Exulting at the way he had diddled the girls, Dick pranced along the
Redville road. He did not meet any one, for it was a fair spring day
and the country people were busy; but he saw men and boys he knew,
plowing and grubbing, hallooing to their teams and to one another.
About two miles from The Village, Dick turned off on the Old Plank
Road. Twenty years before, this had been a highway going through The
Village, on its long way to Richmond. Then the railroad was built. It
wanted to come through The Village, between court-house and church,
but the people rose up in arms. They did not want shrieking, grinding
trains, to scare horses and bring in outsiders, nor an iron track
parting their homes from their graves in the churchyard. So the
railroad went by Redville that was six miles from The Village in summer
and three or four times as far in the winter season of ruts and red mud.
After the railway was built, however, the road by Redville station
became the thoroughfare; the Old Plank Road was seldom traveled except
by negroes who lived in clearings in the Big Woods that covered miles
of the rocky, infertile ridge land.
Dick was near one of these clearings, a patch of stumpy land around a
log cabin, when he heard a voice calling loudly, “Whoa! Gee! Whoa, I
say!”
An old negro was coming up the hill, in a cart drawn by bony,
long-horned oxen.
“Hey, Unc’ Isham!” said Dick. “What are you making such a racket for?”
Isham Baskerfield jumped nervously; but when he recognized the speaker,
he grinned and said: “Howdy, little marster! howdy! I was jest talkin’
to my oxes. I tuk ’em down to de creek to gin ’em some water.”
“You sounded scared,” commented Dick. “And you looked scared, too.”
“Skeered? Course I aint skeered. Huccome I be skeered?” Isham replied
loudly. Then he mumbled: “I aint nuver liked to go down dis road since
dat old man--Whar you gwine, Marse Dick?” he interrupted himself.
“Don’t you fool ’round dat lowermos’ cabin. Dat’s”--he breathed the
name in a whisper--“Solomon Gabe’s house, dat is. An’ he can shore
cunjer folks.”
Dick laughed. “So that’s what you are afraid of. You--”
“Sh--sh, little marster!” The old negro looked around, as if afraid of
being overheard. He stopped his oxcart in front of his cabin. “I got to
git my meal bag,” he said. “Lily Belle emptied it to make a hoecake for
dinner, so I got to go to mill an’ git some corn ground ’fore supper
time. I don’t worry ’bout nothin’ long as my meal bag can stan’ up for
itself, but when it lays down I got to stir about. What you doin’,
Marse Dick, strayin’ so fur from home?”
“Oh! I’m just strolling ’round,” Dick answered vaguely.
“Umph! When I fust see you, I thought you mought be gwine fishin’; but
you aint got no fishin’ pole.”
“No use to carry a pole in the woods, when you’ve got a knife,” said
Dick. “Where is a good place to go?”
“Uh! any o’ dem holes in Mine Creek below de ford,” said the old man;
“taint good fishin’ ’bove thar.”
“O. K.!” said Dick. “If I catch more fish than I can carry, I’ll leave
you what I can’t tote home.”
“Yas, suh; yas, suh! I reckon you will,” chuckled the old negro.
Dick went on down the road. But his merry whistle died on his lips as
he passed Solomon Gabe’s cabin.
It stood, like a dark, poisonous fungus, under low-branching evergreens
in a dank, somber hollow a little away from the road. The squat old log
hovel had not even a window; the door stood open, not hospitably, but
like the yawning mouth of a pit.
Dick ran on down the road and came presently to Mine Creek, a little
stream straggling along a rocky, weed-fringed bed. Near the ford,
there was a pile of rotting logs and fallen stones that had once been
a cabin. He left the road here, but he did not take Isham’s advice and
go down Mine Creek. Instead, he went up stream, following a vague old
path that presently crossed the creek and climbed a little hill. There
was a small enclosure fenced in with rotting rails. In and around the
enclosure were piles of earth and broken stones of such ancient date
that saplings and even trees were growing on them.
Dick paused on the hilltop and looked around cautiously. No one was in
sight; and all was still except for the chatter of squirrels and the
drumming of woodpeckers. He jumped over the old fence and advanced to
the edge of a well-like opening. Again he stopped and looked around.
Then he took out of his pocket a ball of string. He tied a stone to
one end of it; dropped the stone into the hole; played out his line
until it rested on the bottom; and tied a knot in the string at the
ground level.
Then he went into the woods and cut down a hickory sapling; he measured
it with his line and cut it off at the top; and trimmed the branches,
leaving stout prongs at intervals of about eighteen inches. Every now
and then, he stopped and looked about, to make sure that he was not
observed. After nearly an hour’s work, he finished an improvised ladder
which he carried to the hole and slid over the edge. Then with a final
sharp lookout, he descended.
