- 1 - Emmett Miller

The west is full of things that want to trick you, kill you, or worse, it is not a place meant for soft people. And as a general rule humans are soft people. Except for a few. Except for the ones with guns.

Emmett’s hand pulled one of his revolvers from its holster and he held it in the ready position. His second hand was ready to draw as well if need be.

Low and forward. Low and forward. Always dear to your heart.

He stepped into the dim light of the shaft’s entrance. The sun was bright in his eyes. As he knew it would be, it was a risk they had to take to explore this shaft.

No signs of a threat. Jonathan is not standing guard at the mouth of the shaft. The ‘all clear’ sign is missing.

“Now hold up in there. Come on out nice and easy friend.” A voice hollered out from the glare.

He’s young and from the southern territory. He’s off to the left, the south east with the morning sun at his back. He’s speaking with the confidence of a man with two or three able men backing him up.

What’s that slacker up to?

“Jonathan?” Emmett called out from the dusky shade.

“Over here with our new friend Kleetus.” Jonathan replied.

“Are the horses safe?”

“Yes Emmett. And I’m in one piece as well. Not that you asked.” Jonathan griped.

“Shut up! Enough with the witty banter, nobody likes it anyways.” Said the man Kleetus. “Put the gun away.”

Of course Jonathan told him about my guns.

“Get his guns Kleetus.” An older woman said.

“Mah, that’s asking for trouble. A soldier like this one would die before he handed over his guns.” Kleetus said.

I can’t tell if this guy is a complete idiot or just partially done in.

“You brought your mother out west?” Jonathan asked.

“Not I didn’t! She brought me. What idiot brings his mother out west?” Kleetus said.

“Well my guns are holstered and calm for now. These ladies’ll stay asleep unless you wake them.” Emmett said. “They wakes fast and have a temper.”

Emmett took another step out of the shaft and the dry heat of the desert embraced him. Another step and the sun cut across his clean shaved face. His wide brimmed hat kept the glare from his eyes.

Jonathan was standing a few paces from their camp fire, Kleetus behind him with a long knife and his hand clamped on Jonathan’s arm. Kleetus’s Mah was astride a horse with an arrow notched and a bow drawn on Emmett.

“They got the drop on me Captain. Said they wanted water and food enough to get them to the next town.”

“Well we can afford to split what we have.” Emmett said. “We are friendly people after all.”

“Thats what I said, and I told them we’ve been in the same spot before, with nothing but dust to eat and tears to drink. Same as them.” Jonathan said.

“And a horse!” Mah said. “They got extra horses.”

“Now mam, I will have to draw the line at that. We need the horses. You see Jonathan and I have a whole gang of friends and they don’t like to walk.” Emmett said.

“That’s right, a platoon!” Jonathan said.

“Shut up Jonathan.” Emmett said.

Kleetus looked alarmed and his tone changed completely.

“Mah! What did I say about asking for trouble!”

Kleetus put away his knife and let go of Jonathan’s arm.

“Any food you can spare would be appreciated Captain.” Kleetus said.

Emmett and Jonathan met at the campfire and spoke in hushed words and a few sharp gestures.

“We can give them the canned food and our old water skin. They seemed like such a nice-“

Emmett interrupted him.

“We will give them your water skin. The nice one. And that ration of cake we were saving for your birthday.” Emmett shouted in a whisper. “You were supposed to watch the horses.”

“I was watching the horses!” Jonathan whispered.

“And?” Emmett asked. “Watching the horses and…?!”

“And what? I may have been into my cards again. That’s no distraction. It’s all sleight of hand and the whole point is to not look at them.” Jonathan said. “So I WAS looking at the horses!”

“What’s all that whispering going on over there?” Mah shouted.

Kleetus looked embarrassed again, then his eyes snuck over quickly to the north.

Shit. That’s where I would have holed up, perfect place for his confidence men to be waiting.

“We’ll get to it! Give them their rations.” Emmett said. “Enough for two or three people.”

Hopefully Jonathan can take a hint. Likely there will be trouble.

Jonathan was about to complain but then he winked. He strode over to the horses and as he passed the campfire he accidentally knocked over a pot of water.

Smoke billowed covering their camp and Emmett disappeared into it.

Now we will see who all is out there hiding.

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Two men on horses charged from the north with bows drawn.

“Hold still!” The first man shouted. “Don’t get any ideas!”

“Where’s the strapped one? He was just-“

The second man was cut short by half his head exploding. A long tunnel, about the diameter of a dinner plate, appeared in the smoke. At one end was Kleetus’s Mah. She stared down the tunnel as the headless man fell from his horse.

“Now Mam.” Emmett said from beside her. “How about you step down from the horse and put down that twig shooter.”

“How about you eat dirt and die!” Said the first man on his horse. He raised his bow and before he could loose an arrow a shot rang out.

