Alias-the-Blackbird-Chapter-12

NO MAN dared to go into the old mine shaft. At times they shouted to the Blackbird, and he replied with sullen snarls.

With the setting of the moon, they crept closer to the old mine shaft. Someone lighted a dead pine branch and, when it was burning steadily, flung it around a corner into the entrance. For an instant there was the gleam of swiftly retreating eyes. In the fetid air the torch was smothered out.

When the night was at its blackest, Cedar Rudd crawled up to the dismal door. He had fastened a rope about his waist, and three men held the end of it.

“Come out!” he cried.

He crawled half his length into the old mine shaft. Sweat lathered him, his heart beat slowly. He heard the lapping of foul waters, deep in the old mine shaft. The silence rumbled; the floor beneath him settled down.

“Come out!” he cried. “Come out like a man!”

Deep from the caverns of the earth, wild screaming answered him, and there was the muffled sound of a rifle pumping rapidly. The men upon the rope pulled Cedar back. There came no other sound.

All night they shouted to the Blackbird, but he did not reply. With the coming of dawn they shouted to him, but still he did not reply. Hollow silence prevailed in the old mine shaft, and there drifted from it a dank stench.

Five days and nights they kept the watch, but no living thing passed out of the old mine shaft, except a fat rattlesnake, crawling sluggishly.