The resiliency of youth, aided by the allurement of riches to be
gained by digging, drove Gary back up the bluff to his work. Here
again circumstances had forced him to continue where he would
voluntarily have left off. In digging out the body of Steve Carson,
Gary had dug completely through the broken stuff to a continuation
of the vein and its contact beyond.
He felt that he understood in a general way what had happened five
years ago. Steve Carson had undoubtedly discovered the gold-bearing
quartz and had started to sink on the vein much as Gary had done.
The calamity of a cave-in--or perhaps a slide--had overtaken him while
he was at work underground. He had never known what hit him, which
was a mercy. And since no one in the country had heard of the
prospect up on the bluff, the discovery of his body would never have
been made if Gary had not followed the cat up there and so stumbled
upon the vein.
He thought he also understood now why Faith had shown her strange
penchant for that particular spot on the bluff. Monty had told him
that the cat had belonged to Steve Carson. She had undoubtedly been
in the habit of following Steve Carson to work, just as she followed
Gary. Very likely she had been somewhere near at the time when her
master was killed. That she should continue the habit of going each
day to the spot where she had last seen him was not unlikely. So
another small mystery was cleared to Gary’s satisfaction. Save for
its grim history, Johnnywater Cañon was likely to drop at last to
the dead level of commonplace respectability.
If Steve Carson had worked in an open shaft that had been filled by
a slide, the opening had been effectually blocked afterward. For on
the surface Gary could see no evidence whatever, among the piled
bowlders, of an opening beneath. And the roof, when he lifted his
candle to examine it, looked to be a smooth expanse of rock.
For himself, he pronounced his own incline shaft safe from any
similar catastrophe. He had started it at the extreme edge of the
slide, and above it the rocks seemed firmly in place. He was working
under dangerous conditions, it is true; but the danger lay in using
five-year-old dynamite. Still, he must chance it or let the
development of Patricia’s claim stand still.
Pondering the necessary steps to protect Patricia in case anything
happened to him, Gary wrote a copy of his location notice, declared
the necessary location work done, described the exact spot as
closely as possible--lining it up with blazed trees in the grove
behind the cabin, and placed the papers in his suit case. That, he
knew, would effectually forestall any claim-jumping; unless James
Blaine Hawkins or some other crook appeared first on the scene and
ransacked his belongings, destroying the papers and placing their
own location notices on the claim. He felt that the danger of such
villainy was slight and not worth considering seriously. Monty would
probably ride over as soon as he had finished his work in Pahranagat
Valley; and when he did, Gary meant to tell him all about it and
take him up and show him the claim.
Monty would keep the secret for him, he was sure. He did not want
Patricia to know anything about it until he was sure that the vein
was not going to peter out before it yielded at least a modest
fortune.
One night soon after he had made these elaborate arrangements, Gary
woke sweating from a nightmare. He was so sure that James Blaine
Hawkins was rummaging through his suit case, looking for the
information of the mine, that he swung out of bed, kicking viciously
with both feet. When they failed to land upon the man he believed
was there, Gary drew back and kicked again at a different angle.
Not a sound save Gary’s breathing disturbed the midnight quiet of
the cabin. Gary waited, wondering foolishly if he had been dreaming
after all. He leaned and reached for his trousers, found a match and
lighted it. The tiny blaze flared up and showed him an empty cabin.
It was a dream, then--but a disagreeably vivid one, that impressed
upon Gary’s mind the thought that James Blaine Hawkins, returning
while he was at work up the bluff, would be very likely to go
prowling. If he found and read Gary’s explicit description of the
mine and the way to find it, together with his opinion of its
richness, James Blaine Hawkins might be tempted to slip up there and
roll a rock down on Gary.
Wherefore, Gary dragged his suit case from under the bed, found the
papers, lighted another match and burned them. When that was done to
his satisfaction, he lay down again and went to sleep. Books might
be written--and possibly have been--about hunches, their origin and
value, if any. Gary’s nightmare and the strong impulse afterward to
guard against danger, took a wrong turning somewhere. He provided
against a danger which did not exist in reality and felt an instant
relief. And soon after sunrise he shouldered a full canteen, stuffed
a five-pound lard bucket as full of lunch as he could cram it, got a
handful of fresh candles and went blithely up the bluff to meet the
greatest danger that had ever threatened him in his life.
