THE WILL OF THE WATERS
Crusoe was the generic name of the collection of rough shanties that
clustered about and among the various shaft-houses. Not all of the
mines had attained to the dignity of shaft-houses and regular hours,
many of them, indeed, being mere prospect-holes, but all were named,
and a student of human nature might have accurately gauged the past
experience or present hopefulness of their respective owners by some
of the curious freaks of nomenclature.
The shaft-house of the Gray Eagle was the last but one at the upper
extremity of the ravine along which Crusoe straggled. Father and I,
hurrying past the cabins, had nearly reached it, when a loud call from
the open doorway of one of the larger cabins brought us to a halt.
"There's old Joe!" father said, glancing at the individual who had
shouted; "I was in hopes that I could slip past without his seeing
me."
"No such good luck as that," I said, with what I felt to be
uncharitable impatience; "I almost believe that Joe sits up nights to
watch for you. It's a shame, too, for him to try to work in the mines.
Just look at him!"
"I've looked at him a good many times, Leslie, dear, but he would be
in a ten times worse position if I were to tell him that I am old
enough to take care of myself. Since the day I was born he has spent
his life in watching over me."
From all accounts that was strictly true. The white-wooled old negro
who, in his shirt sleeves, now came limping down the pathway toward
us, had once been a slave on grandfather Gordon's estate. When freedom
came to all the slaves, old Joe--who was young Joe then--declined to
accept of any liberty, or to follow any occupation that might take him
away from his master's oldest son, Ralph Gordon, our father. The
negro's mission in life, as he understood it, was simply to keep an
eye on the young man, for the young man's good. The flight of years
did not lessen his sense of responsibility any more than it did his
devotion, which was immeasurable. But, curiously enough, he seemed to
prefer, on the whole, not to reside with the object of his adoration.
It was enough for him if he could but hover around in father's
vicinity, and this he did with such tireless persistency that in all
the changes, the shifting scenes of his Western life, the one thing
that father owned to being absolutely sure of was, that no matter
where he went, or how quietly, the place that knew him presently
became familiar also with the white wool and shambling figure of old
Joe.
"I 'clar ter goodness!" groaned Joe, reaching us at last, and hobbling
on beside us, "I didn' 'low fur t' wuck ter-day; my rheumatiz is tuck
dat bad!"
"Don't work, then, Joe; the mine is as wet as a sponge. You'll be the
worse to-morrow for going into it," remonstrated father, kindly.
"No; I reckons I's wuck ef yo' does; hit ain' out o' place, noway,
fur me ter crope inter a hole like dat; but w'at fur yo' keep w'alin'
at wuck in de mine? 'Pears like a gen'leman might fin' more fittin'
kine o' wuck dan dat."
"The kind of work neither makes nor unmakes one, Joe," returned
father, good-humoredly; "but I'm not going to do this sort of work
much longer. I'm calculating on opening up the ranch in fine shape,
with your help, when I get the title to it."
"W'en yo' 'low fur ter git dat titull?"
"In about three months. You'll have to come and live with us then,
Joe, so as to be on hand to help us."
"Yes," the old man assented, with unexpected readiness, "I 'spect I
shall. I'se mighty good farmer, yo' knows, Mas'r Ralph. Hit goin' take
nigh a week ter tell all dat I knows erbout raisin' ob watermillions
an' goobers. Yo' 'low dat goobers grow in dish yer kentry, Mas'r
Ralph?"
"Yes, indeed. Why not?" father returned, cheerily, evidently glad of
old Joe's implied willingness to take up his abode with us.
We presently entered the shaft-house. Rutledge, the mine
superintendent, was standing by the shaft, and the hoisting-cage, with
its first load of ore from the dump below, was moving slowly upward.
"You're late," was his greeting.
"A trifle late," father returned, pleasantly, adding, "you can dock my
day's wages for it if you like."
