They started forward then, making their way through the slime and silt
of the drift flooring, slippery and wet from years of flooding. From
above them the water dripped from the seep-soaked hanging-wall, which
showed rough and splotchy in the gleam of the carbides and seemed to
absorb the light until they could see only a few feet before them as
they clambered over water-soaked timbers, disjointed rails of the
little tram track which once had existed there, and floundered in and
out of the greasy pockets of mud which the floating ties of the track
had left behind. On--on--they stopped.
Progress had become impossible. Before them, twisted and torn and
piled about in muddy confusion, the timbers of the mine suddenly showed
in a perfect barricade, supplanted from behind by piles of muck and
rocky refuse which left no opening to the chamber of the stope beyond.
Harry's carbide went high in the air, and he slid forward, to stand a
moment in thought before the obstacle. At place after place he
surveyed it, finally to turn with a shrug of his shoulders.
"It's going to mean more 'n a month of the 'ardest kind of work, Boy,"
came his final announcement. "'Ow it could 'ave caved in like that is
more than I know. I 'm sure we timbered it good."
"And look--" Fairchild was beside him now, with his carbide--"how
everything's torn, as though from an explosion."
"It seems that wye. But you can't tell. Rock 'as an awful way of
churning up things when it decides to turn loose. All I know is we 've
got a job cut out for us."
There was only one thing to do,--turn back. Fifteen minutes more and
they were on the surface, making their plans; projects which entailed
work from morning until night for many a day to come. There was a
track to lay, an extra skip to be lowered, that they might haul the
muck and broken timbers from the cave-in to the shaft and on out to the
dump. There were stulls and mill-stakes and laggs to cut and to be
taken into the shaft. And there was good, hard work of muscle and
brawn and pick and shovel, that muck might be torn away from the
cave-in, and good timbers put in place, to hold the hanging wall from
repeating its escapade of eighteen years before. Harry reached for a
new axe and indicated another.
"We 'll cut ties first," he announced.
And thus began the weeks of effort, weeks in which they worked with
crude appliances; weeks in which they dragged the heavy stulls and
other timbers into the tunnel and then lowered them down the shaft to
the drift, two hundred feet below, only to follow them in their
counter-balanced bucket and laboriously pile them along the sides of
the drift, there to await use later on. Weeks in which they worked in
mud and slime, as they shoveled out the muck and with their gad hooks
tore down loose portions of the hanging wall to form a roadbed for
their new tram. Weeks in which they cut ties, in which they crawled
from their beds even before dawn, nor returned to Mother Howard's
boarding house until long after dark; weeks in which they seemed to
lose all touch with the outside world. Their whole universe had turned
into a tunnel far beneath the surface of the earth, a drift leading to
a cave-in, which they had not yet begun to even indent with excavations.
It was a slow, galling progress, but they kept at it. Gradually the
tram line began to take shape, pieced together from old portions of the
track which still lay in the drift and supplemented by others bought
cheaply at that graveyard of miner's hopes,--the junk yard in Ohadi.
At last it was finished; the work of moving the heavy timbers became
easier now as they were shunted on to the small tram truck from which
the body had been dismantled and trundled along the rails to the
cave-in, there to be piled in readiness for their use. And finally--
A pick swung in the air, to give forth a chunky, smacking sound, as it
struck water-softened, spongy wood. The attack against the cave-in had
begun, to progress with seeming rapidity for a few hours, then to
cease, until the two men could remove the debris which they had dug out
and haul it by slow, laborious effort to the surface. But it was a
beginning, and they kept at it.
A foot at a time they tore away the old, broken, splintered timbers and
the rocky refuse which lay piled behind each shivered beam; only to
stop, carry away the muck, and then rebuild. And it was
effort,--effort which strained every muscle of two strong men, as with
pulleys and handmade, crude cranes, they raised the big logs and
propped them in place against further encroachment of the hanging wall.
Cold and damp, in the moist air of the tunnel they labored, but there
was a joy in it all. Down here they could forget Squint Rodaine and
his chalky-faced son; down here they could feel that they were working
toward a goal and lay aside the handicap which humans might put in
their path.
Day after day of labor and the indentation upon the cave-in grew from a
matter of feet to one of yards. A week. Two. Then, as Harry swung
his pick, he lurched forward and went to his knees. "I 've gone
through!" he announced in happy surprise. "I 've gone through. We 're
at the end of it!"
Up went Fairchild's carbide. Where the pick still hung in the rocky
mass, a tiny hole showed, darker than the surrounding refuse. He put
forth a hand and clawed at the earth about the tool; it gave way
beneath his touch, and there was only vacancy beyond. Again Harry
raised his pick and swung it with force. Fairchild joined him. A
moment more and they were staring at a hole which led to darkness, and
there was joy in Harry's voice as he made a momentary survey.
"It's fairly dry be'ind there," he announced. "Otherwise we 'd have
been scrambling around in water up to our necks. We 're lucky there,
any'ow."
Again the attack and again the hole widened. At last Harry
straightened.
"We can go in now," came finally. "Are you willing to go with me?"
"Of course. Why not?"
The Cornishman's hand went to his mustache.
"I ain't tickled about what we 're liable to find."
"You mean--?"
But Harry stopped him.
"Let's don't talk about it till we 'ave to. Come on."
