The Way of the Wilderking (7 page)

“This crevice is actually the beginning of a new branch of the canyon. As years go by, it will open more and more. Someday this won't be much of a hiding
place. But surely we will have no need of a hiding place by then. For now, it serves just fine.”

Errol pointed at five tunnel entrances that opened onto the large chamber, joining like spokes on a hub. “Sleeping chambers and storage rooms,” he explained.

“The miners dug all this?” Aidan asked. “How long did it take?”

“Not as long as you'd think,” Errol answered. “The rest of us couldn't carry out the sand nearly as quickly as they could dig it. They're used to chipping their way through rock. This sand and clay is child's play for them.”

Aidan looked up at the sliver of sky visible through the crack in the ceiling. “Doesn't the rain get in here?”

“In here, yes,” Errol said. “But not up there.” He pointed up one of the tunnels. He picked up one of the pine knot torches that lay stacked in piles beside the wall and poked it around in the banked fire until it lit. “Follow me,” he said, and he stooped to walk up the tunnel.

“Even if it floods,” Errol explained, “these chambers stay dry. The tunnels are dug on an upward slope.” The sloping tunnel reached a plateau, from which connected three chambers. “You and Dobro will sleep here on the left with your brothers and me.” Errol pointed to the chamber on the right. “Here are Marvin and the boys, where I can keep a close eye on them. And there at the end of the tunnel, a provision
ing room.” He held his torch in the room to show Aidan great bags of flour, rice, and dried beans stacked in neat rows.

It was an impressive feat of engineering and effort. But it was a long way from the life Aidan felt his father deserved. “Father, I'm sorry,” he said. “This is all my fault—your being outlawed, your living in a hole in the ground.”

“It's not your fault, Aidan,” Errol said. “You do what you have to do. We all do. Life in the canyons isn't what I had expected, but it's a very good life in its way.

“Just a few years ago, this place seemed like alien soil, no more like Corenwald than the moon. But now it feels as if this is the only Corenwald that's left. For us, the land of the free and true has shrunk down to this one barren, godforsaken spot. Here we live free and true. We live like Corenwalders, something we couldn't do anymore in the Corenwald we used to know. Here, among us outlaws, Corenwald survives.”

The men were telling stories by the fire one breezy afternoon when the storm came. “My Uncle Armand was the finest feller you'll ever meet,” began Isom, “but, man, was he ugly.”

Little Haze had heard this tale many times at Last Camp, but nevertheless he obligingly asked Isom the question the old deer hunter was hoping someone would ask: “How ugly was he, Isom?”

Isom winked his thanks to Little Haze over the fire. “Poor Armand. Before he married Aunt Flossie, she'd only let him come courting after dark, and even then she'd only let him come as far as the porch. The porch lantern was broke, don't you see.”

“That's some kind of ugly, if your sweetie can't even stand to look at you,” remarked one of the Greasy Cave boys.

“That ain't the half of it,” Isom continued. “Uncle Armand was cutting across Flossie's pasture one day on his way to the big road—her daddy's farm was next door to his, don't you see—and he heard the sound of smacking and smooching behind a big bank of blackberry
bushes. Armand was curious by nature, and he wasn't in no particular hurry, so he peeped around the bush and seen Flossie kissing her milk cow square on the mouth. Armand hollers, ‘Flossie, what ails you? Why you smooching a milk cow?' Flossie felt a little bashful, but she could tell Armand wasn't going nowhere till he had a answer. She told him, ‘Sugar, I knowed you was going to want to kiss me after we got married. I'm just working up my gumption.'”

The crowd roared at that, which encouraged Isom to press on. “Being ugly's how Armand made his living, don't you see.”

Percy was fascinated. “How can a fellow make a living by being ugly?”

“When folks around the village was sitting down for supper, he'd show up,” Isom explained, “and he was so astonishing ugly, they'd throw biscuits at him, chicken legs, whatever they had to hand, trying to scare him off. On a good day he'd catch a whole roast beef to carry home for Aunt Flossie and them ugly babies of theirs. One time he come home with the prettiest silver tea set you ever saw.”

