Onward to the Calico mines.
Westwood tried to find some horses for us to ride, but they had all rode off during the storm. We grabbed what little supplies we could and headed on foot to the calico mines.
While on our journey I began to wonder what the rest of my bands could actually do. I had already used Merry go round, and riptide. We were out in the open and we had a lot of time, the mines were far off, we could barely see the mountain in the distance. “I might as well try the Perilous Plunge.” I thought to myself. I made sure Bigfoot and Westwood were alert, prepared for anything standing close to me so I could protect them.
“Perilous Plunge!!” I shouted. The band flashed white light.... but nothing happened. “Perilous Plunge!!” I shouted again. And again the band flashed white light and still nothing happened.
“Maybe you no can use?” Said Bigfoot.
“Maybe.” I replied. “Let’s try another.” I saw the two locomotive bands that I had, 41, and 340. “How about one of these?” I asked.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” Westwood Replied. “That riptide band was very powerful and I really don’t want to get hit by a train right now.”
I decided to try it anyway.
“Three forty!!!” I shouted. The band flashed white light and train tracks appeared on the ground. A large locomotive with the number 340 appeared from the distance then let out a long whistle stopping and resting in front of us. Everyone was amazed.
“Maybe we can ride it?” I said hopping aboard. “I should be able to drive this thing!”
I grabbed hold of the throttle, but as soon as I did the train fought back throwing me, my body slamming into the tender.
“I no think it like you!” Bigfoot laughed.
“Be nice.” Westwood scolded.
I stood back up brushing myself off.
“Would you like to try???” I scowled.
“No no...” Bigfoot said shaking his head. “...Go on.”
I tried a few more times, but the locomotive was stubborn. The locomotive let out a loud whistle like it was angry with me. Like it was talking to me, maybe even yelling at me. It was like it was alive!
“This is no use.” Westwood insisted. “This thing has a mind of its own! We might as well keep on walking.”
“Wait!” I argued. “That’s just what Jeff the Engineer said about this locomotive! That she’s got a mind of her own.”
“She?” Westwood replied. “…Well, serves you right!”
“What do you mean?”
“You can’t just go grabbing at women all willy nilly! Maybe throwing you into that there tender is her way of slapping you in the face!”
“So what should I do?” I asked.
“Be a gentleman!” He replied. “Look, in all my years I’ve met lots of women and none like to be forced into doing anything they don’t want to do. But what I do know is that most women want to help as long as you ask nicely.”
“Well… you know more about this world than I do.” I admitted. “Let’s try it your way.”
I decided that I’d be as kind as possible to this locomotive, as if it were another person.
“Come on three forty.” I whispered softly to the locomotive. “We need your help.” It sounded silly talking to the locomotive, but it’s all I could think of.
“Please.” I continued. “Please help us get to the calico mines.”
Suddenly the locomotive whistled out two peppy toots, the train tracks magically shifted in direction headed straight for the mines and the locomotive began to move. I didn’t even have to operate it. It throttled itself, fired itself. The locomotive moved fast as it chuffed her way onward, wheels spinning and smoke puffing out her smoke stack. Jeff was right! 340 did have a mind of its own. From then on I referred to the locomotive as “She” …just as Jeff did.
The locomotive pulled us directly up to the calico mine entrance. We hopped off the locomotive. I thanked 340 for bringing us this far. It let out two happy whistles before chuffing off into the distance and disappearing.
“This is a mine?” I said looking at the large mountain.
“The Calico mines!” Westwood hailed. “And this is just the beginning. The mine reaches deep into the earth... You’ll see soon enough.”
There were vultures perched atop of the mine, they stared at us, waiting. Dodo squawked at them, but they had no real reaction. Instead they just continued to stare. Waiting for us to die perhaps.
“You ready go inside?” Bigfoot asked.
“As ready as we’ll ever be.” Westwood replied. “How about you Michael?”
“I suppose.” I replied staring at the dark entrance of the mine.
“Don’t worry, I’ve been in this here mine a few times before.”
We entered the mine following what seemed to be mine car tracks. They led us deep inside the mine then curved off into different tracks headed into different parts of the mine.
“Which way do we go?” I asked. Some of the tunnels were lined with lanterns, their fire glowing amber, lighting the path.
We decided to stay together following the lit path. As we headed further into the mine we noticed different holes in the rock.
“Those are blasting holes.” Westwood declared.
“Blast holes?” Bigfoot asked.
“Yeah, how do you think they dug this far? Not with just a shovel that’s for sure.”
Dodo looked inside each of the holes along the way, probably searching for insects to eat. He even squeezed his whole head in one of the blast holes and got stuck! Bigfoot had to pull him back out, Dodo shook its head and continued to stick its head in other blast holes.
“That bird never learns." I said.
As we headed further into the mine the air became humid with massive amounts of steam making it almost impossible to see.
Westwood began to complain about his feet.
“My feet are killing me." Westwood Whined. “We need to take a break soon."
