The big boiler finally reached the east portal. A compressor was set
up. An air line was run over the mountain so that automatic drills
could be used in the west bore, too. Ben Vickers paid a bonus to
everybody who worked for him when progress exceeded the necessary daily
footage. The work spurted ahead.
There were unforseeable problems and delays, of course. Snow fell to
a depth of twenty feet. Snow sheds had to be hurriedly built over the
dump trucks. A landslide carried away part of the approach to the east
portal. Supply wagons bogged down on the way up from Ellensburg, first
in snow, then in mud. Much of the road had to be paved with logs and
planks. When enough track was laid so that supplies could be brought in
by train, a bridge washed out and freight wagons had to be pressed into
service again.
There were more accidents in the tunnel, mostly caused by premature or
delayed blasts. A dozen more men lost their lives. Rock was loosened
above the line of the cut, and days were lost. Fumes from blasting
became unbearable, and there was more delay while the ventilating
system was altered. Cloudbursts flooded first the east portal, then the
west. A dump train engine jumped the tracks, and its boiler burst. The
strata of the basaltic trap rock was unpredictable; in spite of every
precaution, there were frequent cave-ins.
But morale was high. The weak and the discontented and the lazy
were weeded out; the tough and the determined stayed on. A spirited
competition developed between the crews working from opposite sides of
the mountain. Slowly, hour by hour, foot by foot, the lost days were
made up.
On a May morning eleven days before the deadline, Ben Vickers stood in
the hazy saffron glow of the arc lights and watched the drilling crew
come toward him from the bench, two hundred yards away. Ben studied
his watch. For weeks, both crews had been jarred by blasts in the other
bore; so it was necessary to schedule every shot now and alert the
drillers on the other side.
The crew reached Ben and lined itself beside him along the timbered
wall. The fuse man came jogging along a minute or two later. The charge
roared and grumbled. The earth trembled. A cloud of dust and rubble
tumbled out of the heading. Much of this was caught by the fans and
pulled into vent pipes; but the acrid outer edges of it rolled down the
bore to where the men stood. And then, while the area of the explosion
was still obscured, the dust cloud began to spew human figures,
running, coughing, cheering.
Ben Vickers gaped and blinked and tried to bring up a yell of triumph
that came out a kind of tired sob. These were workmen from the west
bore. The wall between had crumbled away with the blast. Runaway
Mountain had its tunnel.
A few days later, Ben and Tesno stood together in a crowd gathered near
the portal to watch the first train pull through. The train crew waved.
The workmen and townfolk waved back and cheered. Then, sadly, they
watched the cars gather speed on the down-grade toward Ellensburg.
"How do you feel, Ben?" Tesno asked.
"Old," Ben grumbled. "Too old even to go on a drunk. What will it be
now for you, Jack? You finally going to get to that ranch?"
Tesno grinned his twisted, one-dimple grin. He pulled an envelope from
a pocket. "Got this the other day. An offer from James J. Hill."