Silently they crawled through the opening, the silt and fine rock
rattling about them as they did so, to come upon fairly dry earth on
the other side, and to start forward. Under the rays of the carbides,
they could see that the track here was in fairly good condition; the
only moisture being that of a natural seepage which counted for little.
The timbers still stood dry and firm, except where dripping water in a
few cases had caused the blocks to become spongy and great holes to be
pressed in them by the larger timbers which held back the tremendous
weight from above. Suddenly, as they walked along. Harry took the
lead, holding his lantern far ahead of him, with one big hand behind
it, as though for a reflector. Then, just as suddenly, he turned.
"Let's go out," came shortly.
"Why?"
"It's there!" In the light of the lantern,
Harry's face was white, his big lips livid. "Let's go--"
But Fairchild stopped him.
"Harry," he said, and there was determination in his voice, "if it's
there--we 've got to face it. I 'll be the one who will suffer. My
father is gone. There are no accusations where he rests now; I 'm sure
of that. If--if he ever did anything in his life that wasn't right, he
paid for it. We don't know what happened, Harry--all we are sure of is
that if it's what we 're--we 're afraid of, we 've gone too far now to
turn back. Don't you think that certain people would make an
investigation if we should happen to quit the mine now?"
"The Rodaines!"
"Exactly. They would scent something, and within an hour they 'd be
down in here, snooping around. And how much worse would it be for them
to tell the news--than for us!"
"Nobody 'as to tell it--" Harry was staring at his carbide
flare--"there 's a wye."
"But we can't take it, Harry. In my father's letter was the statement
that he made only one mistake--that of fear. I 'm going to believe
him--and in spite of what I find here, I 'm going to hold him innocent,
and I 'm going to be fair and square and aboveboard about it all. The
world can think what it pleases--about him and about me. There 's
nothing on my conscience--and I know that if my father had not made the
mistake of running away when he did, there would have been nothing on
his."
Harry shook his head.
"'E could n't do much else, Boy. Rodaine was stronger in some ways
then than he is now. That was in different days. That was in times
when Squint Rodaine could 'ave gotten a 'undred men together quicker 'n
a cat's wink and lynched a man without 'im 'aving a trial or anything.
And if I 'd been your father, I 'd 'ave done the same as 'e did. I 'd
'ave run too--'e 'd 'ave paid for it with 'is life if 'e didn't, guilty
or not guilty. And--" he looked sharply toward the younger man--"you
say to go on?"
"Go on," said Fairchild, and he spoke the words between tightly
clenched teeth. Harry turned his light before him, and once more
shielded it with his big hand. A step--two, then:
"Look--there--over by the footwall!"
Fairchild forced his eyes in the direction designated and stared
intently. At first it appeared only like a succession of disjointed,
broken stones, lying in straggly fashion along the footwall of the
drift where it widened into the stope, or upward slant on the vein.
Then, it came forth clearer, the thin outlines of something which
clutched at the heart of Robert Fairchild, which sickened him, which
caused him to fight down a sudden, panicky desire to shield his eyes
and to run,--a heap of age-denuded bones, the scraps of a miner's
costume still clinging to them, the heavy shoes protruding in comically
tragic fashion over bony feet; a huddled, cramped skeleton of a human
being!
They could only stand and stare at it,--this reminder of a tragedy of a
quarter of a century agone. Their lips refused to utter the words that
strove to travel past them; they were two men dumb, dumb through a
discovery which they had forced themselves to face, through a fact
which they had hoped against, each more or less silently, yet felt sure
must, sooner or later, come before them. And now it was here.
And this was the reason that twenty years before Thornton Fairchild,
white, grim, had sought the aid of Harry and of Mother Howard. This
was the reason that a woman had played the part of a man, singing in
maudlin fashion as they traveled down the center of the street at
night, to all appearances only three disappointed miners seeking a new
field. And yet--
"I know what you 're thinking." It was Harry's voice, strangely hoarse
and weak. "I 'm thinking the same thing. But it must n't be. Dead
men don't alwyes mean they 've died--in a wye to cast reflections on
the man that was with 'em. Do you get what I mean? You've said--" and
he looked hard into the cramped, suffering face of Robert
Fairchild--"that you were going to 'old your father innocent. So 'm I.
We don't know, Boy, what went on 'ere. And we 've got to 'ope for the
best."
Then, while Fairchild stood motionless and silent, the big Cornishman
forced himself forward, to stoop by the side of the heap of bones which
once had represented a man, to touch gingerly the clothing, and then to
bend nearer and hold his carbide close to some object which Fairchild
could not see. At last he rose and with old, white features,
approached his partner.
"The appearances are against us," came quietly. "There 's a 'ole in
'is skull that a jury 'll say was made by a single jack. It 'll seem
like some one 'ad killed 'im, and then caved in the mine with a box of
powder. But 'e 's gone, Boy--your father--I mean. 'E can't defend
'imself. We 've got to take 'is part."
"Maybe--" Fairchild was grasping at the final straw--"maybe it's not
the person we believe it to be at all. It might be somebody else--who
had come in here and set off a charge of powder by accident and--"
But the shaking of Harry's head stifled the momentary ray of hope.
"No. I looked. There was a watch--all covered with mold and mildewed.
I pried it open. It's got Larsen's name inside!"