fallen onto the rails of the mine loading sidings.  The final time, she actually rolled a little bit, but luckily, some quick thinking and a tree branch stopped her decent.

Down in the valley, Aleu got a small victory in seeing the strange convoy of trains slowly move under the power of her own Texas. She silently wished them luck and that the authorities would be quick in coming.

But still she pressed on.

At the top of the hill, she came upon her goal. The old pumping engine and pump house still stood. They sat in a small clearing high above the mineshaft, looking like a Dolby painting, morphed against the rich outline of the jagged peaks.  And like Aleu’s hunch told her, the house was open.  

Opening the door slightly, Aleu found a lantern hanging in the ceiling, a quick whiff told her in contained kerosene. A simple turn of the flint wheel, and an orb of dim orange light filled the building.

Aleu swung the lantern along the old boiler of the pumping engine. It was cold, and bits of rust flaked off in the fur of her hand. She then looked down the shaft that led into the mine. It looked like some strange dark cavern leading into a frozen hell, just barely big enough for someone to climb down on the ladder.

But Aleu saw a better way, a pulley and rope harness hung stored above the shaft. Carefully she wrapped herself in the harness and sat on the edge of the shaft. Holding the lantern in her muzzle, and with both hands grabbing the rope, she started to lower herself into the old mine.  


The trip down was nerve wracking, the sound of the ropes creaking and the squeak of the pulley wheel echoed down the dark metal shaft. All the while Aleu imagined some horrific death by the rope braking or the wheel snapping, leaving her to fall unheeded into the depths of the earth.

Then her ears picked dup a sound that she feared most…running water. The bottom of the shaft was flooded. But how much she didn’t know.

It didn’t take long to find out; soon she saw the ripples outlined in the light of her lantern. As she got within a foot or two of the surface, she wrapped the rope into her arm, and hung there.

Looking into the stream, her spirits were lifted by a warm glow that was in the water itself. The stream ran into the mine. But how long was the stream.

Aleu carefully grabbed the lantern, and chucked it into the stream, under handing her arm so it flew up under the water.

The glow of the lantern bobbed for a few seconds…then became still when it hit the end of the path…the opening was only four or five feet away.  

But the water looked to be above seven or eight feet deep.

“Well…I always thought winter was a bad time for a swim.” Aleu mumbled to herself.

She kicked off her steel toes, as they would be like anchors in the water, and watched them sink to the bottom like stones, and disrobed from her denim jacket. Leaving the jacket tied into the rope, not just to not get it wet, but as the preverbal bread crumb for the rescue party, Aleu found herself starting to get the chills. She knotted her white shirt above her waist, and let go of the rope.


The water was unbelievably cold. Even with her arctic pedigree, its icy embrace stunned the wolf’s body. Aleu submerged and felt the cold sticking like needles into her body as she floated, her body suddenly immobile, floating down like a leaf from a tree.

But her mind soon over came the sheer force of the blood stopping cold. Aleu kicked her canine feet and started moving forward, pulling herself along the underwater passage by the eerie glow of the lantern, still burning in its housing, Aleu thought it was a pure miracle that the water hadn’t snuffed it out yet.

But then she felt a tug on her right leg. Looking back, Aleu found that the rope from the pulley system had wrapped itself around her bare ankle, and it was keeping her from going any further.  

She kicked and swarmed, but it felt as if the rope was just getting tighter.  Aleu could feel her lungs starting the burn of drowning. She made a few frantic kicks before the rope finally let go, and she bobbed to the surface inside the mineshaft.




Aleu surfaced with a bout of coughing and hacking. She lifted herself from the water pool and onto the rock floor of the shaft, her fur and hair-sopping wet. She lay on her stomach in the dirt, catching her breath and letting herself dry off. The floor felt warm and comforting.

After a few seconds, Aleu realized that indeed the floor was warm! Very warm, Her clothing had dried and gone back to its original opacity, and her legs and feet had significantly dried on the rock floor.

Then it hit her…bare rock, no snow or ice. The tunnel was warm enough to prevent the cold artic from entering.

Aleu looked around the shaft, above her head burned several lanterns, throwing orange highlights that accented the brown and gray of the stone. Wooden beams stood five feet apart, and every other one had a lantern dangling from it. The haunting moan of the outside wind could be herd inside the mine. Giving Aleu the strange suspicion that she was being watched.