He found himself in a pit about ten feet in diameter, heaped knee-deep
with twigs and leaves swept there by winds of many winters. At one side
there was an opening four feet wide and five or six feet high, the
mouth of a tunnel that was roofed with logs supported on the sides by
stout rough timbers.
Dick lighted his candle and started down this tunnel. But after a few
steps he turned back, set down his candle, and pulled his ladder into
the hole.
“Now,” he said. “Anybody’s welcome to look in here. I reckon they’ll
not find little Dick.”
He picked up his candle and went along the tunnel. Now and then it
dropped down abruptly, but there were timbers and old ladders that made
the way passable. At last the tunnel broadened into a room about thirty
feet square and high enough to stand upright in. This room also was
roofed with logs and poles propped by stout timbers of white oak. Here
and there were heaps of earth and stones and piles of rotting timbers;
on the left side there was another tunnel.
Dick hesitated a minute, then he muttered: “I reckon I’ll find _it_
here. But I’ll look around first.”
He followed the lower tunnel. It, too, slanted downward, but it was
longer than the upper one and had several short spurs. It ended in
a pit a dozen feet deep, that had an old ladder in it. Dick climbed
down and looked around, then he went back to the main room and began
examining the clay and stone between the supporting timbers.
“It certainly seems as if they would have left some,” he said earnestly
to himself. “I ought to see little bits sparkling somewhere. If they
were ever so little, they would show me where to work.”
His tour of investigation brought him at last to a corner where
there was a heap of earth and stones. He scrambled on top of the
mound,--and, in a twinkling, he landed at the bottom of a hole.
For a minute he was stunned. Then he staggered to his feet, lighted the
candle which had been extinguished in his fall, and looked around. He
had fallen into a pit ten or twelve feet deep--probably an opening of
the mine that had been abandoned with the failure of a vein that was
being followed. The place had been covered with a layer of logs and
poles on top of which earth and stones had been thrown. The rotting
timbers--how many years they had been there!--had given way under his
weight.
How was he to get out? The walls of the pit, stone in one place and
clay on the other sides, were steep, almost perpendicular.
After considering awhile, he set his candle on a projecting rock, took
out his knife, and dug some crannies for finger-holds and toe-holds,
to serve as a ladder. But when he put his weight in them and tried
to climb up, the clay slipped under his feet and he slid back. He
made the holes larger and deeper, but after he mounted two or three
steps he slid back again; and again; and again. At last he gave up
this plan. Anyway, if he could climb to the top, how could he get
out? He had crashed through the middle of the pit, and the broken
downward-slanting poles barred the sides.
Must he stay here and wait for help to come? Help? What help? No one
knew where he was. Oh! how he regretted now his careful plans to put
every one off the trail. Anne and Patsy could only say that they had
last seen him on the main road to Redville. And Isham thought he had
gone down Mine Creek.
If only he had left the ladder in place, there would be a chance that
when they missed him and made search, they would look in the mine. But
he had taken that chance away from himself by pulling the ladder into
the pit.
He must dig his way out. He _must_! There was no other way of escape.
He selected a place that seemed free from rocks, and began to hack at
the wall. He toiled till his arms ached and his hands were sore and
blistered. It was a slow and painful task, but he was making progress.
He piled up loose rocks and stood on tiptoe, so as to reach higher
on the wall. In spite of his weariness and his tormented hands, his
spirits rose.
“A tight place like this is lots of fun--after you get out. Won’t Dave
and Steve pop their eyes when I tell ’em about it?”
He laughed and, with renewed vigor, drove his knife into the hard
clay. There was a sharp scratch and a snap. Something fell, click! on
a stone. It was his knife blade, broken against a rock that extended
shelf-like above him, and formed an impassable barrier. All these
hours of work and pain were wasted. He must begin again and dig out in
another place; or try to, and perhaps run against rock again. And with
this broken knife!
He groaned and looked around.
“O-oh!” he gave a sharp, startled cry. His candle! Only an inch of it
was left. Oh! he _must_ get out! How terrible it would be here in the
pitch-black, shut-in dark!
He seized a broken bit of timber for a makeshift spade, and gave a
hurried stroke. Alas! The old timber snapped in two, bruising and
cutting his hands cruelly. He threw aside the useless fragment and
then, as if he had lost the power of motion, he stood staring at his
bit of candle that shortened with every passing second.
