“Shit happens,” Rufus said.
“Exactly.”
During the first week, Rufus kept his trailer parked at Bunkhouse, near the gun, but slept in a sound-insulated berth that happened to be available inside. This left him free to drive anywhere on the ranch where his truck was capable of going. Ranch roads—some barely discernible—ran all over the place. The only way you could follow some of them was by shifting into first gear, proceeding at about pedestrian speed, and keeping a close eye on the nav system, which kept insisting that you were on a road even when all evidence was to the contrary. But then you’d come up out the other side of a dry wash or top a stony ridge and see it before you, like a giant had dragged a sharp stick across the desert six months ago.
Such was Old Marble Mine Road, which he followed up into the mountains between Pina2bo and the river one day, for no other reason than he liked the sound of its name. According to the nav system it would eventually terminate in a sort of box canyon just below the crest of the range. Without the nav, Rufus never would have been able to follow it, or even known that it was there. The overall direction of movement was a little west of due south, but along the way it managed to veer through every other point of the compass.
He was penetrating a valley between two spurs flung out from the northern slope of the mountains. Lower down it was chock-ablock with breadloaf-sized rocks that had washed down out of the higher places. The tires of his truck just had to feel their way over those. But beyond a certain point he was driving on smoother terrain that just consisted of exposed bedrock. He passed into the shade of the spur on his right, or west. Sun still shone on the opposite
face of the canyon, making the sedimentary layers obvious. One of those layers was white. At first it was high above him, but over the next few miles he gained altitude and rose up to its level. That was where the road ended, in a shady cul-de-sac with a flat floor strewn with rusty old hulks of mining equipment: most notably a rock crusher. The surrounding wall consisted entirely of that white stratum of rock, and the obvious assumption was that it was marble. You could keep driving beyond that point but you’d be driving into the mountain. A hole in the rock face, obviously man-made, served as the mine’s entrance.
The map claimed that another road joined up at the same place. Rufus could see it clearly, headed down a distinct watershed in the next valley off to the west. Such a road would have to exist for this mine ever to have been viable; heavy equipment wouldn’t be able to come up the way he’d just done. Inevitably this was labeled as New Marble Mine Road. Tire tracks indicated that someone had been here within the last few months. On the peak that loomed over the mine entrance, perhaps a hundred feet above, was a new steel tower with solar panels and electronics enclosures. That was probably why.
Rufus got out of his truck and was pleased to discover that it wasn’t hellishly hot. The altitude was something like a mile above sea level and this box canyon almost never received direct sunlight. After making sure that his iffy was working, he strolled a few yards into the mine. It was not one of your narrow claustrophobic tunnels. He could easily have driven his truck into the place for some distance. There was bat shit—there was always bat shit—but not that much of it; this wasn’t one of those guano-choked holes housing millions of bats like you saw in East Texas. Stood to reason; there weren’t enough bugs for them to subsist on. The whiteness of the natural stone made it seem clean. Rufus knew very little of mining, but it was plain to see the structural logic at work: to keep the ceiling from falling in, they had to give it a domed roof, and they had to bolster that with pillars of stone. These were as fat as they were high. They were simply carved out of the rock. So the pillars didn’t just dive into the ground but funneled broadly
outward as they merged without any clear seam into the floor or the ceiling. The whole thing sloped generally downward.
He hit on the idea of bringing his trailer up here. From the looks of it, New Marble Mine Road would be good enough, if he took it easy. Because of the cell tower, he was getting five bars on his phone. Obviously there were no utilities beyond that. But he could fetch gas for his generator and water to put in the trailer’s tank. Getting rid of sewage would be an inconvenience, but he could manage it. And Tatum had said anywhere.
So the next day Rufus towed his trailer up New Marble Mine Road and parked it just outside the mine entrance. In the shady space just inside, he set up a camp table and chairs. This area was largely bug-free and comfortable for much of the day, but sunlight bouncing in from the canyon walls made it bright enough to read and work. He got busy upgrading his drones with the transponders that had been supplied to him by Black Hat.