ngrel. He felt it now, a hard oval in his coat pocket.

How long?

The men pursuing him had searched the mine, as he figured they would.
Days had passed, he was sure, since he'd heard their voices in the mine,
footsteps echoing. He was certain he was the only man in Victor who knew
about the tunnel he was hiding in, its entrance, just big enough to
crawl through, covered by a pile of gravel that appeared to have nothing
but wall behind it. He'd tried to disturb the gravel as little as
possible while crawling in, and had carefully replaced what he'd pushed
aside.

But he might have left some trace on the other side. He'd sat in the
blackness, waiting to hear the sounds of digging, his back pressed
against the damp rock wall, knees drawn up to his chin. His hands, cold
as if they'd been plunged into a snowdrift, had rested on his loaded
rifle and his pistol. And he'd drawn his Bowie knife and laid it beside
him. They'd pay dearly to take him. If there were no more than four or
five of them, he might manage to kill them all and get away.

But the sounds of the search party had faded away. He'd welcomed the
black cotton silence that had followed. He would stay down here as long
as he could. He'd found a place in his tunnel where underground water
had seeped in, and was able to keep refilling his canteen from that. He
found another small branch tunnel some distance from where he slept,
where he could piss and shit. But he'd come into the mine with only six
candles, and he was afraid to use them up, so he spent most of the time
sitting in the dark feeling as if he was going mad with alternating
worry and boredom.

He had brought his canteen of whiskey down here with him, and it had
made time pass easier for a while. But now it was all gone. Seemed like
a hell of a long time since he'd had a drink.

He made a flame with flint, steel and cotton wool, lit his next to last
candle and set it in a pool of its own wax. The light hurt his eyes for
a moment, and the sight of his own shadow moving on the dark gray rock
walls frightened him.

His hollow belly kept squealing and grumbling, and visions of beef and
turkey and duck and pork tormented him. Out of one of his saddlebags he
took the bundle of corn biscuits and dried beef he'd thrown together at
the trading post in his flight. He bit into a biscuit as hard and dry as
a lump of wood and rolled it around in his mouth until his saliva
softened it enough to chew and swallow.