In which Dinah falls down a hole on Ohio and comes up in Colorado

Chapter 1

In which Dinah falls down a hole on Ohio and comes up in Colorado

 

     The house wasn’t too terribly old and yet there were already legends surround it.  Dinah had been told that there room in the cellar that had caved in just a few months after the house was finished.  Like many other houses of that time and place, there had been an outside hatch to the root cellar, providing quick shelter during storms and easy access for storing good from the garden out back.  The cellar door had been removed and porch built over the place where the door once was.  The only access to the basement was from the inside.  However, rumor had it that there was a tiny hole under the porch which led to the sealed off room.  Dinah knew that the room existed, for there was a wooden door which was always locked inside the back of the basement.  What she wasn’t sure of was if the rumor about the hole was correct. 

      Then one day fifteen year-old Dinah watched a rabbit slip under the porch and promptly disappear.  She stood there waiting for nearly an hour and she never saw the rabbit squeeze back out into the backyard.  Curiously, Dinah decided to crawl under the porch and see where the rabbit went for herself.  She opened the latch and crawled underneath the porch.  It was dark, but a dim light filtered through the cracks of the porch above.  She looked around, but could find no sign of the rabbit anywhere.  Crawling on her hands and knees, Dinah made it the short distance to the wall of the house. Her blue and white dress became soiled and torn a bit, but she didn’t care. It was there that she found a hole.  She touched the sides of the hole and peered inside.  A rush of cold air came up to meet her flushed face.  Suddenly Dinah lost her grip and tumbled down into the hole. 

      Now Dinah assumed that she’d quickly land on pile of dirt in the sealed off room, but she was wrong.  She fell and fell for quite a ways, longer than she ever imagined possible.  Then she hit the bottom of the hole with a thud.  It jarred her bones and made her ache, but there was nothing she could do but pick herself up and dust herself off.  She stood up and looked around with great confusion.  The room she was in certainly didn’t look like basement.  It looked like a mine of some sort.  Once more, she heard the whirring and clanking of some machinery either further down her tunnel or in another tunnel. 

      Strange, she thought, I wasn’t aware of any sort of mine being underneath our house.  Mines were usually in the mountains and Dinah lived in the great Ohio Valley.  Her house had been surrounded by corn fields, wheat fields and forests.  Before she could figure out anything of her surroundings she heard gunshots.  From deep in the tunnel below her a woman came rushing out of the darkness.  She was dressed in brown trousers and a white blouse and was carrying a gun.  It was an odd looking sort of pistol like nothing Dinah had ever seen before.  The woman looked back into the darkness and fired several rounds into the shadows before she turned to see a rather bewildered teenager standing in her way.

      “Don’t just stand there!” the woman exclaimed.  “They’re coming and they don’t care whose side you’re on.  They’ll shoot you just the same.  Run!”

       “Who’s coming? Where am I? What’s happening?” Dinah sputtered.

        The woman grabbed her by the arm and yanked her up the steep incline along with her.  “We can talk on the way.  The marshals are coming.  They caught us stealing again and they are less than thrilled.  I’m Kiera Cannon,” she said looking over her shoulder to see if they had caught up to them yet or not. 

        Dinah could barely keep up with Kiera’s fast pace up the rocky path, but she did her best.  “Where am I?”

       Kiera shot her a look of puzzlement.  “Why you are in the great Independence Mine in Colorado.  Where did you think you were? India?”

      “No, I thought I was in the basement back home in Ohio.  Am I really in Colorado Territory? How did I get so far away I wonder?” she replied.

       There was a bright light at the end of the tunnel. Together Kiera and Dinah burst out into the fresh mountain air.  Hovering just above the ground was huge oblong airship. It was a shocking and magnificent site for Dinah who’d never imagined such a thing existed.  Quickly Kiera climbed up a rope ladder to the deck at of the ship above them.  Dinah stood there looking up in awe for a few moments, but the sound of gunshots jolted her back to her present reality.  “Come on!” Kiera screamed.  “Climb damn you!”

       Dinah jumped to action and began climbing the rope ladder.  She was a bit unsteady as the ladder swayed this way and that.  It took a great deal of concentration to move up to the next rung without falling to her death.  She glanced briefly below her to see several men standing outside the cave with guns.  They were taking aim at her.  Before they could fire, shots rained down from the airship and then men scattered behind the boulders around them for cover.  Dinah assumed it was Kiera and perhaps whoever else was aboard the great ship.  At last, Dinah made it to the top and Kiera pulled her over onto the deck. 

      “That was close,” Dinah sighed thankful to be on a solid wooden deck instead of the flimsy rope.

      “Too close,” Kiera said as the airship began to move through the air. 

