Walking into the coolness of the mine opening was a relief from the desert heat, the midday sun burned Rodney’s neck so terribly it felt as if it were a piece of bacon fat. In the light of his lantern, he saw the mine hasn’t been disturbed in some time, thick spider webs, and rusty abandoned tools indicated that, and the air smelt stagnant.
A pool of mucky water, was fed by drips from the stalactites in the ceiling, and was slowly flooding the lower parts of the mine. Rodney in his filthy leather vest, lifted his lantern up high to try and find the landmarks that he wrote down long ago. Despite the ink of his map having been faded with time and the sweat of his greedy fingers, he quickly recognized the shadow his lantern cast on the wall.
As the beam of light focused on a particular rise of rock, he saw a dragon’s silhouette cast on the far wall, it startled him at first, but he remember it was on the map.
“Right at the dragon…—” he lifted his lantern, and saw the old etchings on the wall, “—Parker’s cave…” Parker was a miner who died back when the mine was in operation. A cave in crushed him, and sealed off a side passage. Digging away at loose stones, he found the small opening that he covered away long ago. Not even a rattler could squeeze into the tight compact of rocks and stones.
His lantern shined into the dark cavity, and he saw the black bag, a worn, leather satchel, that he buried away before he was sent to prison. Reaching in, he pulled out his prize, then his heart stopped, when he heard a bone cracking click.
Spinning around his lantern in one hand, and his prize in the other, he saw two shimmering eyes of the devil looking at him with maleficent intent.
“Glass!” Rodney cried out, as he had his hands full, and couldn’t reach for his gun, cause already Glass Conner had a shotgun trained at him for a dead shot.
“Is that it?” Glass’s smile could be seen even in the shadows around his lantern lit spectacles. “The thing worth dying for?”
Rodney went stiff when he heard those dire words. “Glass’s wait—” he tried to spin a deal, or offering to appease the devil, come to reap his soul for a life wasted on the pursuit of a glittering fortune.
Before he could utter his spin, a bombastic blast, blew his forehead open, and a second shot fire soon after eviscerated his face, exposing a skeletal face, under layers of blood and flesh.
“Rest in Hell, fool.” Glass’s went towards the slumped lantern, but instead of taking the light source, he grabbed the black bag. Going to where the light angled upward, he opened it, and peered inside its dark interior, where small twinkling specks winked back at him, even in the dim light.
Putting his hand inside, he lifted up a handful, and let the gleaming pebbles fall from his grasp.
‘The diamonds!’ nearly a decade of waiting, and his prize was ready to reap.
Memories of the robbery was permanently burnt into his lustful soul, even long past dead, when his bones turned to dust on the wind, he would remember the story.
Him, Rodney, the Walter Brothers, all schemes to rob the mine of its only payout of diamonds. Years of working the mine, had produced nothing, and Old Rogers was left digging through the rock, determined to find something, even as his hair fell out, and his beard turned white.
Then he found diamonds, imbedded in the rocks, he let it slip after he went to the Rodney to buy dynamite to bomb out the precious stones. Rodney never had the courage to commit a robbery alone so he enlisted Walter Brothers, and of course Glass’s always had his piece of the action in the town of Wastewaters.
The night Rogers used the dynamite and freed a fortune of diamonds from the mine wall, they were waiting for him at the mine entrance. Walter Brothers tried to take the bag, but Glass’s shot Rogers dead, and to make his prize bigger, shot dead both brothers, as they looked at him with shock and awe.
Rodney then the greed opportunity, took the bag, and rushed into the mine, and in the light of his lantern, memorized landmarks to find the cache. Burning it under loose rocks, he tightly compacted the rocks, and managed to slip past Glass’s, only to be captured by the Sheriff.
Blaming the murder on Glass’s he was charged with robbery, and sentenced to decade and some odd years to prison. Only to die, after reclaiming his covetous fortune.
Now Glass’s had the diamond, and ran the shinning stones through his fingers, taking them out into the night, he gloried at them in the night of the full moon.
A dazzling sparkle shined out, as he held them up into the air.
“Hand them over Glass’s.” a chilly voice spoke from the dark. Spinning around the spectacle wearing gunslinger had his shotgun ready to fire at the origin of those deathly words.
“Is that you Sheriff? Figured you suspected as much at the trial, didn’t you?!” Glass’s looked out into the darkness, he didn’t take the lantern with him, he’d rather keep his gun and the black bag close at hand.
