THE BLACK DEATH
It took seven days of exploration to reveal the condition of the Cross
of Gold, and each night the task appeared more hopeless. The steel
pipe line, leading down for three miles of sinuous, black length, from
a reservoir high up in the hills, had been broken here and there
maliciously by some one who had traversed its length and with a heavy
pick driven holes into it that inflicted thousands of dollars of
expense.
The Pelton wheels in the power house, neglected, were rusted in their
bearings, and without them and the pipe line there could be no
electric power on which the mill depended. The mill had been stripped
of all smaller stuff, and its dynamos had been chipped with an ax
until the copper windings showed frayed and useless. The shoes of the
huge stamps were worn down to a thin, uneven rim, battering on broken
surfaces. The Venners rattled on their foundations, and the plates
had been scarred as if by a chisel in the hands of a maniac.
The blacksmith's tunnel--the tunnel leading off from the level--was
blocked by fallen timbers where a belt of lime formation cut across;
and fragments of wood, splintered into toothpick size, had been thrown
out when the mountain settled to its place. But a short distance from
the main shaft, which was a double compartment, carrying two cages up
and down, in every level the air was foul down to the five-hundred
foot, and below that the mine was filled with water.
Patiently Dick and the veteran explored these windings as far as they
might until the guttering of their candles warned them that the air
was loaded with poison, and often they retreated none too soon to
scale the slippery, yielding rungs of the ladder with dizzy heads.
Expert and experienced, they were puzzled by what was disclosed.
Either the mine had yielded exceedingly rich streaks and had been, in
mining parlance, "gophered," or else the management had been as
foolish as ever handled a property.
In the assay-house, where the furnaces were dust-covered, the scale
case black with grime, and the floor littered with refuse crucibles,
cupels, mufflers, and worn buckboards, they discovered a bundle of
old tablets. Almost invariably these showed that the assays had been
made from samples that would have paid to work, but this alone gave
them no hope.
But this was not all. A mysterious enmity seemed to pursue all their
efforts. Yet its displays were unaccountable for by natural causes. On
their arrival at the mine they found water, fresh and clear, piped
into every cabin, the mess-house, and the superintendent's quarters.
They traced it back and discovered a small lake formed and fed by a
large spring on what was evidently land of the mine. It suddenly
failed them, and proved unwholesome. An investigation of the tiny
reservoir disclosed masses of poisonous weeds in the water. They
decided that they must have been blown there after their arrival,
cleared the supply and yet, but two days later, when there had been no
wind of more than noticeable violence, the weeds were there again.
They abandoned their water supply for the time being and resorted to
the stream at the bottom of the canyon.
A day later one of their burros died mysteriously, and Bill, puzzled,
said he believed that it had lost its sense of smell and eaten
something poisonous. On the day following the other died, apparently
from the same complaint. The veteran miner grieved over them as for
friends.
"I've been acquainted with a good many of 'em," he said, sorrowfully,
"but I never knew two that had finer characters than these two did.
They were regular burros! No cheaters--just the square, open and
above-board kind, that never kicked without layin' back their ears to
give you warnin' and never laid down on the trail unless they wanted
to rest. The meanest thing a burro or a man can do is to die
voluntarily when you're dependin' on him, or when he owes you work or
money. So it does seem as if I must have been mistaken in these two,
after all, because we may need 'em."
Dick did not smile at his homily, for he caught the significance of
it, that the Croix d'Or would have to make a better showing than they
had so far discovered to warrant them in opening it. They had come
almost to the end of the investigations possible. They scanned plans
and scales in the office to familiarize themselves with the property,
and there was but one portion of it they had not visited. That was a
shaft which had been the "discovery hole," where the first find of ore
had been made. And it was this they entered on the day when Fate
seemed most particularly unkind. Yet even Fate appeared to relent, in
the end, through one of those trifling afterthoughts which lead men to
do the insignificant act. They had prepared everything for the
venture. They had an extra supply of candles, chalk for making a
course mark, sample bags for such pieces of ore as might interest
them, and the prospectors' picks and hammers when they started out.
They were a hundred yards from the office when the younger man
hesitated, stopped and turned back.
"I've an idea we might need those old maps," he said. "We haven't gone
over them very much and they might come in handy."
Bill protested, but despite this Dick went back to the quarters and
got them. They were crude, apparently, compared with the later work
when competent engineers had opened the mine in earnest; but doubtless
had served their purpose. The men came to the mouth of the old shaft
which had been loosely covered over with poles, and around which a
thicket of wild blackberry bushes had sprung up in stunted growth. An
hour's work disclosed the black opening and a ladder in a fair state
of preservation. They lowered a candle into the depths and saw that it
burned undimmed, indicating that the air was pure, and then descended
cautiously, testing each rung as they went. The shaft was not more
than fifty feet deep, and they found themselves standing on the bottom
and peering off into a drift which had been crudely timbered and had
fallen in here and there as the unworked ground had settled.
