Chapter 15
“You did what?” Michael roared.
Diane regarded him with cool indifference.
Ethan was alive and although he seemed a bit banged up, he was okay.
He was okay! Thank God. The relief that washed over Diane was palpable.
The knot that had been developing between her shoulder blades began to ease.
Now that she knew he was alive, nothing would stop her from getting him out of that hole.
Nothing! Certainly not Michael and his misplaced anger.
“I wouldn’t think you would find it that hard to follow,” Diane said primly.
“I went and gave the men some water, a couple of sandwiches, and a whole lot of medical supplies. They’re stuck in a hole and have been all day.
They needed all of those things urgently, or we would be pulling corpses out. ”
“I think what’s boggling my brother’s mind is how you got in there without causing another cave-in,” Troy said, his tone gentler than Michael’s had been.
There had been rumbles and, at one point, more smoke coming out of the hole in the floor. It hadn’t seemed terribly safe, but then Diane hadn’t been concerned about her safety, only with finding out what was happening in there.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess I’m light enough not to cause a problem.”
“I guess so,” Andrew said.
The three men were chastising her in the office.
They’d been waiting for her along with Mr. Rossi when she came out of the rubble.
Ben, who had held the rope tied around her waist, had worn a guilty look that had made Diane wish she’d just tied the rope to something.
She hadn’t wanted to get anyone else in trouble.
Mr. Rossi glared at her. “Are you crazy? What were you thinking? You didn’t know that you would be light enough not to cause another problem.
” He used a colorful expletive and didn’t even ask to be pardoned for cursing in front of a lady.
“This place is just one big circus! No wonder you’re behind schedule. ”
Diane watched a vein standing out on the side of the bureaucrat’s neck. “Mr. Rossi, you might want to take a couple of breaths.”
“Breaths? I want this whole insane debacle to be over,” Mr. Rossi said.
“When Mr. Bernini said I should come and help out, send a few reports, make a few suggestions, I thought, Texas is a nice place. Why not? Now I’m thinking I should have my head read!
I wanna go home, even if the dragon is still there. ”
“The dragon?” Diane asked, placing a consolatory hand on Mr. Rossi’s arm and leading him to the door. “Who is that?”
“My wife’s mother, God help me,” he said.
“She never knows when to leave, and she makes the whole apartment smell like sardines.” He wrinkled his nose.
“Get those men out of that hole, and do it quickly. I need to leave already.” He walked to the door and flung it open so that it bounced off the wall and swung closed as he was walking through. He grunted but didn’t look back.
Diane could hear him grumbling all the way out of the office building. She turned back to the men. “Right. Best we do as he says, don’t you think? Let’s get those men out of that hole!”
Despite Diane’s fervor, it still took over two hours to get things organized on the surface so that rescuing Ethan and the others would even be possible. More rubble had to be cleared, and the framework had to be assembled to haul them out.
When it came to clearing the rubble, Sarah, Chrissie, Alice, Diane, and even the diminutive Lucy were given shovels. They had to clear the space for the frame’s legs to be bolted to the ground.
Diane was happy to help. She could almost feel Ethan’s arms around her again. He was going to make it out of that hole, even if she had to go in and fetch him herself!
Luckily, Troy had been working on the frame all day and it was ready, with a pulley system and a stretcher with a couple of belts to hold a person in place on it.
Diane put her back into the work, thinking only of Ethan. She and Lucy, the sheriff’s fiancée, filled wheelbarrows with debris and then trundled it out of the way. It was starting to get dark by the time they managed to clear the space and get the frame up.
Then the women stepped back and let the men work.
The frame had to be firmly attached to the ground in three places. Then it only took one man to guide the stretcher with another rope tied to it, and the men holding the other side of the stretcher’s rope. That was a long piece that several men, including Ben, had a hold of.
With bated breath, Diane watched the stretcher lower into the ground.
Troy was the one guiding the stretcher, and he called for the men to take up the slack when the stretcher reached the bottom.
There were a couple of minutes when nothing seemed to happen, and then Ben and the others began to pull.
Diane’s breath caught in her throat as she waited to see who would come out first. She found herself standing in a knot of women, all of them watching the frame, waiting. She hoped to heaven it would be Ethan. She needed him to finally be safe.