“It isn’t the Sheriff Glass.” the voice wasn’t familiar, it became more hideous the second time around.
“Then who?” Glass saw something stand out in the shadows, in the faint beam of moonlight there was a gleaming, almost blinding pale light, that of a star.
The figure approached, and stopped just at the fringes of moonlight.
“Death.”
Glass’s face was livid in fear, for what he saw was face of a demon, whose nose was completely eroded into tight, flaky skin, with the skeleton jaw hidden under a face mask. Before he could pull the trigger, Glass heard a crack and a narrow stab in his heart. Loosing all strength in his digits, he couldn’t pull the trigger, and with a futile welp fell over.
Dropping his shotgun, he kept the black bag still clutched to his side, as blood overflowed from the large opening in his chest. Glass’s spectacles went dark, and he laid stiff, as a shadow went over him, and a pale star loomed over his now deceased form.
“Who goes there!” called out the voice of the Sheriff, who rushed onward with his deputies, who had spent much of the night trying to trail after Rodney. “Don’t move!”
Their lanterns caught sight of a black clad figure, in a poncho and speaker’s hat.
“Turn to the light.” the Sheriff ordered, and the figure obliged. The first thing they saw was the pale star pinned to his chest, it gleamed a ghostly illumination in their lantern lights.
“Marshal?” the Sheriff was flummoxed as he believed he locked him in his jail. “How did you get out? I told you to stay out of this!”
“If I did Glass would’ve gotten away with this.” he held up the black bag, and the Sheriff and his two deputies eyes lit up at the sight of it.
“Good man…good man…” the Sheriff’s eyes kept darting to the black bag, as he tightening his grip on his pistol. “Give it here, and I’ll give you the bounty for Glass.”
“These aren’t for you.” the Marshal said, as the black bag disappeared under his poncho.
“This isn’t how this works Pale Star, that is evidence to—”
The Sheriff was interrupted by Pale Star’s blunt honest accusation.
“—its a supplement to make up for the pension pay the town’ll give you for decades of service.” the Marshal’s frank words, made the agitated lawman pull the hammer back on his pistol.
“I served the law since I was left the army, I was a boy, and I’ve never stopped fighting for justice…but I need that money.” the Sheriff sounded almost pleading.
“It isn’t yours.” those words we simple and truthful and the Sheriff despite his desires and greed, couldn’t rationally justify taking possession of that fortune in diamonds.
“Lower the guns boys…we’re going back to town, that grave digger can get the bodies in the morning.” the deputies sulking lowered their own guns. Despite wanting a piece of what the Sheriff intended to take, they were obedient young men, who admired the Sheriff, and did as they were told. “I better not find out you cheated me.”
Before the Sheriff would test his words against the Marshal’s eyes he vanished into the shadows, and the Pale Star went dim and finally black.
***
The humid sun heated the thick air around the southern swamps, it was hard to breathe, and a poor widow was doing wash for the boarding house where she worked. Her kids were helping out in her labors, but they were too young to be of any real use, but it was better for them to learn to work, since she couldn’t afford to school them.
If only her husband didn’t die in that gunfight with that spectacle wearing gunfighter, if only her grandfather didn’t open that mine, and got himself killed.
Working in the harsh sunlight, her skin turned red, as she heard the barking owners of the landlady yell at her from the house’s porch. A towering five story house, that didn’t offer any shade in the midday, she let out a hoarse sigh, but was relieved momentary when a shade covered her in her labors.
Her children looked up in stunned awe, and she finally looked up, to see the dark form of a man seated upon a hulking, pallid hair stallion.
“Who’re you? If you want a room, you have to talk to the Land Lady, she is in the house.” she was anxious around the stranger, and nearly jumped in shock when something dropped near her. “What’re you trying to do Mister—?!”
“Open it.” the dark stranger suggested.
Hesitantly, she looked at the black bag, and as her children looked on in curiosity, she slowly reached for it, and opened it, then her eyes went wild with surprise.
“That is your Grandfather Roger’s legacy, spend it well.” with that he sped away on his horse. Leaving the widow to wonder, wonder what she was going to buy first, where she was going to send her kids to school, and what she was going to say to the Land Lady after she quit.
Charles I loved this story and its twists and turns. There is a genuine surreal quality and a feeling of both fun and fear in this story. The ending is perfect! Thank you for writing this, I really had an escape into that mine.