Westwood mustered up the strength to travel a little further and we finally came to a place where the mine opened up into a large cavern, but there was no time to rest there. There were hot boiling mud pits everywhere and geysers that sprayed out from the rocks creating large showers of water and steam! It was uncomfortably beautiful watching the mud pits boil and gurgle.
“Don’t get too close...” Warned Westwood. “...That steam’ll burn you alive.”
We took extreme caution around these mud pits and geysers as we continued on our way. One geyser shot out extremely close and would have boiled us for sure, but I used my Boomerang to protect us.
After cautiously tip toeing our way around the mud pits and geysers we finally made it out of that cavern unharmed.
Next we headed into another shaft that led deeper into the mine eventually coming to an extremely large opening. It was calm here. The perfect place to stop and rest for a moment.
Westwood kicked off his boots.
“Ah, that’s better." He sighed in relief.
We all rested for the time being, Westwood and Bigfoot sat together in the dirt and I found a rock to sit on. Dodo hopped in my lap and began to nap… until it heard something. Its neck stretched out and its head cocked sideways listening. We all began to listen too. It was a faint tinging sound. Then came the sound of a hand saw cutting back and forth.
“What is that?" I asked.
“I no Know." Bigfoot replied.
“It’s probably my feet." Westwood grunted jokingly. “They are in a lot of pain right now."
“Wow, your feet make weird sound.” Bigfoot replied taking Westwood’s joke literally.
“So do yours!” Go ahead listen.” Westwood nudged.
Bigfoot held his large sasquatch foot up to his own ear trying to hear sounds coming from it.
“I no hear nothing!” He said.
Westwood began to laugh.
“Cut it out you two.” I said scolding them... “Where the heck is that sound coming from anyway?”
Bigfoot slowly put his foot back down realizing that Westwood was just toying with him.
“I no believe you anyway.” Bigfoot added, picking up one of Westwood’s boots playfully tossing it at him.
“Then why was your foot touching your face?” Westwood laughed.
Bigfoot took a moment to think.... then his reply came to him.
“Because I like way my feet smell!” Bigfoot replied. “All Sasquatch have good smell feet! Everyone know that!”
Bigfoot tried to put his foot in Westwood’s face.
“Here you smell now!” He added.
“No, stop!” Westwood laughed. “I’ll shoot it off!” Then he counterattacked Bigfoot with one of his own feet.
It was good to see Westwood playing with Bigfoot. He had lost so much back in Calico. Back there he was a total mess after what had happened to everyone. I think he was now trying his best not to think about it. Bigfoot was his longtime friend, and the two playing around helped keep his mind off everything, but still we were on a mission to find Montezuma so I stopped the two.
“That’s enough out of you two!” I scolded.
The two listened to me and kept their feet to themselves.
“Ooooooo...” Westwood warned. “...Bigfoot you’re in trouble.”
“I no in trouble! …You in trouble.”
I continued to follow the sounds and saw there was a ledge nearby.
“Hey look!” I declared. “It’s coming from over here!”
We crept up to the ledge and peered over... there was a tremendous decent down. We could see extremely far down into the mine. At the bottom there were people working. It was hard to tell exactly what they were doing but we could hear saws and hammers. Ropes were being pulled on, pulleys moving. Shovels loading rock onto mine cars. The sound of hard work being done down there.
“Montezuma must be somewhere down there.” Said Westwood. “If we continue on, we should be able to make it to the bottom of the mine.”
We continued on through yet another mine shaft and came upon a darker cave. There were no lanterns in here and we all wondered why. We grabbed a lantern off the wall of the closest mine shaft and proceeded onward. Soon enough we noticed why the cave had been unlit. It was full of bats! Thousands of them hanging from the ceiling. Their wings began to move every-time we came close enough with the lantern. We decided to put the lantern out for now so we wouldn’t wake them. We traveled blindly through the cave until we came to another lit shaft.
Further into the mine we came upon a beautiful cavern. Inside there were countless stalactites hanging down from the ceiling, they looked like colorful icicle shaped rocks with water slowly dripping from them creating equally beautiful icicle shaped stalagmites raising up from the ground. Westwood said they were created over millions of years, drop by drop. little by little. We could hear each drop of water dripping from the stalactites down to the stalagmites. They were all forming at different sizes so each drip had a different tone echoing through the cavern. It kind of sounded like this cavern was making music …as if someone were playing a xylophone. This cavern is hard to describe but it was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen in my life.
From there we continued further into the mine traveling through dimly lit tunnels for quite some time,
Finally, we reached the bottom of the mine where hundreds of men were all at work. Some were digging, some moving rock. There were men drilling blast holes and others preparing dynamite fuses to blast. All were sweating profusely and covered in dirt.
One man had struck gold grasping it in his hand. It was almost bigger than he could carry.
“Gold!” He cheered grasping the golden nugget in hand. “After all of these years I’ve finally found gold!”
We continued on searching through the workers looking for Montezuma. One finally told us that he had moved further on ahead, deeper into the mine to dig up the seal. The man pointed us in the right direction and we continued on.