"There doesn't seem to be much of anything here except some starved
quartz," Bill said, staring at the wall after they had gone in some
thirty or forty feet, and they had come to a place where the lagging
had dropped away. He caught another piece of the half-rotted timbering
and jerked it loose for a better inspection. It gave with a dull
crack, then, immediately after, and seeming almost an echo, there was
a terrific rumble, and a report like the explosion of a huge gun back
in the direction of the shaft. Their candles flickered in the air
impact, and for an instant they feared that the roof was coming down
on them to crush them out of all resemblance to human beings.
They turned and ran toward the shaft. A few loose pebbles and pieces
of rock were dripping from above like a shower of porphyry. For an
instant they dared not step out, but stood inside the drift, waiting
for what might happen and staring at each other with set faces exposed
in the still flickering light. They had said nothing up to this time,
being under too great stress to offer other than sharp exclamations.
"Sounds like that shaft had given way!" the veteran exclaimed. "If it
has----"
He leaned forward and looked into Dick's face.
"If it has," the latter took up, "we are in a bad predicament."
They stood tensed and anxious until the pebbles stopped falling and a
silence like that of a tomb, so profound as to seem thick and dense,
invaded the hollows; then Dick started out into the shaft. He felt a
restraining hand on his arm.
"Wait a minute, boy," the elder man said. "You're the owner here. It's
dangerous. I ought to be the one to go first and find out what's
happened. You wait inside the drift."
But Dick shook his hand off and stepped out to look upward. A dense
blackness filled what should have been a space of light. This he had
partially expected from the fact that when they came out toward the
shaft there had been no sign of day; but he had not anticipated such a
complete closing of the opening.
"Lord! We're buried in!" came an exclamation from behind him, and he
felt a sudden sinking of the heart.
"I'll go easily till I come to it," he said, his voice sounding
strained and loud although he had spoken scarcely above a whisper.
"You stand clear so that if anything gives, Bill, you won't be
caught."
The elder miner would have protested, but already he was slowly and
cautiously climbing the ladder. Step by step he ascended, holding the
light above his head to discover the place where the shaft had given
way, and then Bill, standing anxiously below, heard a harsh shout.
"I think the ladder will bear your weight as well as mine. Come up
here."
The big man climbed steadily upward until he stood directly beneath
the younger man's feet. He ventured an exclamation that was almost an
oath.
"Not the shaft at all," he said, an instant later. "It's just a
bowlder so big that it filled the whole opening. We're plugged and
penned in here like rats in a trap!"
Dick took his little prospecting hammer and tapped the bowlder, at
first gently, then with firmer strokes, and looked down at his partner
with a distressed face.
"Hear that?" he exclaimed, rather than questioned. "It's a big one,
and solid. It sounds bad to me."
For a minute they waved their candles round the edge, inspecting the
resting place of the rock that had imprisoned them. Everywhere it was
set firmly. A fitted door could have been no more secure. They
consulted, and at last Bill descended and stepped back into the
entrance to the drift to avoid falling stone, while the younger man
attacked the edge beneath the bowlder, inch by inch, trying to find
some place where he could pick through to daylight. At last, his arm
wearied and the point of his prospecting hammer dulled, he rested.
"Come down, Dick, and I'll take a spell," Bill called up from below,
and he obeyed.
The big miner, without comment, climbed up, and again the vault-like
space was filled with the persistent picking of steel on stone. For a
half-hour it continued, and then, slowly, Bill descended. He sat down
at the foot of the shaft, wiped the sweat from his face, thrust his
candlestick in a crevice and rolled a cigarette before he said
anything, and then only as Dick started to the foot of the ladder.
"It's no use," he said. "We're holed up all right. I picked clear
around the lower edge and there isn't a place where she isn't resting
on solid rock. Nothing but dynamite could ever move that stone. Unless
we can find some other way out we're----"
He paused and Dick added the finishing word, "Gone!"
"Exactly! No one knows we're here. No one comes to the mine. We're in
the old works which I don't suppose a man has been inside of in five
or ten years, and the map shows that it doesn't connect with the other
ones. Answer--the finish!"
Dick pulled the worn and badly drawn plans from his pocket and then
lighted his own candle, indulging in the extravagance of two that he
might study the faint and smudged penciled lines.
"Here, Bill," he said, pointing at the drawing. "These two side drifts
each end in what are now sump holes. We've got to watch out for them.