"I know that without you telling me, but I shouldn't like," Rutledge
said, crossly. We all knew him slightly, and I had thought him a
pleasant young gentleman, but he was looking sullen to-day, almost
angry, it seemed to me. We stood there waiting, and the cage had
reached the surface and automatically dumped its load before Rutledge
spoke again.
"I thought you weren't coming, in spite of your promise," he then
said, looking toward father. "No one could have blamed you if you had
shown the white feather--"
"Say, yo' heah me!" broke in old Joe, suddenly and savagely, his voice
quivering with indignation. "Ole Cunnel Gordon's son ain' one o' de
kine w'at done breaks promises, ner yit w'at's a-showin' w'ite
fedders. Ef yo's lookin' fer dat kine of a man, git a lookin'-glass
an' study de face dat yo' sees in hit, den maybe yo' fine 'im!"
Rutledge smiled, although he still scowled disapproval.
"That's all right, Joe; there are no cowards around the Gray Eagle
shaft-house, but I couldn't blame any one for keeping out of the mine
to-day--not but what it's safe enough, as far as I can see--I've just
been down."
For an instant his words startled and thrilled me. Could it be that
there was so much danger in working in the mine then? I glanced at
father. He was just stepping into the cage, and his face was as serene
as if Rutledge's discourse had been of some possible disturbance in
the moon. The look of displeasure on Rutledge's face deepened as I
caught hold of one of the ropes and swung myself lightly into the
cage, following father and Joe. Delaying the signal for descent,
Rutledge said:
"While it may be safe enough down there, it isn't exactly like a
lady's parlor, Gordon--not to-day, anyway."
"Oh, Leslie is just going down on an errand," father explained. "But,
Leslie, perhaps you had better wait here and let me send the spade up
to you."
"And make you walk from your tunnel clear back to the hoisting cage
again!" I remonstrated. "Why, Mr. Rutledge, I've been down lots of
times, you know, and I'm not at all afraid."
The superintendent had looked relieved when he heard that my stay in
the mine was likely to be a short one. I wondered, inconsequently, as
the cage started on its downward passage, if he had thought that I was
going down on a tour of inspection. There would have been nothing for
him to fear from any one's inspection; he was a good superintendent.
"Don't stay long, Miss Leslie," he called down after us. I could no
longer see his face, but his voice sounded anxious, and father
remarked:
"Rutledge seems quite uneasy, somehow."
"Dese yer minin' bosses, dey knows dey business," muttered old Joe.
"Dey knows dat de rheumatiz hit lays in wait, like a wile beas'
scentin' hits prey. 'Spect's Mas'r Rutledge he hate fur ter see a
spry young gal like Miss Leslie git all crippled up, same's a ole
lame nigger."
"Yes; it must be that he feared Leslie would get the rheumatism,"
father said, in a lighter tone. Old Joe's explanations and reasons for
things were always a source of unfailing delight to him. The cage
reached the bottom of the shaft and we stepped out. By the light that
was always burning at the tunnel's mouth father and Joe each selected
a miner's lamp from the stock in a corner, and, as father was lighting
his, he said: "You had better carry a lamp, too, Leslie." I picked one
up while father slipped the bar of his under his cap band. Then he
glanced at my big hat. "You'll have to carry yours in your hand,
child; there's no room for so small a thing as a miner's lamp on that
great island of straw that you call a shade hat."
The Gray Eagle was a quartz gold mine. Tunnels drifted this way and
that, wherever deposits of the elusive metal led them; sometimes they
even made turns so sharp as to almost double back on themselves. I was
glad to see that the point where father and Joe halted, at last, to
pick up the tools that they had thrown down when they quit work in the
mine, was within sight of the twinkling yellow star that marked the
location of the hoisting cage. The place seemed less eerie somehow,
with this means of escape signaled in the darkness. I had been, as I
told Mr. Rutledge, in the mines a good many times, but never had its
darkness seemed so impenetrable, so encroaching, as on this morning.
"It seems to me that our lamps don't give so much light as usual, or
else what they do give does not go so far," I remarked to father as I
lingered beside him a few moments, watching him work.
