth. And as he cursed, he dug, knowing with every stroke of his shovel that he could be digging his own grave.
    No matter how hard Rafe dug, he could not keep a hole open that was big enough to crawl through. The grim set of his mouth when he wriggled back out into the tunnel where Eve waited told her more than she wanted to know.
    “The more I dig, the farther away I get,” Rafe said bluntly, wiping sweat from his eyes. “I got the biggest rocks out of the way, but the small stuff keeps coming down. It’s like digging through a riverbed. I can barely open up enough space for a cat, much less for a man my size.”
    “Any sign of Reno?”
    Rafe looked at Eve’s shadowed golden eyes and pinched face. He stroked her tangled hair with surprising gentleness.
    “I got the shoved through to air twice,” Rafe said. “More stuff came down each time. I shouted through the opening, but…”
    He looked away, unable to confront the anguishedhope in Eve’s eyes.
    She didn’t ask for any more information. If Reno had called out in return, Rafe would have heard.
    “Well, we’re better off than we were,” Rafe said. “At least we know there’s new air going in through the hole, and enough space on the other side to echo when I shout, and there was enough air all along to keep Reno’s lantern burning.”
    Eve nodded, but her attention was on the coyote hole.
    “If he wasn’t killed outright,” Rafe continued, “he’s probably knocked out or in another part of the mine, looking for a way out.”
    “Shall I get Caleb or Wolfe?”
    “No,” Rafe said curtly. “You were dead right. That hole is no place for a family man.”
    “Rest for a few minutes,” Eve said in a shaking voice. “There’s water in the canteen. It’s yesterday’s, but I don’t suppose you’ll mind.”
    Rafe’s teeth were a white flash against his gritand sweat-streaked face.
    “I sure won’t,” he agreed.
    He set aside the shovel and went to the canteen, which Eve had put back up the tunnel, out of the way.
    As soon as Rafe picked up the canteen, Eve grabbed the shovel and scrambled into the coyote hole. By the time he turned around and realized what she had done, she was beyond his reach.
    “Come back here!” Rafe yelled. “It’s too dangerous. That ceiling is set to come down at the first excuse!”
    Eve’s only