That makes it safe for us to take the main drift and see where it
leads. The two end drifts evidently ran but a few feet and were then
abandoned. So, if these plans are any good, they, too, are safe, if we
can get into them."
The elder miner peered at the plans and studied them. He stood up and
blew out his candle. He thrust his hands into his pockets.
"I've got three candles left," he said, "and I cain't just exactly say
why I put that many in unless the Lord gave me a hunch we'd need 'em.
How many you got!"
"One in my pocket, and this."
"Then we'd better move fast, eh?"
They took a desperate chance on foul air and plunged down the drift,
pausing only now and then when they came to the first side drifts to
make sure of their course. They were informed by the plans that they
had barely three hundred feet to explore, yet they had gone even
farther than that before they came to a halt, a threatening one, for
directly ahead of them the timbering had given way, the shaft caved,
and there seemed at first no opening through the debris.
"Well, this looks pretty tough!" exclaimed Bill, stooping down and
examining the face of the barrier.
His companion lighted his own candle and together they went over the
face of the obstruction.
"It looks to me as if we could open her up a little if we can shift
this timber here and use it as a lever," he said, pointing to one
projecting near the roof.
"May bring the whole mountain down, but it's our only chance," agreed
Bill. "Here she goes. Stand back. No use in both of us getting it."
He caught the end of the timber in his heavy hands, planted his feet
firmly on the floor and heaved. The big timber creaked, but did not
give. Again he planted himself and this time his great shoulders
seemed to twist and writhe until the muscles cracked and then, with a
crash, the barrier gave way. He sprang back with amazing quickness and
they ran back up the drift for twenty or thirty feet while the mass
again readjusted itself and settled slowly into position. A cloud of
dust bellowed toward them, half-choking them with its gritty fineness,
and then, in a minute, the air had cleared. They went cautiously
forward.
"Well, we got some farther, anyhow, unless she comes down while we're
working through. We've got a hole to crawl into, and that's
something," the big miner asserted.
Before he could say anything more Dick had crowded him to one side and
was entering the aperture. He had prevented his partner from taking
the first perilous chance. Painfully he made his way, while the man
behind listened with terrified apprehension; for none knew better
than he the risk of that progress.
"All right, but be careful," a voice came to him faintly from the
distance. "She's bad, but the air over here seems good. It's a close
shave."
The big miner dropped down and began crawling through beneath the tons
of balanced rock, which might give at any instant. Larger than his
younger companion, he found it more difficult for his great shoulders
persisted in brushing at all times, and now and then he was compelled
to squeeze himself through a narrow place that for a moment threatened
to be impossible. Once a timber above him gave a little and a rock
crowded down until only by exerting his whole force could he sustain
it while he scraped his hips through from under it. Then as it
descended between his legs he found one of them pinioned. He shut his
teeth desperately to avoid shouting, and twisted sidewise, and back,
to and fro, at the imminent danger of dislodging everything above him.
He heard an anxious voice calling outside and replied that he was
coming and was all right. He rested for an instant to regain breath,
then made a desperate forward effort to find that his foot alone
caught him. Again he rolled from side to side, and again he rested.
"Bill! Bill! For God's sake, what has happened?" he heard an agonized
call from ahead.
"I'm all right, boy," he called back patiently. "Just keep away from
the hole so I can get air. I'm--I'm just findin' some places a little
tight."
His reply did not seem to allay the solicitude of his companion, who
called again, "Can I help you in any way?"
"Only by keeping clear. I'll make another try. Stand clear so if she
comes down you won't be caught. If she does come--well--good-bye,
Dick!"
As he spoke the final word he made another fiercely desperate effort
from his new position. There was a ripping, searing pain along the
length of his foot which he disregarded in that supreme attempt and
suddenly he seemed to slide forward while back of him came a
crunching, grinding noise as the disturbed rock which had pinioned him
settled down into place. He crawled desperately forward. A light
flared in his eyes and he felt strong hands thrust under his arm pits
and was jerked bodily out to the floor of the drift. They fell
together and the candle, falling with them, was extinguished. They
were overwhelmed, as they lay there in the darkness, gasping, by a
terrific crashing impact as if the whole mountain had given way and at
their very feet huge rocks thundered down. They crawled farther along
on hands and knees and the falling rock seemed to pursue them
malignantly. For an age it seemed as if the whole drift would give way
as each set of timbers came to the strain and failed to hold. Then
again all was still.
Strangling, sweating, spent, they got to the side wall and raised
themselves up, gasping for fresh air. Their senses wavered and swooned
in that half-suffocation and slowly they comprehended that they were
still alive and that the dust was settling. "Are you all right?" they
called to each other in acute unison, their voices betraying a great
apprehension, and then, reassured for the instant, they sagged weakly
against the walls and each reached out to find the other. Their hands
met and clasped fervently and, again in unison, they said, "Thank
God!"