He was using a drill on the face of the rock wall in front of him. He
suspended operations now to say: "I noticed that myself. The air is
thick and damp; the light is lost much as it is in a fog." Then he
called my attention to an object lying on the ground at his feet.
"There's the spade; I guess you'd better be going back with it, dear;
Reynolds will be needing it."
Accordingly, with the spade in one hand and the lamp in the other, I
started to retrace my steps to the hoisting cage. The sound of the
drill that father was now plying vigorously followed me, becoming
muffled, rather than fainter in the distance as I proceeded. From the
various tunnels, branching off to the right and left, came the sound
of other drills, and, occasionally, the plaintive "hee-haw" of one of
the half-dozen or more little Andalusian mules used in hauling the
loaded cars to and from the ore dumps near the hoisting cage. With all
these sounds I was more or less familiar, but to-day, underneath them
all, it seemed to me that there were others, myriads of them. To my
lively young fancy the silence teemed with mysterious noises; low
groans and sighing whispers that wandered bodiless through dark
tunnels, dripping with a soft, unusual ooze. Knowing that Reynolds was
in a hurry for the spade I hastened along, listening and speculating,
until coming opposite one of the side extensions I was suddenly taken
with the whim to see if its walls were as damp as those of the tunnel
that I was then standing in. I turned into it accordingly, but stopped
doubtfully after a few yards. Holding the lamp aloft I looked
inquiringly along the walls. Damp! I understood now why my father wore
a coat, a circumstance that had already impressed itself upon my mind
as being very unusual among these underground workers. The water was
almost running down the sides of the rocky tunnel, and the light of my
lamp was reflected back at me in a thousand sliding, mischievous
drops.
"Where does it all come from?" I thought, laying my hand on the face
of the rock before which I stood. My hand had touched it for a single
heart-beat, no more, when I felt the color go out of my face, leaving
me with wide, staring eyes, while I stood trembling and ghastly white
in the breathless gloom. Like one suddenly bereft of all power of
speech or motion I stared mutely at the black wall before me. I had
felt the rock move!
Standing there in that awful darkness, hundreds of feet underground, I
understood what had happened, what was happening, and, dumb with the
horror of that awful knowledge, stood motionless. All the stories that
I had ever heard or read of sudden irruptions of water in mines, of
dreadful cavings-in, flashed into my mind, and then, breaking the
paralyzing trance of terror, I turned and ran toward the main tunnel.
I tried to utter a warning shout as I ran, but my stiffened lips gave
forth no sound. Happily, as I reached the main tunnel, the light at
the foot of the shaft was in direct range with my vision, and between
the shaft and myself I plainly saw a man hastening toward it. He was
wearing a light gray coat. A quick glance toward the spot where I had
left father and Joe showed nothing but darkness. They had both left.
The hoisting cage was down, and, as I raced toward it, the man in the
gray coat scrambled in. Even in my terror and excitement I was
conscious of an unreasonable, desolate sense of desertion when I saw
that. Yet, underneath it all a lingering fragment of common sense told
me that father would believe me, by this, safe above; he had told me
to go--and I had not obeyed him.
Behind me, as I ran, arose a shrill and terrible chorus, a crashing of
timbers, yells and shrieks of men, the terrific braying of the
Andalusian mules, and above all, a new sound; the mighty voice, the
swelling roar of imprisoned waters taking possession of the channels
that man had inadvertently prepared for them. I reached the hoisting
cage so nearly too late that it had already started on its upward
journey, when, seeing me, one of its occupants reached down, caught
both my upstretched hands and swung me up to a place by his side. It
chanced, providentially, that the cage was at the bottom of the shaft
when the inrush of waters came, and it had been held there for a
brief, dangerous moment while the men nearest the shaft fled to its
protection. It rose slowly upward, not too soon, for in an incredibly
short time an inky flood rolled beneath it; rolled beneath, but seemed
to keep pace with it as it arose. The water was coming up the shaft.