The rider died in his saddle and Kleetus dropped to the ground to lay on his belly.

“Leave one of their horses. Let the woman and the snake down there go with what they have on them.”

A woman with a rifle stepped out of the shaft and into the sun. She wore military issue canvas britches same as Emmett, and a tightly cropped vest and blouse with a scarf to keep the sun off. Her hair was tied back to free up the view of her sharp eyes.

Kleetus jumped up and scrambled over to his mah. Emmett backed away but kept his revolver trained on them.

“Mah! You okay?” Kleetus blubbered. “I swore he had shot you!”

“Oh shut up! Grab Dale’s horse and let’s get out of here already.” Mah replied and cuffed her son on the head.

Kleetus ran to the closest horse but Jonathan caught him with a sucker punch to the jaw, knocking him down.

“Jonathan! That’s uncalled for.” Emmett said.

“I’m not the one about to shoot someone’s mah.” He replied. “Kettles shouldn’t call each other black.”

Jonathan helped Kleetus pick himself up and dusted him off. Once he was respectable, he helped him onto the horse.

“I wasn’t going to shoot her.” Emmett said.

He reloaded and holstered his gun. He grabbed the shell out of the air as it was ejected and slid it back into an empty loop on his belt. The motions taking half a second. And his eyes never left the two riders.

Keep your brass, save your ass.

“She didn’t know that. Did she Mari?” Jonathan said.

“I honestly had my doubts Emmett, it’s why I stepped in.” Mari said. She kept the rifle up at her shoulder as the two riders galloped off.

Jonathan had his cards out again and he was making the knave of clubs dance across his fingers and reappear in his other hand.

Emmett stomped over to the campfire and tried to clear things up. He scowled at the mess Jonathan had made and turned around to make a new camp fire beside the first.

Mari slung her rifle across her back where she could easily get it and grabbed the last horse’s reigns. It was startled after the gunfight and still had its rider in the saddle.

“Jonathan, since you were on look out, you can dig us a couple graves.” Mari said.

Jonathan groaned and picked up a shovel. He put down his cards on a table. He also deposited Kleetus’s long knife and a slim wallet.

Always stealing things. And after he sucker punched him. He’s a kettle alright.

Mari walked their new horse over to the 5 they had already and tied it up in the shade.

“Have they all gone?” Lottie asked.

She poked her head out from the semi-darkness of the shaft. Emmett stood up strait and nodded to her.

“Lottie! It was terrible! There were four of them and they wanted to kill me!” Jonathan said.

Emmett laid out a new campfire with the old stones, and wove his kindling and cotton into a simple base while Jonathan rambled on dramatically.

“But Mari saved me. And now I have to bury two men. And we have a new horse. I’ll name him Kleetus!”

Emmett struck his starter and the fire took hold in the kindling. He added fuel and built out a foundation for the cooking pot to sit on.

Lottie looked alarmed. Her mousy features far too cute for the west. She wore light cotton pants and a loose blouse with the sleeves cuffed back. Her pants were stuffed into trail worn boots that the group had picked up along the way. She wore a leather bucket hat that failed to contain all her golden brown curls.

“Mari thank you for saving my brother. I don’t know what I would do without him.” Lottie said.

“We’d all get a good night sleep.” Emmett said.

“Ah!” Jonathan said in mock offense. “Now you have hurt my feelings.”

“Go dig some holes already.” Emmett said.

“Yes Captain!” Jonathan gave a firm salute and Emmett kicked dust at him.

“I am not your Captain any more!” He grumbled.

Mari returned with the saddlebags from their new horse and shook her head.

“Roger that Captain.” She said.

Jonathan laughed and Mari hid a smile.

“Right. Well if you are all done having adventures out here I believe I have found what we are looking for.” Lottie said.

-

“Lottie I love you.” Jonathan said. “But are you certain this is the correct one?”

“Oh yes of little faith.” She replied with a smile.

They were carrying torches and moving quickly down the shaft. Emmett was taking his turn to escort their scholar down the shaft, leaving Mari to guard the horses. Jonathan was keeping his eyes peeled for traps.

“It’s just that shafts just like this one have claimed many of my favorite friends. And I don’t want to lose you too.” Jonathan said.

Emmett led the way for the group. They followed the winding, almost naturally shaped tunnels as it descended down into the earth. The delvers had cleared the path yesterday after three days of meticulous work.

“Oh it’s all completely harmless now Jonathan.” Lottie said as she gingerly followed Emmett across a plank spanning a pit full of spikes.

Never trust a trap. Even a disarmed one can bite.

“That’s the thing tho Lottie. Never get comfortable down in these shafts. Sometimes the traps reset, or ones that never triggered before wake up.” He said.