He had driven the crosscut in a good twelve feet by now, and he was
proud of his work. The vein seemed to be widening a bit, and the
values still held. Already he had an ore dump which he estimated
should bring Patricia almost as much money as she had paid for
Johnnywater. He hoped there was more than that in the dump, but he
was clinging to the side of conservatism. If the claim yielded no
more than that, he could still feel that he had done Patricia a real
service. To-day he carried his gold dust knotted in a handkerchief
in his pocket, lest his nightmare should come true and James Blaine
Hawkins should return to rob him. He even carried the mortar and
pestle to the shed and threw them down in a corner with the gold pan
tucked under some steel traps, so that no one could possibly suspect
that they had been used lately.
He was thinking of James Blaine Hawkins while he drilled the four
holes in the face of the crosscut. He stopped to listen and looked
down the cañon and out as far as he could see into the desert when
he went up into the hot sunlight to get the powder, fuse and caps
from the cave to load the holes. As he sat in the shade crimping the
caps on the four lengths of fuse, a vague uneasiness grew upon him.
“I got a hunch he’ll turn up to-day--and maybe bring some strong-arm
guy with him,” Gary said to himself. “Just so he doesn’t happen
along in time to hear the shots up here, I don’t know what harm he
could do. He never could find this place, even if he got some hint
there was a mine somewhere. Anyway, I could hear him drive up the
cañon, all right.”
Still he was charging his mental disturbance to James Blaine
Hawkins--which proves how inaccurate a “hunch” may be. He carried his
four loads to the incline shaft and let himself carefully down, the
explosive cuddled in one arm while he steadied himself with the
other. At the bottom he noticed his second canteen lying in the full
glare of the sun and moved it inside the crosscut with the other
canteen and his lunch. It was an absent-minded act, since he would
presently move everything outside clear of flung rocks from the
blasting.
Still fighting the vague depression that seemed the aftermath of his
nightmare, Gary loaded the holes with more care than usual,
remembering that he was playing with death whenever he handled that
old powder. He flung shovel and pick toward the opening, split the
fuse ends with his knife and turned to hurry out of the shaft.
He faced the opening just in time to see it close as a great bowlder
dropped into the shaft, followed by the clatter of smaller rocks.
Instinctively Gary recoiled and got the smell of the burning fuse in
his nostrils. Without conscious thought of what he must do, he
whipped out his knife, tore open a blade and cut the fuses, one by
one, close to the rock. He stamped upon them--though they were
harmless, writhing there on the floor of the crosscut until the
powder was exhausted.
Not until the last fuse stopped burning did Gary approach the
blocked opening to see how badly he was trapped. A little rift of
sunlight showed at the upper right-hand corner. The rest was black,
solid rock. Gary felt the rock all over with his hands, then stooped
and lifted his lunch and the two canteens and set them farther back
in the crosscut, as if he feared they might yet be destroyed.
He moved the candle here and there above the floor, looking
desperately for his pick and shovel. But the heave he had given them
had sent them out into the shaft directly in the path of the falling
bowlder. He searched the crosscut for other tools, and found his
single-jack leaning against the wall where he had dropped it; beside
it were two of the shorter drills, the bits nicked and dull.
He returned to the closed mouth of the crosscut and attempted to pry
away the bowlder, using the longer of the two drills thrust into the
opening as a lever. He could as easily have tilted the rim rock
itself. Sunlight streamed in through a crack possibly eighteen
inches long and the width of his hand, but except for the
ventilation it gave, the opening merely served to emphasize the
hopelessness of his prison.
He looked at his watch mechanically, and saw that it was just
fifteen minutes past twelve. He had timed his work, like all good
miners, so that he could “shoot” at noon and let the smoke clear
away from the workings while he rested and ate his lunch. He did not
feel like eating now. He did not feel like much of anything. His
brain refused to react immediately to the full horror of his
position.
That he, Gary Marshall, should actually be entombed alive in
Patricia’s gold mine--“The Pat Connolly” mine--was a thing too
incredible for his mind to grasp. He simply could not take the thing
seriously.
The unreasoning belief that Mills would presently shout, “Cut!” and
Gary would walk out into the sunlight, persisted for a time. The
dramatic element loomed high above the grim reality of it. The thing
was too ghastly to be true. To believe in the horrible truth of it
would drive a man crazy, he told himself impatiently.
He put his face to the widest part of the opening between the
bowlder and the wall, and shouted again and again frenziedly.
“_Monty! Oh-h, Monty!_” he called.
The pity of it was that Monty Girard was at that moment jogging into
the mouth of Johnnywater Cañon, swinging his feet boyishly in the
stirrups and humming a little song as he rode, his thoughts with
Gary, wondering how he was “making it” these days.