CHAPTER 5

Hey everypony. I'm back with another chapter, just as I promised. I hope you enjoy this one. On a minor note, this volume will not be as lengthy as some of the others, so expect no more than 10 chapters or so. I'll try to get a chapter or two a day up, unless life gets in the way. Anyhow, here's chapter five. Please review, my loyal readers...and enjoy.

We entered the mine cautiously, our lanterns casting their yellow glow onto the stone walls of the pony-made cave. Rainbow Dash and Budder stuck close behind me as we ventured deeper and deeper into the mine. None of us had ever gone this deep underground, and despite the fact that were all three wearing hardhats, I couldn't help but feel a little nervous. Mines were dangerous places. At any moment, there could be a cave-in, or a gas explosion. Ponies could become lost in the labyrinth of passages inside a mine. OF course my sister had her own concern about this little spelunking trip. Spiders. She must have asked me a dozen times if there were going to be spiders down here. I didn't know about spiders, but as we walked into the mine, I kept a close watch on the floor for anything long and scaly.

It was nearly impossible to track in here. When the floor of the tunnel wasn't solid rock, any hoofprints in the fine dust would have been utterly obliterated by the volume of hoof traffic from miners. Tracking in an area frequented by many ponies is always difficult, if not outright impossible. The low light of the mine made it even worse in this case. I periodically paused, looking up from the floor of the mine to the walls, inspecting the pick-marks left during excavation for a sign that somepony had been doing anything out of sorts in here.

All the while, my brain was turning over the possibilities. Say this was a criminal case. That would mean there had to be a good reason why the criminals were here, in this particular mine, and why they were going to the trouble of scaring everypony else off. Okay mind, start putting it together. This was a profitable quartz mine. One of the best in the region. So if a few badponies came in and scared off the workers, the mine would close. If the owners couldn't get anypony to work here, they'd have to sell for probably just a few thousand bits. Then the schemers could buy it up cheaply, and start their own mining operation, and make a killing. Not the quickest or easiest way to get rich on their part, but not all criminals were brilliant, or had their sights set on world domination. Some liked to keep their dreams small.

Then again, there could be an underlying factor I wasn't seeing. Maybe the perps wanted this mine, but not for the quartz. With all of the domestic and international terrorism lately, and with all of the smuggling rings that had been broken in the past couple years, it was not a fargone conclusion that this wasn't about a criminal ring wanting an isolated base of operations, or a secret place to stash their stolen goods. Okay, it had to be one of the two. There was no other rational explanation for why and how criminals would be running a game like this. There was always the possibility that it was ghosts, but I couldn't process that right now.

"Hey Drake..." Dashie called. "You think this tunnel is important?" I stopped and looked at Dash, who was standing at a boarded-up entrance to another shaft. I pulled the mine plans out of my saddlebag, and unrolled the map on the dusty floor. We gathered around the plans, and placed our lanterns at three corners of it to hold it open while I followed the route we had taken.

"Okay...we're right here..." I muttered, pointing a hoof at a spot on the map about a hundred and fifty yards from the entrance. "So that means that is the shaft where the forepony heard the screaming. I looked back at the opening. "Seems like a good a place as any to start. Help me pull these boards loose." After a few minutes of work, we had managed to tear down the barrier blocking off the unused mine shaft. I stuck the map back into my saddlebag and grabbed the lantern in my teeth, leading Dash and Budder into the new tunnel. We hadn't traveled far into the shaft, when I saw my first sign. I stopped dead, and looked at the condemning evidence.

"What is it, bubby" My sister asked in a hushed voice.

"There is a lantern...hanging from the roof beam." I answered.

"So?" Dash asked. "We're in a mine. There's lanterns hanging everywhere."

"In an unused, abandoned shaft?" I shot back. "And there's another one." I continued, walking along further. I passed the second hanging lantern, and walked about fifty feet more. "And another. And I'll bet you two that they're full of oil."

"Somepony's been here." Rainbow Dash stated.

"Yep." I agreed. "I think our...ghosts...needed some light to do their haunting."

"But ghosts don't need light." My sister said. I slowly turned my head and looked at her incredulously.

"Um...that was the point...angel..." I said slowly. I saw her face turn as the situation dawned on her.

"Oh...derp." She sighed, rolling her eyes.

"Come on guys. This little mystery probably isn't gonna be that mysterious by the time we get to the end of this tunnel." I said, leading my family deeper into the mine. Along the way, I noticed more lanterns hanging from the thick wooden beams on the ceiling of the cavern. Not only that, but I started noticing something else odd as well, and finally ran ahead to inspect a telling piece of evidence I would have to work into my theory somehow. By the time Dash and Budder joined me, I was already staring at odd bulges in the wall, grottoes extending back into the otherwise flat walls, almost like...

"New excavation..." I stated.

"How can you tell?" Dash asked.

"Look at the marks in the rock. They look fresher than the pick and chisel marks in the older part of the wall. And look at all the rock dust on the floor of the mine here. These were made recently...and it looks like somepony's been starting a new tunnel here. And up there."

"But why?" Budder asked.

