TRAPPED
As the three friends hurried up Pine Nut Gulch toward the Katie Brackett
the youngest of them reflected that the method of approach had been made
smooth for him. It was not now necessary for him to skulk up through the
sage. The whole town was on its way to the scene of the disaster. A
stream of people was headed for the mine. Nimble boys passed them on the
run. Less active citizens they overtook and left behind. The sounds of
voices, of movements of many people, came to them through the darkness.
Hugh still carried his sawed-off shotgun. He might need it. He might
not. He realized that for the moment his vengeance must take second
place. The common thought and effort of Piodie must centre on the
business of saving the poor fellows trapped in that fiery furnace six
hundred feet below ground.
The superintendent of the mine was calling for volunteer rescuers just
as Hugh and Dan reached the shaft house. McClintock hid his shotgun
under a pile of lumber and stepped forward. The cage was a double
decker. There was a rush of men to get on the lower floor. They knew
well enough the danger that faced them, but it is a risk a brave miner
is always willing to take for the lives of doomed companions.
“Hold on! Get back there. Don’t crowd!” ordered the superintendent. “No
married man can go. You, Finlay—and Trelawney—and Big Bill. That makes
six. All right.”
The lower compartment dropped and the second level was even with the
ground. The superintendent stepped into the cage. Byers crowded in next.
Budd, puffing hard, pushed close. With an elbow driven hard into his
midriff Hugh thrust him back. “Don’t you hear? No married men wanted,
Jim.”
McClintock vaulted over the edge of the cage and dropped into it.
A big Ayrshire mucker shouted at the superintendent. “An’ when did ye
divorce your wife an’ twa weans, boss?”
“I’ve got to go, Sandy. It’s my job,” the mine boss called back. “That’s
all. No room for more. Jam that gate shut.”
The engineer moved a lever and the bucket dropped into the darkness.
Every few seconds there was a flash of light as the cage passed a
station. Except for that the darkness was dense.
Hugh heard someone beside him say, “I hear Dodson’s caught in a drift.”
Carstairs, the superintendent, answered: “Yes. Dutch is with him. They
went to look at that new vein we struck yesterday.”
No accident contains more terrible possibilities than a fire in a mine.
Flame and gas pursue the trapped victims as they fly. Cut off from the
shaft, buried hundreds of feet in the ground, the miners run the risk of
being asphyxiated, burned, or blown up in an explosion of released
gases.
The shaft, the drifts, the crosscuts, and the tunnels all act as flues
to suck the flames into them. At Piodie, as at Virginia City, the danger
was intensified by the great quantity of fuel with which these natural
chimneys were lined. In the Katie Brackett whole forests were buried.
Every drift and tunnel was braced with timbers. Scores of chutes, with
vertical winzes, all made of wood, led from one level to another. The
ore chambers were honeycombed with square sets of timber mortised
together and wedged against the rock walls and roof. Upon each set
floors of heavy planking were laid. In these were trap doors, through
which steps ran leading from the lower level to the one above.
The fire was in the north drift. Carstairs led the men forward
cautiously. Already their eyes were inflamed from the smoke that rolled
out at them. As they moved forward heat waves struck them. The rock
walls were so hot that the rescuers could with difficulty keep going.
Hugh was at the nozzle of the hose they were dragging. He kept a stream
playing on the rock and the charred timber. Presently he fell back,
overcome by the intense heat, and Carstairs took his place. Byers
succeeded the superintendent at the apex of the attack.
Steam, sulphur, fumes, and gas released from the minerals swept the
rescuers back. The air was so foul that the workers could not breathe it
without collapsing. An air pipe was led in from the main blower above,
and the volunteers renewed their efforts.
At times the swirling smoke was too much for them. It either drove them
to the shaft or it forced them to lie with their faces close to the
ground where the air was purer. Farther down the tunnel they could see
red tongues of flame licking at them. The roar of the fire as it leaped
forward was far more appalling than that of any wild beast could have
been.
The faces of the firemen were smoke-blackened and grimy. Already several
had collapsed from the intense heat. These were helped back to the shaft
and sent up. Others came down to take their places.
