IN THE COLD

Chris started the old Jeep up the unpaved road toward Taylor Pass and was overcome by melancholy. Shit. He missed his dad, and he missed his mom and sister who lived so far away, and he missed kissing his son goodnight on the top of his head. He missed married life. He missed climbing into bed at night next to the woman he loved. He missed the security of a paycheck well earned. He missed, more than anything, the decent man he'd once been.

And Ashley was putting her faith in him. Superman.

Fortunately, he had to set aside his nostalgic self-pity when the dirt track began to rise sharply and he had to stop, get out and lock the hubs on the front tires. The Jeep reminded him a lot of the one his dad had kept covered next to their garage at their Denver house. Dan's Jeep had been red, but the paint was just as sun-worn and the seats just as shredded. Yeah, could have been the same vehicle, he mused, swept again by a sense of loss.

There were sections of the rutted dirt road Chris recalled vaguely, especially when the evergreen forests stood sentinel on both sides of him, but when he drove through high parks and stands of aspens, nothing was familiar. Too lush and summer green. He'd always been there in the drab bareness of November.

He remembered the location of their old hunting campsite, though. It had sat on the far side of Taylor Pass below the 14,000-foot peaks that comprised the Elk Mountain Range. This was high country. As high as you could get before ascending above timberline, where the environment was too rarefied for anything to grow.

He'd long since left behind other vehicles or hikers by the time he reached the camp and pulled the Jeep off the road, parking it next to a lodgepole pine—the same tall pine that his dad used to hang the gutted game from. Chris engaged the parking brake and sat breathing in the cool thin air and stared at the tree. His father had nailed a board to the tree thirty years ago and fixed a pulley to it in order to hang the elk. Part of the board was still there, rotting and hanging askew from a rusted nail.

And in the small clearing next to the tree, remnants of their fire pit remained. A few rocks in a semicircle, some even still blackened. Saplings had sprouted from the ashes in the center of the pit.

He stood in the bright summer sun, hands on his hips, baseball cap pulled low, and he surveyed the area.

It was smaller than he recalled. Hell, as a boy, he'd thought their campsite was enormous. A makeshift wood table set up over there. Several log seats near the campfire. Their big olive-drab four-man army tent with the small stove in its center. God, it had taken an hour to pitch that old tent, nothing like the ten seconds it took to pop up a nylon one nowadays.

"When are we going to splurge for a real mountain tent?" Chris had asked that last year they'd hunted. Dan had turned to him. "This will probably be our final trip, kiddo. You'll graduate this spring and be so damn busy you won't have time."

Chris had laughed. "Are you nuts? I'll never give up this trip. Next year we get a real tent. My treat, Pop."

His father had tossed him the bundle of tent pegs. "We'll see," he’d said.

It had been their last trip.

It had also been the pivotal point of his life, they year he'd found Ashley.

The terrain Chris had covered that morning twenty years ago was too rocky for a Jeep to navigate. He stood in the middle of the campsite and tried to recall just how far the mine was. Half a mile? He remembered the route as if he’d taken it yesterday. The only difference was, that long ago November, he'd been bundled in down and shouldering a .30-06. Now he reached around to the back of his jeans and felt his service revolver safely tucked in the waistband. He was about to pull it out and pump a round into the chamber when he remembered there already was one in there. From the other night.

He smiled thinly. "Great," he said out loud. But there was no time for morose thoughts or the hollowness that lurked below the surface. He needed to get going before he ran out of daylight. He pivoted and surveyed the perimeter of the campsite. Yes. There was the route, through that stand of stunted pine. He headed into the forest, picking his way over deadfall and, as he moved forward, the years seemed to peel away. He was twenty-one again and his future lay brightly ahead. The whole world was at his feet.

His wristwatch read 5:30 AM.

"Cold as a witch’s tit," Dan said at his side. "You got your heavy gloves with you, kiddo?"

"Yeah, Pop, I got them."

It was eight degrees Fahrenheit out. Chris felt the cold air claw at his lungs and thought that down in Aspen it was probably twenty-five degrees. But where they were hunting and nearly 11,000 feet it was downright freezing. Always was in the late autumn.

There was no moon. The woods were so black he had to reach out in front of him every couple feet to make sure he wasn't going to walk into a tree or tumble into a ravine.

Ahead lay a park. He and Dan had always had luck in the high meadows. A stream trickled through the center of it, and the elk would one by one emerge from the black forest and make their way to the water. The cows and their spring calves first. Paving the way in gathering light. Then later the bulls. One or two. Sometimes three of them if the herd had not been overly culled the previous year.

The key was silence. You had to move quietly and slowly to your spot and await the dawn. You also had to be downwind of the herd. Elk had an excellent sense of smell.

But on that opening morning of elk season not a single bull showed. At seven- thirty, Chris whispered, "I think we're skunked, Pop. They must be in the ravine."

"Or still up higher," Dan whispered back. "What do you think? Breakfast then take a hike, look for some fresh signs?"

Normally, Chris would've jumped at the chance to fill his stomach with bacon and eggs around a roaring campfire, but the hand of fate was guiding him that icy morning at 11,000 feet. "Um," he said. "You know, let's give that ravine a try. I've got a good feeling."

