Dead Secret

push upward.
    Diane liked solo climbing. She enjoyed being free of the ropes, but she always brought a climbing harness just in case she came across something really deep and interesting in the cave.
    When she reached the opening, she pulled herself over the bottom edge, stood up in the newfound tunnel and viewed the cavern from this new vantage point. The scene was beautiful. Illuminated by her headlamps, the varied hues of red, orange, ivory and silver rock had a golden glow. The icy-looking stalactites and stalagmites with their pointed peaks and knobby textures looked like spires from some Middle Earth kingdom. Diane found the unearthly appearance ironic—nothing was more of the earth than a cave.
    She turned her attention to details of the tunnel. Her first thought on examining the rock face she’d just climbed was that Caver Doe, as she dubbed him in her mind, had fallen the twenty feet from this tunnel to the cavern floor. The rock wall had a concave dip in it under the entrance, so that if he had been walking down this passage without paying attention, he would have run out of floor before he ran out of sides. From this vantage point at the top, that seemed a viable hypothesis.
    There was little breakdown on the floor of the tunnel near the opening. Nothing to trip over. As she studied the walls, she saw something angular jutting from the rock near the bottom of the wall. It wasn’t rock. She knelt and examined the object—a railroad spike. Its presence puzzled her for a moment; then she realized that it might have been a crude anchor bolt, used to secure a rope. Caver Doe’s equipment was old, predating all the modern gear that she had.
    Several inches above the spike she discovered a gash in the stone wall. She put a hand in the gouged-out place, poking around in the hole, feeling its shape. In the middle of the gash was a smaller hole. Interesting.
    A new hypothesis formed in her mind. Caver Doe had set his railroad spike in the top hole, tied his rope to it, and started over the edge. The spike had pulled out of the wall when he put his full weight on it—causing him to fall. If they found a railroad spike on the floor of the cavern, that would support her idea.
    But what of the spike that was set—his caving partner? Surely he hadn’t been caving alone. Then . . . why wasn’t he rescued?

Chapter 3
    Diane pondered various hypotheses of how Caver Doe might have come to his end, turning the ideas over in her mind, trying them out in various scenarios. She knew it was pointless at the moment, since she had not examined the remains, but she couldn’t help herself.
    She turned away from the chamber and faced the other end of the tunnel. The terminal height of the passage at the point it opened into the cavern measured fifteen feet, and the width was about twenty-five feet. The walls, a light tan streaked with many hues of brown, were patterned with large scallops, some nearly a foot in length, and dug into the stone with such repetition and consistency they looked almost man-made.
    The limestone rock made of calcium derived from skeleta, shells, and the secretions of a host of marine life was literally the bones of the earth. She rubbed her fingers over the rock surface—a surface seemingly too hard to have dissolved in a little acidic groundwater. But it had, and that was the wonder of it. Slow-moving, slightly acidic water long ago in the time before man had dissolved this sinuous passage through the limestone. Diane raised a bare hand above her head and paused. There was no air movement.
    She decided to follow the tunnel, even though she was without a caving companion for the moment. If she stayed on the main path, taking no detours, entering no mazes, it would be all right.
    Adrenaline still electrified her body from her near fall. She was hyperalert as she walked, stepping over the rubble that littered the silt floor, examining the pathway, the ceiling.
    At the first gentle curve in the tunnel she stopped and looked back, viewing where she had just traversed. It was a habit she’d developed so she could always recognize passages from any direction—a safeguard against becoming hopelessly lost and having to be rescued.
    Diane knew she probably should go back while she could still see the glow from the chamber dimly illuminated by Neva’s light. When she rounded the bend the chamber would be out of sight. Was she going to be cautious or adventurous? She compromised and called Neva on the