“Tricky acoustics,” Yune said.
“Sí, se?or. So then Roger said they should go around to the Ahiga side, which he knew pretty well from his explorin, what they call spee-lunkin. Once they got there, they heard those boys again, clear as day, cryin and yellin, so they got rope and lights from the equipment buildin and went in to fetch em out. Seemed like the right thing, but it was the end of em, instead.”
“What happened?” Yune asked. “Do you know? Does anybody?”
“Well, like I told you, that place is a goddam maze. They left one man behind to pay out rope and tie on more in case they needed it. That was Ev Brinkley. He left town shortly after. Went to Austin. Brokenhearted, he was . . . but at least alive, and able to walk in the sunlight. Those others . . .” Lovie sighed. “No more sunlight for them.”
Ralph thought about that—the horror of it—and saw what he felt on the faces of the others.
“Ev was down to his last hundred feet of free-rope when he heard somethin he said sounded like a cherry-bomb a kid set off in a tawlit bowl with the lid shut. What musta happened is some goddam fool fired a pistol, hopin to lead the boys to the rescue party, and there was a cave-in. It wasn’t Roger done that, I’d bet a thousand dollars it wasn’t. Old Rog was a fool about many things, especially those dogs, but never fool enough to fire a gun in a cave, where the ricochet could go anywhere.”
“Or where the sound could bring down a piece of ceiling,” Alec said. “It must have been like firing a shotgun to start an avalanche up in the high country.”
“So they were crushed,” Ralph said.
Lovie sighed and resettled her cannula, which had come askew. “Nawp. Might’ve been better if they were. At least it woulda been quick. But people in the big cavern—the Chamber of Sound—could hear em callin for help, just like those lost lads. By then there were sixty or seventy men and women out there, eager to do whatever they could. My George had to be there—his brother and his nephews were among those trapped, after all—and finally I gave up on keepin him home. I went with him, to make sure he didn’t try to do some damn fool thing like tryin to pitch in. That would’ve killed him for sure.”
“And when this accident happened,” Ralph said, “Claude was in the reformatory?”
“Gatesville Trainin School is what I believe they called it, but yes, a reformatory’s what it was.”
Holly had produced a yellow legal pad from her carry-bag, and was bent over it, taking notes.
“By the time I got to the Hole with George, it was dark. The parkin lot’s a good size, but it was damn near full. They’d set up big lights on posts, and with all the trucks and people scurryin around, it was like they were makin a Hollywood movie. They went in through the Ahiga entrance carryin ten-cell flashlights, wearin hardhats and puffy coats like flak jackets. They followed the rope to the cave-in. A long way, some of it through standin water. The rockfall was pretty bad. Took em all that night and half the next morning to clear it enough to get past. By then, people in the big cave couldn’t hear the lost ones callin no more.”
“Your brother-in-law’s bunch wasn’t waiting for rescue on the other side, I take it,” Yune said.
“No, they were gone. Roger or one of the others might have thought he knew a way back to the big cave, or they might’ve been afraid more of the ceiling was gonna cave in. No way to tell. But they left a trail, at least to start with; marks on the walls and litter on the floor, coins and screws of paper. One man even left his bowling card from the Tippit Lanes. One more punch and he’d’ve got himself a free string. That was in the paper.”
“Like Hansel and Gretel, leaving breadcrumbs behind,” Alec mused.
“Then everything just stopped,” Lovie said. “Right in the middle of a gallery. The marks, the dropped coins, the balls of paper. Just stopped.”
Like the footprints in Bill Samuels’s story, Ralph thought.
“The second rescue party kept goin for awhile, callin and wavin their flashlights, but no one called back. The fella who wrote it up for the Austin paper interviewed a bunch of those guys from the second rescue party later on, and they all said the same thing—there were just too many paths to choose from, all of em goin down, some leadin to dead ends and some to chimneys as dark as wells. They weren’t supposed to holler for fear of starting another cave-in, but then one of them yelled anyway, and sure enough, a piece of the roof come down. That’s when they decided they better get the hell out.”