He pulled himself together. He must view every foot, every inch of the
pit, so that he could work to purpose in the dark, not just dig, dig,
dig, and get nowhere. He scrutinized the wall, noting every angle and
projection; then he looked up, and studied the position of every log,
every broken pole. For the first time, he observed a log that did not
extend across the pit; its end was about two feet from the wall. Ah!
perhaps, perhaps--
He jerked the string out of his pocket, made a slip noose, and threw
it at the end of the log; the noose fell short. He threw it again; and
again it went aside. The next time, it caught a broken pole, and to
get it off he had to poke and push with a piece of timber for two or
three minutes--minutes that seemed hours as he glanced fearfully at
the flickering candle. He threw the noose again; and at last it went
over the log. He tried to pull it along. He wanted to get it near the
middle, free of the broken poles, and pull himself up by it, if--oh!
how he prayed it was!--stout enough to bear his weight; but now it was
fast on a knot and he could not move it.
He glanced at the candle. It was a mere bit of wick in a gob of grease;
every flicker threatened to be its last. He could not wait any longer!
he must do something! something! He would pull himself up to the end of
the log and try to break through the poles.
As he pulled, the log began to move. Ah! If he could pull the end into
the pit, it would be a bridge to climb out on. He jerked with all his
might, and it moved, slid, slipped downward; the end caught against a
projecting rock about four feet from the top; there it held fast.
The candle flame flared and dropped and--no, it was not out; not yet.
Dick jumped up and caught hold of the log. The movement fanned the
failing light; it spurted and went out. No matter now! He had firm hold
of the log. He scrambled up on it and managed presently to push and
pull himself between the broken poles. At last, at last, thank Heaven!
he was out of that awful pit.
He staggered along, feeling his way by the wall, making one ascent
after another, until a light glimmered before him and he reached the
entrance well. He raised his ladder and climbed out. Then his strength
gave way. He dropped down on a pile of leaves at the mine entrance, and
lay there, gazing blankly at the blue sky shining beyond the fretwork
of budding branches.
Suddenly he began to laugh. He sat up and slapped his knees. “I’ll pass
it on to them,” he said. “I’ll cover up that hole, and I’ll take Dave
and Steve there--after I find _it_--and let them tumble in without a
light. Then I’ll go off and pretend I don’t hear them, and--oh! I’ll
let them stay there long enough for them to think, to feel--” His face
was suddenly solemn. “I might have stayed there and died. Died!”
He got up and dragged the ladder out, and hid it under the leaves piled
against the fence.
“I reckon I ought not to expect to find it right away,” he sighed.
“I’ve got to keep on looking and looking and looking. And I say I will!
But I need some real tools. A knife, specially a broken one, isn’t much
force for mining.”
He went toward home, but he was in no hurry to complete the journey at
the end of which were his unfinished task and his father. Instead of
going down The Street, he took The Back Way behind the Court-house, and
slipped around the corner of the blacksmith shop.
Mr. Mallett, the blacksmith, with only his corncob pipe for company,
was sitting in a chair tilted against the door jamb of the grimy log
cabin. He was a vivacious little man with blue eyes and dark hair, and
a face that would have been sallow if it had been visible under the
grime. All the Village boys liked to loaf at his shop, but Dick had now
a special reason for visiting him.
“Mr. Mallett--” Dick began.
The smith started. “You young imp!” he exclaimed. “What do you mean by
jumping at me, sudden as a jack-in-the-box? I wasn’t thinking ’bout
you--and here you are, close enough to hear my very thoughts. I never
see such a boy. Why, what’s the matter with your face?”
“I fell down. It got scratched,” Dick explained briefly. “Mr.
Mallett, I was thinking about the Old Sterling Mine, near your
great-grandfather’s shop. Do you reckon it was silver, real silver, he
got there?”
“Do I reckon? No, I don’t! I know it, sure and certain as I’m setting
here in this chair, smoking my corncob pipe. Aint I heard my father
tell time and again what his granddad told him? Why, my father could
remember him good. He was a little quick man with blue eyes and
black hair--we all get our favor from him. He never did learn to
talk like folks over here; he always mixed his words and gave ’em
curious-sounding twists. He come from France, one of Lafayette’s
soldiers he was.”
“Why didn’t he go back with Lafayette?” asked Dick. “I should think
he’d have been lonesome here, away from his own home and folks.”
“Certainly he was lonesome,” said Mr. Mallett. “My father said, when he
was old and child-like, he’d set in the corner, jabbering French by the
hour, with tears dripping down his face.”
“I don’t see why he stayed here,” persisted Dick.
“He just stayed and kept staying,” said the smith. “Maybe that old
silver mine had something to do with it. He was always expecting to get
out a fortune. He come with the Frenchers to chase Cornwallis, and they
stopped here, two or three days, to mend shoes and get victuals.
“The old Mr. Osborne that owned Larkland in them days see what a good
blacksmith my great-grandad was, and told him when the war was over to
come back here and he should have a home. So he did, and the squire
helped him get some of the old glebe land, and he married Mr. Osborne’s
overseer’s daughter. He had a smithy on the Old Plank Road by Mine
Creek. I reckon you know the place.”
