The wind howling down through the upright hoist chimney pipe tore at the hems of Len Vey’s coat, freezing the sweat along his collar into stiff beads of frost.
The high damper platform felt tiny, fragile. Then he utterly removed from the rest of the world. Beneath the rusted steel grating, forty feet of empty space dropped down to the black stone water chute where the boiling cooling runoff rushed toward the Quarry Ward. Ahead of him stood the double, its boots resting lightly on the wet iron mesh, perfectly balanced against the swaying draft.
Thirty feet above them, the upright hoist shaft opened directly to the quarry rim. Down that upright chimney came the sound of the high mountain gale—a low, rhythmic roar like the sound of an iron freight car rolling across a frame stand. The draft smelled of wet granite, wild thyme, and fresh snow. He carried the bitter cold of winter heights into the sulfur-choked throat of the mountain. Far up on that dark rim, invisible in the gloom, Len knew the quarry crew was watching. Edda stood on the timbers with her lead mallet. Geth Marr had his measuring tongs on the hoist frame. Two thousand pounds of pig iron hung suspended in greased wooden guides. But they were eighty feet above him, blind to the shadows on the damper deck. They waited for a yellow cloth that was still tucked inside his leather belt.