She felt an arm gently wrap around her shoulders. “Don’t worry, Di; I’m sure that Ethan will be up soon enough,” Mildred said. She smiled. “And it’s all thanks to you and your bravery. I wouldn’t have gone out there like that.”
“For Anders? I’ll bet you would have,” Diane said.
Mildred looked thoughtful and then shook her head.
“Darling, you weigh as much as a leaf. By comparison, there is no way I wouldn’t bring that hole down on whoever was in there.
So, apart from my nervous nature, I wouldn’t want to kill anyone.
” She laughed good-naturedly, and Diane found herself smiling.
Mildred certainly knew how to cheer a person up.
“Oh, they have someone,” Lucy cried, pointing. “It’s Thomas!”
Diane was about to step forward to take care of the stricken man, but Julie shook her head. “You just wait for Ethan. Antoinette and I can handle the others.”
Troy guided the stretcher slowly and carefully to the side of the hole. The men holding the rope gave him some slack, and he put the stretcher down on the ground gently. Then Troy helped Thomas off it.
Thomas looked a little confused as the late afternoon sun shone on him. “It’s good to be breathing fresh air again,” he said, hobbling carefully away from the hole.
The ground gave a nasty shudder. Troy and Diane locked gazes for a moment.
This wasn’t good. The ground was too unstable.
They might not have long. Diane wanted to run forward to force Ethan to get on the stretcher next, but that was pointless.
She knew it was. Ethan would never jeopardize another person’s well-being for his own gain.
She would just have to hope and pray that the whole contraption held together and the ground stayed up until he was out of the hole.
Down went the stretcher. Slowly, slowly, not wanting to do anything that might cause them more trouble … Then the waiting while the person got on and was strapped in. Then the slow, painful ride up while Ben and the others pulled on the rope.
The sun was setting fast now, dipping down behind the wall, the light fading quite quickly.
“We need torches,” Diane said.
“Ah, I think we brought some from the storeroom,” Mildred said. “Jason suggested it when we went to get the ropes and things.”
Having something to do was better than standing there waiting. Diane couldn’t manage that. She would go mad before Ethan made it up to her.
She, Lucy, and Mildred went to the buckboard and took out the torches, which they stuck in the ground and then lit with matches that Lucy had in her pocket. As the light dimmed around them, the torches seemed to burn all the brighter.
The ground gave another rumble and shuddered as though it was a beast trying to get something off its back. Diane froze, having just stuck another torch into the ground.
“Did we do that?” she asked.
Lucy shrugged.
“I doubt it,” Mildred said, not sounding too sure. “Let’s stop, just in case.”
They put the last of the torches back in the buckboard and resumed their waiting.
Finally, the stretcher arrived at ground level and the man on it was helped off. He looked somewhat confused and grimy but was otherwise fine. Antoinette met him at the edge of the danger zone and escorted him to the first aid area.
This was it; it was finally Ethan’s turn. Diane held her breath. What would she say to him when he was safe?
She didn’t know. What was there to say? A whole host of things, of course, but what to say first?
The stretcher began to descend. As the rope rasped in the pulley, the ground under the frame creaked. Troy stopped the stretcher. “Hold on a moment!” he called.
Ben and the others stopped letting out the rope. They waited. Everyone held their breath.
After a moment, Troy waved them back into action and the stretcher continued on its way down.
The slow pace was agony. Diane could only imagine the frustration and nervous tension that was running through Ethan at that moment.
Alone in the dark down there with only that one lifeline, that one way out, moving so slowly down to him.
Was he afraid that something would go wrong?
Was he simply praying for all he was worth that he would make it out of the predicament he was in?
She was also praying that he would come out of that hole and she could wrap her arms around him and hold him. That was all she wanted, and the time it was taking to get there seemed to be drawn out to a ridiculous length. What was the hold-up? Why was everything moving so slowly?
Troy held up his hand to stop the rope.
“Okay, this is it,” Mildred said, smiling. “He’ll be up here in a shake of a lamb’s tail.”
The ground gave a shake far stronger than any lamb. Diane braced herself. It was a bigger one than any of the others. People stumbled. One of the legs of the frame tilted at a strange angle.
“Pull! Just pull, darn it!” Troy yelled.
The frame was sinking, one side dipping below the ground.