Dick nodded. He did not say he had been there that very afternoon.
“And he found silver on that hill. My grand-daddy used to tell us
children about seeing his father getting silver out of the ground and
beating it on his anvil with his sledge hammer. And Black Mayo that’s
always finding out something ’bout everything, he found them old
_ree_cord papers.”
“And they proved about the silver mine?” asked Dick.
“Certainly they did,” asserted Mr. Mallett. “Would folks try a
man in law court for making money out of silver he didn’t have?
Great-granddad didn’t deny making of it. He just said he wasn’t making
no false coins. He was hammering out sterling pure silver. That’s why
they call it the Sterling Mine. And he was making pieces like Spanish
six shilling pieces--our folks counted money by shillings in them
days--and was giving them, in place of what they called alloy; he was
giving better and purer money than the law. And what could folks say to
that? Why, nothing; for it was the truth.”
“And so they didn’t punish him?” asked Dick.
“Punish him? What for? For doing better than the law of the land? No,
sirree!”
“I don’t reckon he got out all the silver,” said Dick, more to himself
than to Mr. Mallett.
“Course not! Some was got out in my father’s day, by the Mr. Mayo that
owned the land before The War.”
“How did they get it out?” asked Dick.
“Dug it out with tools, of course. Aint there the old picks and sledges
and things, setting there in that shed, that my father made for them?
And Mr. Mayo--”
“Are they--”
Dick tried to interrupt, but Mr. Mallett went on with what he had to
say: “He aint made much out of it. They say it was what they call ‘free
silver’, and great-granddad chanced to strike where it was rich. It
petered out, and silver was so scarce and the rock so hard it didn’t
pay to work the mine. Some folks say that. There was a tale that the
manager wasn’t trying to make it pay; he wanted to get the mine for
himself. He tried to buy it. But he didn’t. He died. Anyway, The War
came, and ’twasn’t worked any more.”
“Yes.” Dick accepted the fact that The War ended everything, even the
worth of the silver mine. “It does seem, if it was real silver, we
could see it there now,” he said thoughtfully.
“Shucks!” Mr. Mallett got up and knocked the ashes out of his pipe.
“Course they took out all in sight. Folks would have to dig for any
more they got.”
“And the tools; will you--” Dick checked himself. If he asked for the
tools now, Mr. Mallett would guess what he was planning to do and
somehow all The Village would know before sunset. He must wait and
manage to get them, without betraying his purpose.
Mr. Mallett was looking at the westering sun. “Fayett ought to be
home,” he said. “He went to Redville, and he was to be back in time to
help me with a little work.”
“Fayett!” exclaimed Dick. “Why, I didn’t know he came home for Easter.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Mallett. “He’s mighty stirred up ’bout this war. What
have we got to do with Europe’s war that started with the killing of a
little prince in a country I’d never heard tell of? But Fayett’s got a
notion in his head-- Here! I’ve got to fix some rivets. Don’t you want
to blow the bellows?”
“I wish I had time,” said Dick. “I’ve got to go home. I--I haven’t
finished my garden work.”
“Then I reckon you’ll save it for another day,” said the smith. “Sun’s
’most down.”
Its long rays lay like a red-gold band across The Street, as Dick
started home, wishing--too late!--that he had finished his garden task
and postponed his adventuring to another day. Seeing his father on the
porch, the truant slipped behind the boxwood at the edge of the walk.
But Mr. Osborne called, “Dick!” and then more sternly, “Richard!”
It was useless to pretend not to hear.
“Sir!” Dick answered meekly.
“Have you completed your garden work?”
“Not--not quite, sir,” said Dick. “I am just going to it now, sir. I
can get a lot done before dark. And I’ll get up soon Monday morning,
and finish it, sir, indeed I will.”
“My son,--” Mr. Osborne spoke in a magisterial voice and took Dick by
the arm.
Just then the front gate clicked, and Black Mayo came up the walk.
“War has been declared,” he said without a word of greeting. “War! The
United States has declared war with Germany.”
Red Mayo dropped Dick’s arm. “How’d you hear?”
“I met Fayett Mallett coming from Redville. He’d heard the news, if we
can call it news. We knew it was coming.”
“Of course; it was inevitable. We knew that the minute we read the
President’s War Message. He held off as long as he could.”
“Yes. Now the War Resolution has passed Congress and the President has
signed it.”
Dick stood listening a minute, then slipped indoors just as his mother
came out.
“What are you talking about?” she asked. “What is the matter?”
“War!” said her husband. “The United States is in the War, Miranda.”
Sweet William was at his mother’s elbow. He spoke in a puzzled little
voice. “I thought The War was done. I thought the Confedacy was
overrun.”
“This is another war, son,” laughed Mr. Osborne. “This is war with
Germany.”