"Now there's a switch. Well, I gave you your chance." Dan stood up from behind the log that had shielded them and stretched, carefully shouldering his rifle. "You take the high side, sport, and flush whatever is in there down to me. I'll walk in by that boulder. You know the one?"

"Sure do. It's maybe five hundred yards down the slope."

"That's the one."

"Then let's do it. See you in a couple hours back at camp if we come away empty."

"Sounds good to me."

He wondered why he chose that particular route as he left his father and picked his way into the woods. He supposed he really did have a gut feeling that day, a feeling something was going to happen.

The woods ran up toward Castle Peak three thousand feet above. The climb was rough, and despite his slow pace as he clambered over fallen trees, he was panting in the thin air. Getting warm, though, finally. Even sweating beneath his orange wool cap.

He'd never been on this side of the ravine, though he'd seen the country. Steep cliffs and lots of rockslides. Even a scree field. But there were level spots, too, where he just might spook up some game that would flee down into the gully. And Dan would be waiting below.

Later he would think it was a miracle he'd spotted that cut in the rocks at all. At least at the time he had thought it was a cut. He'd sidetracked to take a look and been surprised to see mine tailings and the entrance to an abandoned silver mine, with a set of rusty, twisted rails that disappeared into the dark interior. Those old-time miners sure got around. All the way up here, he'd marveled. There were mines leftover from the silver boom days everywhere in these mountains. Some pockmarking the ski slopes of Aspen Mountain itself, where the ski patrol marked the holes with orange tape. A little boy, skiing out of bounds, had fallen into one of the mines and been killed some years back. The story had run in the Denver papers.

But this was a slope mine, the kind you walked straight into, the opening in the side of the mountain. Yes, he noticed bleached and splintered wood around the mouth, probably the entrance shed in the old days. There was even an ancient silvered board with chipped painted letters on it, lying at what once had been the doorway to the shed. He bent and brushed off the years of dust and read The Close Call Mine. Those old prospectors sure had a sense of humor.

His father was waiting for him. Damn, he'd like to explore this place. You never knew what you might find inside—rusty tools, antique ones, cool items. But he didn't have a flashlight, and Dan was waiting.

Reluctantly, he turned away, searched the trees below for telltale elk movement. The sun was just rising above the shoulder of Castle Peak, shooting out long shafts of light to paint the valley in brightness. It'd warm up soon.

He'd started to move away, searching for the best path through the rocks and trees, when he heard it. He stopped, listened hard. And elk bugle? If so, it was really distant. Probably too far to bother with.

But he stood there, his breath pluming in the cold, a slanted beam of sun arrowing into the mine entrance. His lip curled at a corner. "Well now," he said, "The Guiding Light?"

Then he heard it again, a weak humming. Sobering, he turned, cocking his ear for the direction of the sound. A breeze rattled the tree branches, drowning the unfamiliar noise.

It resembled a human voice, a thready impossible song. And it was coming from the mine. The hairs rose on his neck. No way, he thought, his mind blank. Had to be an animal holed up in the mine. A bird. A... a coyote or a fox or...

There it was again. He took his rifle off his shoulder and held it pointed straight ahead. Feeling like a fool. And Pop was waiting.

He took a step toward the entrance, then another. The gaping hole was black and echoing, and the moment he moved inside, he was in an alien world, cut off from reality, from the sun and the trees and the craggy peaks. He felt a sudden horrible panic that the mine would suck him in, and he'd never find his way out.

The sound again, louder. Yes, it was coming from ahead of him, deeper inside. He could almost make out words. But, of course, there couldn't be a human being in this place.

He walked on, the light from the entrance fading quickly. His hands out in front of him grasping the rifle, he felt his way along the floor in a kind of shuffle.

A moan, a rattling, something was there. Jesus.

He drew damp air into his lungs, winced at the moldy smell and cried out, "Hello?" But his voice was weak and shaky, and he swallowed and tried again. "Hello?" Echoing.

The humming stopped instantly, and there was only silence, vast and complete except for water dripping in the dank coolness.

"Is anybody there?" he yelled, feeling like an idiot as his words reverberated around him.

A noise, yes. A human noise, ludicrously familiar in this cave. A sob.

"Hello? Where are you?"

Another sob, bouncing off the rock walls.

"I'm coming," he said, his heart pounding. There couldn't be anyone in here, but there was.

He forced himself to walk, like a kid playing Blind Man's Bluff, the barrel of his rifle scraping the rock walls, tripping on the rotted rails that ran down the center of the floor. He'd have given an arm and a leg for a lousy flashlight.

Coming up against a solid wall, feeling his way around a corner in the passageway. Amazingly, there was light, a dim flickering glow. Were his eyes getting used to the dark? Was there an airshaft to the surface here?

Light?

He moved faster, able to make out the twists and turns, the rails, the fallen rubble on the floor, a couple other tunnels branching off. Mist hung in the air like dust, and support beams sprouted ghostly white fungus like aberrant mushrooms.

"Hello?" he tried again.

"Help!" he heard, and he stopped as if felled by an axe.

He never knew how long he stood frozen there, his emotions raging from disbelief to doubt to a childish fear of the unknown dark. But somehow he finally forced his feet to move, step-by-step, slowly at first then more quickly until he was rushing headlong toward the light, his rifle slung over his shoulder now. He wouldn't need it—the voice was female.