“It's always a pleasure to hear about folks making the most of their God-given abilities,” Massey observed. This philosophical remark was hardly out of the old alligator hunter's mouth when a tremendous clap of thunder shattered the air and the rain began—not gradually building in intensity but driven in sheets by the wind, as suddenly and almost as violently as the thunder itself.

The men ran for the shelter of their hiding crevice and the tunnels the miners designed for just such an emergency as this. One at a time they pushed through the narrow opening, pelted not merely by rain, but also by the mud that glanced off the canyon walls. Within seconds the floor of the entry tunnel was a fast-moving creek well over the men's ankles; for the rain that fell on a wide swath of the plain above funneled into this crevice and tumbled down from the canyon rim a hundred feet in a rushing cataract, shooting down the tunnel to join the growing torrent that had been the braided stream.

The rain kept coming unabated. The men had to push against a growing current to get to the main chamber and the safety of the tunnels. The water was soon shin high; everyone's boots were full of water, and the wet clay made for terrible footing. Twice men slipped and bowled down three or four men behind them before they could get to their feet again.

Aidan and Dobro were at the back of the line, the anchor and last defense for anyone in danger of being swept into the current that raged in the main canyon. Dobro himself slipped once, his bare toes losing their purchase when he stepped in clay. But Aidan caught him by the tunic as he swept past and was somehow able to keep his own footing.

“I know you've had a hankering to swim, Dobro,” Aidan shouted over the rushing of water, “but this isn't a good time!”

A flash of lightning lit Dobro's terrified face. “Time to leave these neighborhoods!” he yelled.

The echoing roar was deafening in the main chamber, where the waterfall from the surface pounded against the ground and splattered mud in every direction. Aidan's ears were ringing as he struggled to climb into the tunnel that led to the Errolsons' sleeping chamber. The tunnel was a slippery slope, but at least there was no current to contend with after they left the main chamber.

When Aidan and Dobro reached their chamber, there was much rejoicing. Errol, Brennus, Jasper, and Percy were all safe and all greatly relieved to see Aidan and Dobro unhurt. On the other side of the tunnel, Marvin and his gang were safe and sound, though bedraggled.

The storm continued through the night. It was a night of much anxiety, for even if all fifteen people in the Errolsons' tunnel were accounted for, they had no way of knowing how things stood in the other tunnels. Then there was always the possibility the water could rise high enough to close the tunnel entrance and seal off their supply of air. It seemed unlikely, and if it happened, it was more unlikely they would consume all the air in the tunnel before the waters receded. Even so, the possibility, however remote, of suffocating in the company of Marvin and his boys made Aidan feel queasy.

“We've done all we can do,” Errol said. “We are in the hands of the living God.” Then he lay down on his
pallet and went to sleep. His sons and Dobro, on the other hand, were unable to sleep and didn't even try.

Meanwhile, Marvin and the boys were having a prayer meeting out in the tunnel, where the water continued to creep higher and higher. No one had ever known them to pray before, even at mealtimes, but there they were, praying loudly and earnestly, making deals with God, promising to behave themselves if only God would deliver them. Their prayers grew louder and more desperate the higher the waters rose. Marvin stood at the very edge of the water and commanded it in the name of the living God to come no farther. But by the time he opened his eyes after his lengthy prayer, his toes were under water.

Aidan tapped Marvin on the shoulder. “Um, Marvin,” he began, “I think you boys have the right idea, of course, but do you think you could pray a little more quietly? Father is trying to sleep.”

Marvin's eyes burned with righteous indignation. “I thought your pap was a man of faith. Why ain't he out here praying with us instead of sleeping?”

Aidan smiled. “Father is a man of faith. That's why he can sleep on a night like this. He prayed for an hour or more this morning, just like every morning, while you were still snoring. He prayed for you by name, in fact, Marvin. I heard him. Father's been praying all day. And now he's resting in the mercy of the living God.”

Marvin looked back at the rising water. “Aw, forget it,” he said and stalked back toward his sleeping quarters, his followers right behind him.

“I don't mean to discourage your praying,” Aidan called behind him.

Marvin waved a hand behind him. “It ain't working anyway.”

