The Cumberland Plateau rose from the landscape like a vast green wall. Gray, low-hanging clouds draped its summit. Cade’s destination, Tracy City, was up there at the end of the rail line. The prison in Nashville buzzed with stories about it, grim details of abuse and death, but Cade reminded himself that tales grew as they passed from one person to the next. Convicts sure weren’t known for telling the truth. Yet a persistent foreboding continued its silent, chilling alarm. I must survive, he thought, dropped his eyes, and placed a hand on the metal base of the open window.

The train rounded the curve and raced up the foot of the mountain railway. The sharp incline slowed the train until the couplers bumped. Cade tightened his grip on the windowsill and absorbed the jolt. The engine strained and lugged the train upward. Back at the station in Nashville, the porter had called it the Mountain Goat Run. Now Cade understood why.

He eased back onto the wooden slat bench and gazed outside. The engine’s billowing smoke blended into the encroaching fog and partly hid the towering oaks, poplars, chestnuts, and shagbark hickories that lined the side of the tracks. His right eyelid suddenly twitched twice, a random, irritating spasm he’d acquired sometime after the indictment. “Stop.”

Nauseous body odor filled the coach; “The prison car,” the guard had said when he herded Cade and thirteen other convicts inside. Twelve were of African descent, most likely freedmen. The other, a skinny, sandy-haired boy sitting near the front. He can’t be more than thirteen years old, Cade thought. The state will send anyone to work the mines.

Demas hooked a finger, pulled a tobacco cud from his jaw, and slung it onto the dirt. He pulled out a small, brown paper sack from his trousers’ rear pocket and folded the edges down, exposing the end of a twist of tobacco. He gnawed off a chunk, stuffed the bag back inside his pocket, wiped his mouth with one hand, and took the papers with the other. “Gimme eight. Send the rest to the Heading.”

He reached for the bridle bit of one of the mules and led the team down the street, looked toward the mine office attached to the company store. Tennessee Coal and Iron was his life. Two miners came toward him and passed without speaking. Demas knew what people thought of him, said about him. “Humph,” he muttered, tied the mules to the hitching rail, and stepped upon the stoop.

The door, scarred and loose, creaked and skimmed the floor and opened to a large room with a counter across the front. Demas scanned the dotted desks with people at work. Only the receptionist noticed him. He looked over their heads toward the colonel’s office. Through the office windows, it appeared deserted. His eyes focused on the receptionist who walked to the counter.

“May I help you?”

“Here’s the papers on the convicts that just come in. I’m taking eight to East Fork. I sent the rest to the Heading Stockade. Is the colonel in?”

“No, but Nate’s here if you want to speak to him?”

Demas hissed. “Nobody here but Lewis?” The name alone disgusted him. “If he’s all they is, let me talk to him.”

The receptionist stepped to a side office, leaned inside, and turned away.

A tall, lanky man in a brown pinstripe, business suit walked out with Lacey Jennings close behind. Demas had seen Lacey several times at the colonel’s residence. Her subtle air of sultry grace left no doubt that her world was a secure, hopeful, and promising place. Sure wasn’t the kind of world Demas had ever known. He thought of the intimate, often lewd encounters he’d had with women, but none had been as appealing as this young woman in her fitted, turquoise dress.

Spooky . . . spookier than anything Cade had ever experienced. He followed Cleve through the entrance and stumbled on the narrow-gauge tracks. He blinked several times, trying to adapt to the intense darkness. The small, oil headlamp didn’t give much light, but after a few minutes, his eyes adjusted well enough to make out the tunnel.

The shaft was high enough to walk upright, and he shivered in the chilly, damp enclosure. Water suddenly concealed the tracks and flooded three inches above his brogans. They passed through the freezing pool, and water squished out of his shoes with each step. Every sixty feet or so, a switch track turned to the right or left. In those places, the top was only as high as the coal seam, which looked to be about forty inches. At each turn, a man got down low and vanished. They came to a cross shaft and then over to a side shaft, where they continued deeper into the mine. All at once, Cleve stepped off the tracks and grabbed Cade by the arm, pulled him over, and let the others pass.

“Dis is yo’ turn. Dis switch goes up to yo’ room.”

They got down on hands and knees and dropped to their bellies and crawled forward under the low top. Cade struggled to hold the dinner pail upright and drag the tools along. Pitprops, evenly spaced, were on both sides of the rails that ran up the center of at least a forty-foot-wide cavity.

Cade’s headlamp illumined only a few short feet in front of him. He couldn’t remember being claustrophobic or at least hadn’t experienced it before, but the darkness and the low top seemed to press in upon him. The air was thinner, and his head bumped the top. Apprehension intensified into flooding anxiety, and the further he crawled, the more labored his breathing became. “I can’t breathe!” Cade grabbed Cleve’s ankle from behind.

Cleve stopped and laid still. “Huh, huh, huh.”

Though difficult in the dim light, Cade saw Cleve’s body shaking as he burst into laughter. After he stopped laughing, he said, “You safe. Youse as safe as in yo’ mama’s womb. Lay here a minute, close yo’ eyes, take big, deep breaths.”

Despite a fierce urge to crawl back toward the main shaft, Cade closed his eyes and felt his heart racing. He forced several deep breaths, and after a few minutes, his breathing became easier.

“Don’t you worry about dis spot. De real danger is up around de face. I show you how to handle that once we get there.” Cleve raised his voice. “You know, if’n you can learn to mine, you might be good fo’ me. You made me laugh two, three times. I ain’t laughed in six months. I say one thang though, if’n they’s any man in you, you gonna have to turn him out.”

“I haven’t done any mining, you know.”

“You gots to learn—and quick. Demas got no mercy on nobody.”