Hugh’s eyebrows crisped from the heat. The men were all naked from the
waist up. Below this they wore only cotton overalls and boots. These
were licked to a char thin and fragile as paper. The skin peeled from
Hugh’s body in flakes where anything touched it.
From above came an ominous sound.
“Back,” ordered Carstairs.
The roof came down, an avalanche of dirt and rock and timber. So close
was McClintock to it that the air shock almost knocked him down.
Before the dust had settled Carstairs sent his sappers at the job of
clearing out and timbering the tunnel.
Steadily the rescuers gained ground. Every few minutes they relayed each
other. Each man knew that his position was one of great danger. The fire
might reach the shaft and cut them off from above. A cave of rock might
release gases which might kill either by explosion or asphyxiation. A
change of draught might fling a great tongue of fire at them and wipe
the whole party out in a few seconds. Yet the work went on, hour after
hour, steadily and without ceasing. For somewhere in one of the
crosscuts which they were approaching, a group of haggard, anxious men
were awaiting rescue, unless the fire had already snuffed out their
lives.
“The crosscut’s just ahead,” Carstairs announced.
Byers was at the nozzle. The little man had stuck it out gamely. Only
four of the original party were still working. The others had been
relieved and sent to the surface.
McClintock had just returned from the shaft where he had been with a man
overcome by the heat. He was for the moment the freshest man in the
group.
“Two volunteers to search the crosscut while the rest hold back the
fire,” called Carstairs.
“I’ll go,” said a Maine lumberjack.
“Same here,” added Hugh.
They waited, watching for a chance to plunge into the side tunnel when
the fire was momentarily low.
“Now,” said McClintock, and he dived at the opening in the wall.
The lumberjack followed him. So intense was the heat at the entrance to
the crosscut that a little pool of water on the rock floor was boiling
angrily. As they pushed deeper into it the heat decreased.
Hugh shouted. A voice answered his call.
He moved forward and presently stumbled over a body.
“How many in here?” he asked.
“Eleven.”
“Where are the others?”
“Dead,” came the answer. “Cut off by fire damp before we reached the
crosscut.”
“All of you able to travel?”
“Yes.”
Hugh heard the sound of footsteps stumbling toward him. Men came abreast
of him and went past. He counted them—eleven. Then he stooped and
picked up the body at his feet. In another minute he was staggering into
the drift with his burden.
The fire fighters fell back past the charred timbers and the hot rocks
of the wall.
“You’re through, boys,” Carstairs said. “I’ll send a fresh crew in to
blast down the mouth of the drift and build a bulkhead against the fire.
Then we’ll close the shaft and let ’er die down for lack of air.”
The first thing Hugh did when he reached the foot of the shaft was to
find the revolver he had hidden beneath a car; the next was to look over
the rescued men for the one he wanted. He found him, standing beside
Robert Dodson close to the cage. The mine owner was sobbing with the
strain he had undergone. His nerve had gone. The big hulking figure at
his back was Sam Dutch.
Hugh kept in the background. He did not want to be recognized just yet.
Meanwhile, he slipped into his trousers, shirt, and coat. In the pocket
of his coat was something that jingled when he accidentally touched the
wall.
The rescued men were in much better condition than the ones who had
fought the fire to save them. They had reached the precarious safety of
the crosscut in time to avail themselves of its comparatively fresh air.
The volunteers were worn out, fagged, and burned to a toast. Some of
them had inhaled gases and smoke that would enfeeble their lungs for
months. They moved like automatons, their energy gone, their strength
exhausted.
The cage came down and the men began to pile in. Hugh was standing close
behind a huge man whom his eyes never left. He pushed into the lower
level of the cage after him.
The car shot upward. Hugh drew something from his pocket. In the
darkness his hand moved gently to and fro. It found what it was seeking.
There was a click, a second click, a furious, raucous oath of rage like
the bellow of a maddened bull elephant. Hugh had slipped handcuffs on
the thick wrists of Dutch and locked them.
His thumb jammed hard into the spine of the desperado. “Steady in the
boat,” he murmured. “This gun’s liable to spill sudden.”
The car rose into the fresh daylight of the young morning.