* * *

In the morning a gray light filtered up the tunnels, but the roar of the waterfall in the main chamber continued as strong as ever. The water had climbed farther up the tunnel in the dark hours of the morning. Were it to rise another foot, it would flood the sleeping chambers and spoil the foodstuffs in the storage room.

The men were restacking bags of flour against that possibility when they noticed the waterfall's roar had lessened. The rain had stopped, and it was only a matter of minutes before most of the surface water funneling into the crevice had run its course. The water in the tunnel began to recede and the waterfall, while still much stronger than a trickle, was nothing like the torrent that had thundered all night long.

In less than an hour, the water was gone from the tunnels. By the time another half hour had passed, the water coursing along the crevice floor had subsided enough for the men to step out into the sunshine that flooded the floor of the main chamber. Everyone was safe. All thirteen miners, nine hunters, twelve soldiers, six field hands, seven noblemen, and, of course, the fifteen men in the Errolsons' tunnel were accounted
for. The men offered up prayers of praise and thanksgiving.

The stream in the main canyon was still raging—a muddy, milky, reddish torrent. From the markings on the canyon walls, it was obvious the water had already fallen several feet.

“If the rain don't come back—and it don't look like it will—this creek'll be within a foot of normal by this afternoon,” Gustus observed. “And we can start work on the main chamber.”

The pounding water had dug a broad bowl in the soft dirt of the crevice floor. Even when the last of the surface water had flowed through and out to the main channel, a little pond, a foot and a half deep, would remain in the chamber to grow stagnant and breed mosquitoes if the men didn't do something about it.

The miners fell to the work with great enthusiasm—digging and grading, filling and scraping. They were proud of their work, proud of their expertise, proud when their comrades said they didn't know what they would do without them, because they knew it was true. That feeling of being indispensable wasn't one they got very often when they were toiling in the mines at Greasy Cave. In their workaday world, amid the dangers they faced daily in the mines, they felt very dispensable. The fact that they mostly looked alike—short, stocky, bearded—only added to the sense of interchangeability. Everybody in Greasy Cave could swing a pickax, and if a miner didn't show
up at the mines one day, the boss would surely find somebody else who would, and he would never miss a lick.

But here in Sinking Canyons, the Greasy Cave boys were heroes, just as they had been at Bonifay. Their tunnels had saved the lives of their comrades. Now they were in charge of the cleanup, organizing the others (civilians, as they had come to think of non-miners) into bucket brigades and telling them what to do and how to do it.

The others were happy to follow the miners' leadership—most of them anyway. Marvin and his gang grumbled all afternoon and dropped their buckets on every other pass and sometimes wandered off from the work a half hour at a time.

After a cold and early supper, Gustus announced, “Boys, we still got a couple hours' daylight left. What say we finish up this job so we don't have to fool with it tomorrow?”

Everyone's back was aching from the day's work. But the men did like the idea of not having to return to the work a second day, so they stood, stretched, and prepared to go back to the bucket brigade.

They all stopped, however, at the booming voice of Marvin echoing on the canyon walls. “Some band of outlaws this is!” He threw his head back and laughed. “Toting buckets of sand! Getting bossed by a bunch of miners!” He pointed a finger at the miners gathered around Gustus. “I've took all the orders I aim to take from a bunch of stoop-backed gravel scratchers.”

Ernest gave it back to Marvin. “I didn't hear no complaints about gravel scratchers when you was safe and dry last night in the tunnels we dug!”

Marvin waved at the air as if swatting away a bothersome fly. The rest of the miners now stepped up beside Ernest, across from Marvin's gang, who fanned out to face them. The miners gripped their pickaxes and shovels. From the looks on their faces, it appeared they were ready to use them.

But Errol and his four sons stepped into the corridor between the two lines of men. The old man stood mere inches away from Marvin. The purple vein had appeared on his forehead. He spoke calmly but with unquestionable authority. “No one is keeping you here, Marvin. Leave anytime you wish. But if you mean to use our shelter and eat our food, you will join us in our work.”

Marvin snorted. “It'll be dark in an hour. The water's still high. We can't leave now.”

Errol grabbed a bucket from one of the miners and shoved it into Marvin's belly. “Then get to work,” he ordered, stalking off to join the bucket brigade himself.