Where the Summer Ends - By Karl Edward Wagner Page 0,61
told them.
Kenlaw grunted in a self-satisfied tone and headed back for the pickup to get his equipment.
“Coming with us?” Brandon asked.
Olin shook his head firmly. “I’ll just wait here. These old bones are too eat up with arthuritis to go a-crawling through that snaky hole.”
“Wait with him, Eric, if you like,” Kenlaw suggested. “I probably won’t be long about this. No point you getting yourself all dirty messing around on what’s likely to be just another wild goose chase.”
“I don’t mind,” Brandon countered. “If that morion came out of this cave, I’m curious to see what else lies hidden back there.”
“Odds are, one of those Brennans found it someplace else and just chucked it back in there. Looks like this place has been used as a dump.”
Kenlaw cautiously shined his light across the rubble beneath the ledge. Satisfied that no snakes were evident, the archeologist gingerly squeezed his corpulent bulk past the opening and lowered himself to the floor of the cavern. Brandon dropped nimbly beside him.
Stale gloom filled a good-sized antechamber. Daylight trickled in from the opening, and a patch of blackness at the far end marked where the cavern narrowed and plunged deeper into the side of the mountain. Brandon took off his mirror sunglasses and glanced about the chamber—the albino’s eyes were suited to the dank gloom.
The wreckage of what had once been a moonshine still cluttered the interior of the cavern. Copper coil and boiler had long ago been carried off, as had anything else of any value. Broken barrels, rotted mounds of sacks, jumbles of firewood, misshapen sculptures of galvanized metal. Broken bits of Mason jars and crockery shards crunched underfoot; dead ashes made a sodden raisin pudding. Kenlaw flung his light overhead and disclosed only sooty rock and somnolent bats.
“A goddamn dump,” he muttered petulantly. “Maybe something farther back in.”
The archeologist swung his light toward the rear of the chamber. A passage led farther into the mountain. Loose stones and more piled debris half blocked the opening. Pushing his way past this barricade, Kenlaw entered the narrow tunnel.
The passage was cramped. They ducked their heads, twisted about to avoid contact with the dank rock. Kenlaw carefully examined the walls of the cavern as they shuffled on. To Brandon’s eye, there was nothing to indicate that man’s tools had shaped the shaft. After a time, the sunlight from behind them disappeared, leaving them with their flashlights to guide them. The air grew stale with a sourness of animal decay, and as the passage seemed to lead downward, Brandon wondered whether they might risk entering a layer of noxious gases.
“Hold on here!” Kenlaw warned, stopping abruptly.
Darkness met their probing flashlight beams several yards ahead of their feet, as the floor of the passage disappeared. Kenlaw wiped his pudgy face and caught his breath, as they shined their lights down into the sudden pit that confronted them.
“Must be thirty-forty feet to the bottom,” Kenlaw estimated. “Cavern’s big enough for a high school gym. The ledge we’re standing on creeps on down that fault line toward the bottom. We can make it if you’ll just watch your step.”
“Is the air okay?” Brandon wondered.
“Smells fresh enough to me,” Kenlaw said. He dug a crumpled cigarette pack from his pocket, applied his lighter. The flame fanned outward along the direction they had come. Kenlaw dropped the burning wad of paper over the edge. It fell softly through the blackness, showering sparks as it hit the floor.
“Still burning,” the archeologist observed. “I’m going on down.”
“Nice if that was natural gas down there,” Brandon muttered.
“This isn’t a coal mine. Just another natural cavern, for my money.”
Clinging to the side of the rock for support, they cautiously felt their way down the steep incline. Although an agile climber could negotiate the descent without ropes, the footing was treacherous, and a missed step could easily mean a headlong plunge into the darkness.
They were halfway down when Kenlaw paused to examine the rock wall. Switching hands with his flashlight, he drew his geologist’s pick and tapped against the stone.
“Find something?” Brandon turned his light onto the object of the archeologist’s scrutiny, saw a band of lighter stone running along the ledge.
“Just a sample of stratum,” Kenlaw explained, hastily breaking free a specimen and shoving it into one of his voluminous pockets. “I’ll have to examine it back at my lab—study it for evidence of tool marks and so on.”
The floor of the pit appeared little different from the chamber through which they had entered the