The prisoners, still manacled, ceased to work, and stared in confusion at the men in Rurales uniform as they went coolly about their business.

Shrugging free of the confining serape, Steve gestured with his pistol to the yawning mouth of a tunnel blasted into the rock.

“The silver is down there.” It was all too familiar, the walk down a narrow tunnel illuminated by the hot, smoky light of creosote torches set into brackets in the rock walls. The walls closed around them like jaws, swallowing them up as they descended into murky air that smelled of raw earth and desperation.

The iron door set into a wall had a double bolt and lock on it, formidable resistance without the key. Hollow clanks sounded loud in the shadows as the door swung open.

Haunted by memories of the days he’d spent in this dank prison, Steve began to sweat despite thin cotton garments and his breath was shallow.

“Are you all right, amigo?”

He didn’t look at Paco, just nodded tightly. “Get the silver loaded as quickly as you can. Use their wagons. We’ll get it out of here before the second shift of guards arrives from the village. We don’t have long.”

“I have the feeling that Senator Brandon is going to be mighty upset,” Butch Casey observed laconically. In the turbid light, his grin flashed white.

“Yeah.” Steve’s belly knotted at the unmistakable sound of a muffled, despairing cry of a prisoner locked into one of the cells. “Finish here, Paco. I’ve got some work to do.”

Using the ring of keys he’d taken from the guard, Steve began to unlock doors, flinging them wide. He went from iron door to iron door, and the men too weak to move were helped by their comrades.

“Go back and help him,” he ordered one man who tried to push past, leaving his cellmate. “If he doesn’t go, you don’t go.”

In the faint, flickering light, the man gave him a wide stare of resentment, but went back, helping the other man to his feet. Freed of manacles and prison, the men poured out of the mine like ants scurrying from a sandy hill, streaming to freedom.

None were left behind. Not one man remained.

“You probably set free some of Cortina’s men or worse,” Paco observed, but Steve only shrugged.

“Better than leaving innocent men down here to suffer the torments of hell. Lock the guards in the cells. Too bad we can’t stay long enough to give them some of the same kind of treatment they like giving to others.”

It wasn’t until they were on the way back, the silver weighing down a wagon and their saddlebags, that he felt as if he could breathe easily again, the stink of the mine finally behind him.

This wouldn’t stop Brandon—there was more silver in the mines—but it would certainly cost him.