Read Chapter 27: The Sabotage

The crack of splintering timber carried across the valley like a rifle shot, followed by a low, groaning rumble that vibrated through the floorboards of the hotel kitchen. Maeve's hand froze over the dough she was kneading. The rumble deepened into a rolling thunder that shook the china on its shelves.

She was out the back door before the dust plume crested the ridgeline above the Lucky Strike mine.

Men were already pouring from the saloons and bunkhouses, all moving in the same direction. Maeve gathered her skirts and ran, her lungs burning as she crested the rise and saw it—a collapsed, gaping maw in the hillside where the mine's main adit had been. Timbers jutted from the rubble like broken teeth.

A foreman she recognized from town, a man named Haskins who worked the Angle claims, grabbed her arm. "Maeve. God, there's at least six of 'em down there. The afternoon shift."

"How do you know? Have you heard tapping?"

Haskins shook his head, his face pale. "It's been ten minutes. Not a sound."

Maeve remembered Caleb's mine collapse three years ago. The silence. The waiting. The bodies they pulled out one by one. She shoved the memory away.

"Get me every pickaxe and shovel in town," she said, her voice sharper than she intended. "Tell the livery to bring ropes and lanterns. And send someone to the telegraph office—wire the county for a rescue car."

She moved toward the collapsed opening. The fresh timber on the edge of the break caught her eye—clean sap still weeping from where supports had sheared. A proper cave-in from poor rock, that was one thing. But this wasn't a seam fault or a spring washout. The break was too clean, too regular.

Maeve crouched and ran her fingers along one snapped beam. The grain was smooth, cut straight through. Not broken. *Severed.*

"Miss O'Donnell." Deputy Barnes appeared at her elbow, his face smeared with dust. "We've got men forming a bucket line. The marshal's down at the telegraph, but he's on his way."

"Barnes, look at this." She pointed at the cut. "You see how this beam came apart? That's not a rock crush—"

"With respect, ma'am, we don't have time for investigating. There's men who need diggin' out."

"Which is why I need your eyes, not your shovel. Come take a look."

Barnes hesitated, then crouched beside her. He studied the beam, his brow furrowing. He ran his thumb over the exposed wood. "Well, that's a clean saw mark, all right. But cave-ins can twist a beam enough to—"

"Leave it!" a voice barked from behind them.

Maeve turned. Harold Whitfield stood twenty feet away, his fine coat already dusted with grit, flanked by two men in matching canvas jackets. The investors' men—she'd seen them loitering around town since Whitfield's arrival, drinking at the bar, asking quiet questions about claim values.

"You people need to stand back," Whitfield said. "My men have ordered a collapse brace from Sacramento. We'll handle the extraction. You'd risk more lives with a rag-tag volunteer dig."

Maeve stood slowly, dusting her hands on her apron. "Your men, Mr. Whitfield? These are Gold Creek's men. Our town. Our mine. We'll dig out our own."

"You misunderstand my purpose." Whitfield advanced, his expression smooth and sorrowful. "I represent Pacific Consolidated. We have a vested interest in the safety of the miners working claims in this district—"

"You have an interest in the *claims*, Mr. Whitfield. And a collapsed mine makes for cheap acquisition, doesn't it?"

The air went still. Whitfield's smile did not reach his eyes. Barnes shifted beside her, his hand straying toward his sidearm.

"That's a serious accusation, Miss O'Donnell." His voice lost its charm, coming out flat and hard. "One I'd be careful repeating. These are my men's lives we're discussing."

"Then they should be digging instead of standing here jawing."

A shout rang out from the collapse. "Ventilation shaft's clear! We can hear voices—they're alive!"

Maeve broke into a run before Whitfield could respond. The crowd had gathered around the east side of the collapse where a narrow utility shaft emerged. She pushed through to see a young miner named Pete Kellerman crouched at the lip, his ear pressed to the iron grate.

"Singin'. They're singin'. Baptist hymns. Tellin' us they're all right."

The crowd erupted in cheers. Maeve felt a sob build in her throat and swallowed it back.

"Then let's get to work." She turned to face the assembled men. "I want two teams. One clearing the main adit, one widening the shaft. Kelley, you take the adit team. Hughes, the shaft."

The men moved without hesitation. Maeve had never given such an order before but they didn't seem to notice. She set up a medical staging area at the base of the ridgeline, directing women from town who'd come running with quilts and bandages. Belle from the saloon arrived with a bottle of whiskey and a box of sulfa powder. Doc Miller was five minutes behind her.

Hours passed. The sun slid across the sky and began its descent toward the Sierras. Maeve worked until her hands blistered, hauling rock from the adit face behind the swing team. Her dress tore at the shoulder. She didn't notice.

By dusk, they'd broken through.

The men emerged one by one, soot-black and coughing, their eyes wild with gratitude. Six of them. All alive. Two with crushed legs, one with a head wound. Maeve counted each as they came through, refusing to let herself lose focus.

The last man out was Old Rory McCormick. He gripped her hand so hard she felt her knuckles grind.

"Knew you'd come, lass. Knew you wouldn't leave us down there."

"Get him water, someone." Maeve pried her hand free and helped ease him onto a stretcher. "Rory, when you were down there, did you hear anything before the collapse? Tools, hammering, anything unusual?"

His brows drew together. "Now that you mention it . . . there was a racket early on. Just after shift change. Sounded like someone in that empty crosscut next to the main shaft. Metal on metal. Thought it was odd, since that section's been abandoned since spring. But then the twenty-strike bell went and we got back to work."

Maeve's blood turned cold. She thanked Rory and walked away from the rescue staging area, back toward the collapse. The lantern light guttered in the early evening wind. She climbed the rubble pile, heedless of the shifting rock.

A crosscut. She'd been down there with Caleb a dozen times. The crosscut ran parallel to the main shaft on the south side, accessible from the outside via a hidden crawl—used for ventilation trimming. If someone had been down there, they wouldn't have been seen by the shift crew.

She reached the broken edge of the main adit and pulled herself up. Below her, the wreckage sprawled. And in the failing light, she saw it: the crosscut opening, its cover was rolled away.

There was no way that was an accident.

"Found something, Miss O'Donnell?"

Whitfield stood at the bottom of the rubble pile, his face a pale oval in the dusk. Behind him, the two men in canvas jackets. They were watching her with too much interest.

She looked down at the severed timber again. Then at Whitfield. Then at his men.

"Just checking on the structural supports," she said lightly. "Making sure no one else goes after them."

She climbed down carefully, feeling his gaze on her back. As she passed him, he caught her arm.

"You're a clever woman, Miss O'Donnell. But clever can be a dangerous thing in a town that needs investors."

She looked down at his hand until he released her. "And careless can be fatal, Mr. Whitfield. I'd keep that in mind if I were you."

She walked back to the staging area without looking back. Her heart hammered in her chest, but her mind was clear. The man who did this needed access to the mine. Needed knowledge of its layout. And given the timing—what, hours after she'd written Eli about investigating Pacific Consolidated—he'd acted fast.

Someone in this town had let him in. And unless she dug faster than they could bury evidence, whoever that was stood to profit from six dead men.