"I do not know..." I replied. This was new information to me, and it didn't make any sense. This part of the mine was shut down because there was no quartz here. So why were they digging? More space to do whatever it was they were doing down here? We walked further until we came to the end of the tunnel. "Uh...huh..." I mused. At the end of the tunnel, loose rock and debris was everywhere, and judging from the amount of material piled along the walls, and the new timbers bracing up the ceiling, there was no questioning that the shaft had been excavated at least fifty feet beyond how long it had used to be. Unused mine timbers were stacked against one side of the mine shaft, ready to be used. Loose aggregate covered the end of the shaft, rock and dirt piled against the wall for some reason. More strange behavior on the part of the mysterious miners. Okay...so I'd been wrong about the mystery being undone. It had just gotten worse.

"Alright...let's go back." I said. "I think we've seen all we're gonna see for now. I gotta process all of this."

"Whaddya think they're up to?" Rainbow Dash asked me, my marefriend poking around in the rubble with a hoof.

"I really don't know. According to the foreman, there's no quartz in this shaft. That's why they stopped mining in here. But it looks like the ponies doing all this have been in here digging away...extending this shaft, and starting to dig two more. It don't make any sense...ugh. I hate criminals that don't make sense. It just makes it harder to catch them."

"You wanna head back?" Budder asked. I sighed.

"Yeah...nothing's gonna happen tonight. We'll just have to do all this again tomorrow."

"What about the screaming?" Dash asked. "What do you think caused all the screaming and junk that scared everypony?"

"Hm. Think I at least figured that one out." I replied. "And maybe why there's explosions down here. Gonna have to check out the other shaft to say for sure though."

"What do you mean?" My sister questioned.

"See those little round indentations in the wall there?" I asked, pointing to a group of three inch wide holes in the rock wall. "Those were made by a drill. I've never heard a drill boring through rock, but I'm willing to bet it sounds a lot like somepony moaning like they're dying." I gave the shaft another look, then turned back and started to walk the way we had come.

"So all this was all just some ponies coming down here and digging?" Dash asked. "And they weren't even smart enough to mine where they'd actually get something out of it? Man, what a bunch of dipsticks..."

"I wouldn't say that just yet, sweetheart." I countered. "Nopony goes to all this work unless they're damned sure they're gonna get something out of it. What it is remains to be seen though."

Back in the shack, I sat at the table, looking over the blueprint of the mine. There had to be a reason why somepony would be mining in that shaft. I took a pencil, and added the new excavation to the map, then drew a line from the end of the shaft outwards. After nearly eight hundred yards, it would intersect with a tunnel where the miners had been working a rich vein of quartz. I turned my attention to the side shaft where the unexplained explosion had taken place. It ran away from the main shaft at an angle, and if continued on in a straight line, would just skirt the edge of the projected quartz deposit, which was defined by a shaded area on the map. Why were they targeting the areas where there was little quartz? Was it because they were off the beaten track, and the trespassers believed that they would go unnoticed? I rolled up the map, and sat it on the table before standing and turning to my marefriend and my sister, who were sitting on one of the bottom bunks, Dashie reading, and Budder drawing something in her sketch book.

"Let's get some sleep." I said wearily. Got another big day tomorrow." Budder slid her sketch book and pencil under the bed, and climbed into the top bunk. I blew out the lanterns, and got into the bottom bed with Dashie. My marefriend put a foreleg around me and snuggled up to me lovingly. We lay there for a moment in the quiet darkness of the cabin.

"Did you ever solve any big crimes when you were out here?" Budder's voice asked from the top bunk. "Back when you were in the cavalry?"

"Hm. Big crimes, no. Back then, I was too busy running a fort and trying to keep down trouble in the area." I answered. "I was always a good tracker." I added. "I'm not trying to brag about that...but I could follow signs as good as any Buffalo Scout."

"I believe it." My sister stated. There was a pause, and I lay on the mattress, feeling Dash's left foreleg around me. "Did the soldiers under you...did they like you?" Budder queried. "I bet they thought you were awesome."

"Not at first..." I confessed. "They didn't trust me when I first came out here. Their last commander was a raving lunatic that yelled at them all the time. I guess they thought I'd be the same way. Heheh...I remember...one of them even wrote 'Bend over, here it comes again' on the door of my quarters. I almost got into a brawl with one of them during inspection. I guess I proved myself to them though. The walls of that fort were coated with the lingering curses of my name the first couple of weeks. Within a year, they wanted to have me promoted."

"Heehee...sounds legit." Dashie quipped.

"I knew they thought you were awesome..." Budder said. I heard her yawn. "'Cause you are, bubby."

"You guys are too." I returned with a smile.

"Nahhh...we're only assistant awesome." Budder said sleepily. "Love you bub."

"Love you too, angel." I replied. "Good night sis."

"Good night bub." My sister said. "Good night Dashie."

"Good night Budder." Dash yawned. "Good night, Drake."

"G'night, Dash." I said back.

"Night guys." Budder said.

"Um..." I muttered.

"Night kid." Dash stated. Oh no...we aren't doing this thing again...

"Good night guys..." Dashie began, and I could hear the laugh she was holding back.

"NO! This ain't the Walltons! I breathed. "Shut up and go to sleep...now. Oh, and I love you guys." Dashie and Budder giggled.

"Love you too." They both said. I wallowed into the mattress and fell fast asleep.

I will make every attempt to get chapter six up late tonight. I should be able to do so. I hope everypony out there is enjoying this Volume so far. Until next chapter, I want to thank all of you for reading.