Her bare pads felt the cold iron of rails. And sure enough, Aleu looked down to see a pare of narrow gauge rails, connected not with wooden ties, but iron bars. Bolts held the gauge together, and it unbelievably narrow, two feet perhaps!

Aleu started walking down the track, in the direction away from the mineshaft entrance. The sound of her pads on the rock floor seemed strangely out of place in this subterranean world. She didn’t talk, didn’t whisper, and dared to breath as she skulked her way threw the tunnels.

The brain is like a railroad freight car…guaranteed to have a certain capacity, but often running empty. - Wise proverb




The mineshaft went on for miles. The deeper it went though, the warmer it became. Aleu felt as if she was slowly approaching the center of the earth. The tunnels, although showing life, where completely barren, but she kept to the walls and out of the light just incase someone would happen to be walking down.

One thing was for sure, these tunnels where not abandoned. The rails on the track looked like two mirrors, the shiny glint reelecting back in the lantern light, which had only been burning for a few days.  

Another thing told Aleu she was getting close to the epicenter…food. On the airflow that breezed its way in the tunnel, she could catch faint wisps of a kitchen.

She came to an intersection between two tunnels, a diamond and stub switch led down one track, and the other track turned and met the one she was walking down.

As Aleu debated which way to go she heard a faint whizzing, like sound of steam as it leaking out of a pipe. She recognized it instantly as cylinders pumping on a locomotive. The glow of lanterns started to appear down the intersecting tunnel

Retreating into the corner beam of the tunnel opposite the light, Aleu her breath she watched as the rails hummed and a small mine locomotive with a vertical Boiler hissed past, leaving a stream of smoke in its trail. The locomotive was diminutive. Smaller in size then the malamute driving it. It had no whistle, or bell. A single lamp burned on its bumper beam. She recognized it as a British built Merlin and Westinghouse mine locomotive.

“I knew those things where evil.” She whispered to herself.

The locomotive was towing four small 4-wheeled flatcars, loaded with creates and burlap bags. Aleu’s eyes picked out the shipping notes on a few of the creates. All read: Nome AL, WRR.

Waiting till the train was past, Aleu stealthily moved around the corner and started down the path the train had come from.



The track curved along a similarly structured tunnel, bet here the beams where newer, and the track hadn’t even had the time to rust. Aleu ran on for another fifteen minutes till she came to a stub switch and siding. A line of similar flat cars stood, and a female malamute wearing a jacket that had the logo of the Kenacot mining company was shifting the load on the flatcars. Aleu noticed the Smith and Wesson pistol in her jacket pocket

Aleu carefully walked up alongside the train, one the side that was opposed the malamute. When he pulled down a crate reviling her, she smiled and waved her hand

“Howdy…good evening isn’t it.”  She said giggling.

The malamute was taken aback by the sudden appearance of a she-wolf, and before she had the chance to react, Aleu pushed the flatcar over, dumping its load onto the hapless canine.

She fallowed the car, and jumped atop the dog, holding her hand over the dog’s mouth. With a quick bash of a lantern from the flatcar, she was knocked silent.

Aleu dragged the dog over and dumped her in-between the train and the wall. Righting the flatcar so it didn’t look too suspicious, she retreated behind the train and to her unknown capture.

“Sorry, but I need these.” She said taking off the girl’s boots. She also took the jacket, and helmet. She donned both and after lighting the lantern on the ten cap and looking like any of the other mineworkers, Aleu started walking down the shaft again.

The closer she got to the heat source, the more she started running onto workers. In the jacket she didn’t look out of place. The mining helmet covered up her hair and made her face unseen to the workers who hurried along. She gave a slight lift of one hand whenever someone looked at her, but didn’t speak. She acted as just another worker rushing off to do a job.

She soon found herself in a large cavern. On each side where boilers, feeding heat to some unknown source. Men stood on each side, feeding coal in the dark and dim red lights emanating from the fire doors. It looked like a scene from hell itself.

Passing threw the boiler rooms she found what they where feeding. A Giant multi-storied cavern had been hollowed out in steppes. The narrow gauge tracks ran along these steps and a multitude of steam drills, hammers and blasting power fed ore to the small coal hoppers being pulled my