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mine would be even easier than he had
thought. An unknown adventurer who did own a pair of bolt cutters and
who had remembered to bring them along had very thoughtfully snipped
right through four feet of links immediately adjacent to the support pole on
the left side of the damaged fence. Tim inspected the links and concluded the
adventurer, whoever it was, had done his exploring a long time ago, because the
slices in the metal were as rusted as the rest of the fence.
    Tim didn’t care.
He had hoped for access to the mine and now he had it. He dropped to his knees
and forced the fence away from the metal support pole. The links were stiff and
hard to move and when he touched them, rust flaked off in Tim’s hands. He
placed his backpack on the ground and pushed it through the opening, then
belly-crawled behind it.
    And just like that
he was in. He stood and brushed the dirt off his clothes and turned toward an
ancient wood-frame building positioned roughly in the middle of the clearing. It
was obvious that at one time this had been the mining company’s office. Decades
of Pennsylvania weather had scoured the paint right off the siding and it now
stood gray and forlorn, beaten-looking. The front of the building faced what
had at one time probably been some kind of rudimentary parking lot and Tim
wondered whether cars had even been invented nearly a hundred years ago, or if
horses had stood tethered to poles outside the office like in the old black and
white Western movies his dad used to like to watch before he pulled up stakes
and moved on.
    The most
interesting part of the building, though, was the front door, because it hung
awkwardly off its frame, inviting Tim to walk right through and explore the
inside. He approached and examined the door as closely as possible without
actually touching it, fearing the whole thing might just drop off its rusty
hinges and fall on him. Jeez, stop being such a wuss, he told himself. You
came all this way, and now you’re afraid to check the place out?
    He took a deep
breath and squeezed through the small opening, trying not to disturb the
rotting wood, holding his breath until he had slipped safely past the entrance.
    Inside the
decrepit building was . . . nothing.
    Tim wasn’t sure
what he had expected to find—decomposed human bodies or caches of weapons or
maybe a chest filled with priceless treasures—but whatever it was, this wasn’t
it. Decades worth of dust and grime littered the floor of the open space, which
had been cleared of everything but one lonely table in the far corner. It was
as if there had been no room on the last moving truck to leave the doomed
mining compound, so the owners just said the heck with it and left it where it
stood. The office windows were so dirty a twilight-like gloom permeated the interior
despite the fact it was barely past noon and outside the sun was beating down
on central Pennsylvania through cloudless skies.
    Well, this is a
letdown, Tim thought, and hurried through the empty office toward a back
door, which, against all odds, still seemed to fit snugly in its frame. It was
unlocked. He turned the grubby handle and pushed and the door popped open after
a moment’s hesitation, as if it had been closed for so long it couldn’t quite remember
exactly what it was supposed to do.
    Tim squinted and
shielded his eyes against the blazing sun, which seemed even brighter now than
it had been before after the murky dimness of the old office, despite the fact
he had spent no more than two or three minutes inside. Finally he spotted what
he had come for.
    Across a small
empty space Tim could see a gradual rise in the earth into which had been
carved the entrance to the mining operation. It seemed somehow small and
insignificant given the amount of attention it had received so many years ago.
A semi-circular tunnel had been dug, barely higher than Tim’s five feet, four
inches, and reinforced with a frame constructed of thick timbers.
    Tim’s