“Oh pish posh, brother dear. You and Emmett cleared this whole area, I’m confident you didn’t miss a thing.” Lottie said.

“And you know, Pandect Scholars have not documented Shafts regenerating traps. It’s an unproven theory.” She continued.

“The self fulfilling kind.” Mused Emmett.

They stepped through a broken siege door and Lottie continued on the topic.

“You see their theory purposes that these traps theoretically would reset themselves. While it’s true this thesis is growing in popularity, the traditional records show us that the dwarves themselves would come and reset them.”

“We saw as much during the war.” Emmett said.

“Precisely.” Lottie agreed.

She ducked under some spears that were rusted and broken. The trap was another one that had been triggered long before they arrived.

“But some of the newer underscholars believe that the dwarves posses technology to automate the process.” She said.

“Which is why we should be more careful!” Jonathan said.

They passed several deactivated spike traps in a row. They would have triggered in sequence if the delvers jumped past the obvious pressure plates onto the hidden ones. Jonathan had disabled one of these, but the rest were non functional when they arrived.

“Well the main obstacle for this school of thought is that there is no evidence of machinery to operate the traps. Thusly, they must be manually operated.”

They rounded a sharp turn in the tunnel and went down a tight spiral staircase. They skipped over the 7th and 11th steps. Jonathan had identified and marked those as trick steps that would cause the stairs to roll into a ramp and dump delvers into a spike pit at the bottom.

At the bottom, they crossed a short plank bridge Jonathan had erected over the pit.

Around the next bend in the tunnel they passed a fearsome statue of a snarling snake that once shot out poison or venom or acid. ‘Bad stuff of some kind of nasty’ if Jonathan was to believed.

“Hardy.” Jonathan said with a nod to the snake.

They arrived at the chamber deep in the earth. It was nestled at the end of a long hallway that branched off from the main shaft.

Emmett had explored the main shaft for another mile. It carried on to the west without descending much. He had not found anything interesting so he had turned back.

Just yesterday, Emmett and Jonathan had cleared a large spherical boulder trap to gain access to the room. Some unfortunate soul had triggered the trap and the boulder had chased them down this hallway. It had taken the two able bodied men a day to hack their way through with picks and wedges.

Jonathan paused a moment to pay his respects to the bloodstain beneath the boulder as they carried on.

Lottie’s destination was the back wall of the next chamber. Even Emmett recognized it as one he had seen in countless delves during the war. Rooms like this one had once held storage crates, the most common loot one could find in any shaft. At least back in the early days. Now most of the shafts were explored and looted.

The crates were remarkable in that they were so well made and tightly sealed that food and water could be found in near perfect condition. Even years later after the war. The crates could not be opened without breaking them. Unopened crates sold well at auction. It was a high risk/ high reward prospect.

According to the auction houses, one in a thousand of the crates contained a Dwarvish artifact. As a younger man, Emmett had thought it a fools enterprise. None of the artifacts made any sense to him and nobody had gotten them to work since the Dwarves left.

Lottie led them to the back wall and continued her lecture on Dwarvish symbolism and the sudden disappearance of their race at the end of the war. She stood with her back to a wall with ornate carving across it.

Walls like this were found in many shafts of you delved deep enough. They all showed the same thing. The mythical underground city of the Dwarves.

“Lottie. My lovely. How is this wall any different from the others we have found?” Jonathan asked.

Lottie smiled, that quaint and homely smile of hers that always warmed Emmett’s heart. He would love her for just a moment each time he saw it. But then the faces of his men, his platoon, would crowd back in and their headstones would overshadow any happiness he might imagine.

“You see?” Lottie asked.

“Wait what?” Emmett said, coming back from his reverie.

“This mural is somehow active Emmett!” Jonathan said.

How is that possible?

Lottie reached out with her hand and caressed some of the Dwarvish phrasing carved into the wall.

As her hand passed each symbol it glowed and flickered before going out.

It has power!

“Get Down!” He shouted.

Emmett drew his revolvers and took in the room again. Flashbacks of retreating dwarves, endless tunnels and countless men dying, their bodies and futures lost forever down in the darkness.

If it has power then a Dwarf is near.

“Emmett calm down, there’s not been a Dwarf sighted, alive or dead, in over a decade.” Jonathan said.

Emmett’s senses were turned up to their limits. His revolvers hummed with deadly potential in his hands. But after long moments, nothing happened. No trap was sprung, no door opened to unleash death upon them.

Lottie went to place a hand on Emmett’s shoulder but her brother stopped her.

“Give him some time dear. He’s a rare breed in his element.” Jonathan said. “He was like this the day he saved my life. Let him be for now.”

“Are you sure?” Lottie asked with a lingering glance at Emmett. He hardly looked like himself.

“I am sure.” Jonathan replied turning to the mural. “Now what does this section say?”