A match spluttered dimly through the dark and dust-clogged air, a
candle slowly took flame and they looked at each other. Bill was
leaning against the wall, weakly, and trying to recover his strength.
A tattered trousers leg clung above his bared leg and foot where he
had wrenched himself loose from the rock, and torn his boot away in
so doing. Along the length of the white flesh was a flaring line of
red, where the point of rock had cut deeply when he made that last
desperate struggle to escape. He dropped to the floor and clutched his
wound with his hands while Dick, almost with a moan, thrust his
candlestick into a timber and savagely tore his shirt off and rent it
into strips. He stooped over and with hasty skill bandaged the wound.
"It's not bad, I hope," he said, "but it does hurt, doesn't it, old
partner?"
"That's nothin'," bravely drawled the giant, striving to force a grin
to his pain-drawn lips. "Don't worry now, boy! Think what might have
happened if I'd been there a minute or two longer, or if I couldn't
have got loose at all!"
In their thankfulness for the last escape they had almost forgotten
the fact that their situation was still almost hopeless, and that
perhaps the speedy end would have been preferable to one more
agonizing, more slow, to come. They got to their feet at last and
hobbled forward, the big man resting half his weight on his friend's
shoulder and making slow progress. Again they were centered on the
faint hope that beyond was some sort of opening, because now they knew
but too well that their retreat was effectually cut off. If there was
no opening ahead they were doomed. They consulted the plan again and
went forward. Abruptly they came to a halt, shutting their jaws hard.
They had come to the end of the main drift and it was a blank wall of
solid stone where the prospectors had finished!
"Well, old man, there's still the two side drifts to examine," said
Bill with a plain attempt to appear hopeful that did not in the least
deceive the other.
"Yes. That's back there about fifty feet," Dick assented, finding that
it required an effort to steady his voice. "The other one is behind
that barrier."
They looked at each other, reading the same thought. They had but one
more chance and that was almost futile; for the plans indicated that
the side drift extended but a score or so of yards and had then been
abandoned. They felt their feet faltering when they turned into it,
dreading the end, dreading the revelation that must tell them they
were to die in this limited burrow in the hills. But courageously they
tried to assume an air of confidence. They did not speak as they
progressed, each dreading that instant when he would again face an
inexorable barrier. They counted their steps as they went, to
themselves. They came to the twentieth, twenty-first, twenty-second,
and were peering fixedly ahead. Together they stopped and turned
toward each other. Dimly in the faintly thrown light of the candle
beams, they could see it, the dusky gray mass where hope had pictured
a continuing blackness. The wall leered at them as they stood there
panting, despairing, desperate as trapped animals. Their imaginations
told them the end.
"Well, old man"--Bill's voice sounded with exceptional softness--"they
didn't extend this drift any farther. All we can do now is to go up
and sit down at the foot of it, and--wait!"
"But it won't take long, Bill," Dick replied. "The air, you know. It
can't last forever."
They trudged forward for the few remaining yards and then, abruptly,
the candle they were carrying gave a little flicker. This time they
stopped in their tracks and shouted. Bill suddenly loosened his hold
on the younger man's shoulder and began hopping forward, and the light
threw huge, grotesque, strangely moving shadows on the wall ahead of
them. Dick ran after him, crowding on his heels and shouting
meaningless hopes. Abruptly they came to a right-angle drift, and
then, but a few yards down it, they discovered an upraise, crude and
uncared-for, but climbing into the higher darkness, and down this
there streamed fresh air.
It was such a one as prospectors make, having here and there a pole
with cleats to serve as a ladder, then ascending at an incline which,
though difficult, was not impossible, and again reverting to rocky
footholds at the sides. Up this Dick boosted his partner, thrusting a
shoulder beneath his haunches and straining upward with the exultation
of reaction. They were saved! He knew it! The fresh air told that
story to their experienced nostrils. Up, up, up they clambered for a
long slanting distance and then fell out on the floor of another
drift, at whose end was a shadowy light. Again they hobbled down a
long length, ever approaching their goal. Bill stopped and leaned
against the side wall and voiced his exultation.
"I know where we are," he exclaimed. "This is the blacksmiths' tunnel.
They made that upraise following the ore, and that's why the mine was
opened for the second time here. They didn't complete the plans
because they knew the old work was useless. Dick, we've been through
some pretty hard times together and had some narrow shaves; but I
don't care for many more like that! Come on. Help me out. I want you
to take a look and see if my head is any whiter than it was at nine
o'clock this mornin' when we went into that other hole."