The High Country Rancher

Ping.

Another bullet zinged past, hitting the ground inches behind them.

Baylor aimed for the trees two hundred feet in front of them, caution driving him as he tried to pick the safest place to go off trail. The meadow was riddled with boarded-over vertical mine shafts; one wrong step and…

Before the thought had time to solidify, the earth gave under his feet.

In a last desperate attempt to save Mariah, he yanked hard, sending her flying past him, but the cavernous hole was too big.

It swallowed them whole and they fell through the rotting boards into darkness.

Mariah hit the bottom of the pit with a thud. The air pushed from her lungs as she slammed into the ground. Pain shot through her body from the jarring drop.

Baylor hit next to her.

She heard him grunt.

Dust clogged her mouth and nose, grit showering her tongue and grating on her teeth.

She lay still and opened her eyes.

It was dark at the bottom of the hole, and it took a moment for them to adjust. She scanned the earthen walls of the mine shaft. They were trapped.

She choked back a sob, drawing on her training instead. A cool head was the best tool in a situation like this.

“Baylor, can you hear me?” she asked, encouraged by a scraping noise and a grunt.

“Yeah.”

The sound of his voice sent a charge of excitement through her. He was alive.

“How deep do you suppose this shaft is?”

“Thirty feet maybe.”

May as well be a hundred, she thought as she pulled herself up into a sitting position, looking for anything that could help them escape.

“Are you hurt?”

“Does my pride count?”

She smiled in the darkness. “No.”

“Good.”

Mariah pulled herself to her feet, dusting off the layer of dirt that coated her body. She watched Baylor stand up, testing his feet under him before he put his head back and gazed up at the beams of light pouring through the jagged slats of wood above their heads.

The shaft was tight, maybe six by six.

A chill rocked her body and she fought a wave of hopelessness. They had to find a way out or this hole would become their grave.

Baylor wiped a trickle of blood off his forehead with the back of his hand and stared up at the opening.

The walls of the vertical shaft were laced with tree roots, the only thing that had slowed their fall. Worry hammered through him, pounding his nerves to a pulp. In frustration he grabbed a root and tested it for stability, but after a hard jerk it pulled out of the wall, coating him in more dirt.