      Several women also dressed in trousers and blouses surrounded Kiera and Dinah.  They were all looking at Dinah wondering who she was, as she was wondering who they were.  They all held guns in their hands and looked quite confident and thus dangerous in Dinah’s opinion.  “Who are you?” the black haired woman demanded.

      “Dinah Dodgson,” she replied nervously smoothing her dress.  “And who are all of you?”

      “I am Madison,” the black haired woman said.  “And we are the Prospector Pirates. Where did you come from? You aren’t one of them miners are you?” She closed one eye and stared at Dinah with the one opened eye. 

      “Uhm, I’ve never heard of pirates in flying ships before,” Dinah said.  “The only pirates I know of were the ones who sailed on ships across the seven seas and beyond.  They stole treasure from Spanish Galleons mostly, but they also stole from the British and others as well,” Dinah declared.

       “Where exactly did you find her?” Madison asked Kiera. 

       “She was standing in the middle of the mine looking rather confused,” Kiera explained.  “I couldn’t just leaver her there for the men to shoot now could I?”

       “I suppose not,” Madison sighed.  “So, tell us Dinah how did you end up in the mine?”

       “That’s just it, I don’t know,” Dinah frowned.  “One moment I am under my porch in Ohio and the next I am tumbling down a hole.  I thought it was the hole that led to part of the basement that had collapsed in, but I landed here instead.  I am not sure how I managed to travel from Ohio to Colorado, but I did I guess.  I am here aren’t I?”

       “Yes, indeed you are here,” Kiera assured her.  “The question is why.”

       “That I do not know.  I was hoping you could tell me,” Dinah said sadly.

       “I don’t know either,” Kiera shook her head, “But perhaps we will figure it out along the way.  Come, follow me.  We will retire to my cabin where we can freshen up.  We have a long journey ahead of us.”

       “Where are we going?” Dinah asked.

       “Oh, back down to Denver.  That is where we sell the gold and silver that we took from the prospectors,” Kiera said as they walked across the wooden deck to the cabins beyond.  The cabins were located in the center of the outside deck and above the cabins were a huge balloon filled with some sort of gas.  Whatever was in there, it caused the balloon to float high in the sky. 

       Kiera led Dinah from the outer deck to the inside of the dirigible.  Dinah looked around in amazement at all the decorative metal work and various gears and such that filled the cabin.  At the wheel of the great ship was the Captain, who was introduced to Dinah as Ophelia Payne.  Ophelia had wide blue eyes, blonde hair.  She wore men’s brown trousers and a white ruffled blouse.  There was a sword tied to her right side and a pistol tucked into her left side. 

      “Dinah, eh?” she said.  “Where do you hail from?”

      “Ohio.”

      “Long way from home.”

      “You have no idea,” Dinah said.

      “So you are flying with us to Denver.  You got business there?”

      “Actually, I arrived here quite by accident and I am just looking to get back home.”

      “Well, we don’t usually do cross-country trips, but I am sure we can find you a way back.  Maybe you can ride the locomotive train back or something.”

       “To be honest, I have a feeling a train isn’t going to be able to get me back to the Ohio I know.  You see, things were quite different back there.  I feel through a hole and somehow ended up here.  It was like magic.”

       “Ah, magic you say?  Well, a wise man once said that magic is merely an advanced technology.  Or something like that anyway.  Perhaps we should speak to Dr. Verne.  He might know how you got here and the best way to return you.”

      “That would be wonderful! Where is this Dr. Verne?”

      “He’s in Denver usually, but he isn’t always easy to find.”

      Dinah peered out the window and down at the tiny town below them.  “Is that Denver?”

      Ophelia laughed, “No dear that is just Cripple Creek.  It is but a small mining town.  They don’t have the resources to give us what we want.  We have to fly to the big city of Denver to exchange our gold and silver for supplies and paper money.”

      “How far is Denver then?”

      “Maybe an hour or so over the mountains.  It isn’t far really.”

      “Good.  And thank you for saving me.  I am sure those men down there would have shot me other wise.”

       “Yeah, the men around here are a bit trigger happy,” Ophelia laughed. 

       Dinah was silent for a moment before she spoke up again.  “So, if you don’t mind me asking, how did you get into pirating?”

       Ophelia smiled over at her before turning her attention back to wheel.  She explained as she steered through the headwinds.  “It was really quite simple.  Me and my girls found that many of the miners had become too greedy.  They lied to their wives and children about how much they were really producing up here.  When I caught a glimpse of their accounting books, I realized that the money they were hording away could go to good use, like feeding the orphans and taking care of the women and children with consumption at the hospitals.  But they insisted on wasting all their money building fancy hotels and complicated air ships like this one.  Frustrated, we rallied together, stole us an airship and began sailing the skies in search of treasure.  We often raid the mines for silver and gold ore and then turn around and sell it for ourselves.  The men are more than a little angry at us for doing this, but we don’t care.”