THE EXPLOSION
THE new crowd of miners were anxiously waiting about the mouth of the
pit shaft, which led down into the deepest excavation that had yet been
dug in the neighborhood of the Rainbow Creek.
There were other openings, but because this was the largest, Ralph
Merrit had desired that his workmen begin their labor here. For by
extending and deepening the passages in the lower part of this shaft he
hoped to make important discoveries of new veins of ore. And once
convinced that a quantity of new gold was actually to be found under
this ground the young engineer had no idea of giving up before he had
devised some intelligent and not too expensive method of bringing more
wealth to the surface of the earth.
Not many feet from the company of men Jack Ralston and Frank Kent were
standing together talking of some detail in connection with the work,
while Jim Colter was hanging over the pit opening in company with the
men who had charge of the lowering and raising of the mine elevator.
Evidently Ralph Merrit and his two companions had made a safe landing
below, for shortly after their disappearance there was a signal, and
slowly the lift traveled up into the daylight again, now ready to take
on another lot of passengers.
"Steady, no crowding," Jim Colter called out as the next relay stepped
hastily forward. "Merrit will want to start things going in the tunnel
before you descend."
One man had already gotten aboard, while another had one foot extended
toward the platform, when suddenly from underneath them there came a
tearing, splitting noise and then a muffled roar like the instantaneous
explosion of a thousand guns.
The passengers in the elevator fell on their knees and all around the
opening of the pit there was powder and blackness and a fall of stones
like a swift rain of meteors.
By accident Ruth Colter's back happened to be turned away from the scene
at the mine, so that the first sound she remembered hearing was her
husband's hoarse shout of horror and then as she turned the sight of
his great form lying prostrate on the ground with Jack and Frank trying
to drag him away from danger.
But when Ruth would have rushed toward him, Olive and Frieda held her
fast, and the next instant a wave of weakness and darkness so
overwhelmed her that she had no strength to move.
When she opened her eyes she could see Jean's face, white as a sheet,
dancing before her and hear her saying:
"Jim isn't hurt, dear; only stunned by his fall. See, he is on his feet
again giving orders. And Jack and Frank must be all right, they were not
so near. But what could have happened, what caused the explosion? It's
the men down inside the mine who must be horribly hurt. Ralph----"
But Jean shook with such nervous terror that Frieda's arm encircled her,
and the next moment the four women moved nearer the place of the
disaster.
They were just in time, for at the moment of their approach, although
Jim Colter's face was so black that you could hardly distinguish him,
with his forehead bleeding from an ugly wound and his clothes torn and
burnt, he was giving orders like the general of an army and like trained
soldiers the miners were obeying him.
"I'll take four of you men who will volunteer to go down inside the mine
with me. I don't know what has happened, but we are pretty apt to find
things serious. It sounded like a dynamite explosion and there may be
another. Fortunately for us the elevator is above ground and we can
lower it. Some of you see that stretchers are brought here. Jack, keep
your head and get hold of a doctor at once. I hope we may need him," the
man added grimly, as he swung his great length aboard the small car, his
companions crowding close against him.
Unmindful of the awed silence that had followed the noise of the
explosion, unmindful of the two score of rough strange men, Ruth
breaking away from the girls now ran forward crying:
"Jim, you can't go down into the mine first. I can't let you. There is
the baby and me, you must think of us and of the girls. You may be
horribly hurt."
She was near enough now so that she could look straight into her
husband's blue eyes and something in Jim's expression calmed her
instantly. Then for the time he too seemed conscious of the presence of
no one else.
"Don't be frightened, Ruth, I shall be all right, dear, and back again
with you in ten minutes perhaps. But in any case, girl, don't you see I
have got to go down before the others? This is our mine and two of the
men down there are almost boys."
Some quiet order Jim then gave and slowly for the second time the lift
sank down toward the dark abyss under the earth. For Ruth had made no
other sound or protest, only keeping tight hold on Frieda's and Jean's
hands. Olive had gone with Jack and Frank Kent in the direction of the
Rainbow Lodge.
To the watchers at the pit opening after the elevator had landed the
second time there was a moment when they believed that they could hear
voices below. Then the waiting seemed interminable. In point of fact
only a few moments more had passed before the signal indicated that the
car must be drawn up again.
And this time it was Jean Bruce who covered her eyes with her hands.
There was a grinding of the cables and then an unmistakable groan, so
it was not only the faces of the women that blanched whiter. Many of
these miners were middle-aged men who had been in mining disasters where
many hundreds of lives were at stake. Now, since no further disturbance
had followed the first brief explosion, they realized that only the
three men who had first gone down into the pit had been injured. Yet it
was nerve-racking not to be able to foretell whether these three men
would be brought up alive or dead.
Jim Colter and one of his helpers were standing upright in the car and
Jim held in his arms a limp, crumpled figure, unconscious, his blue
overalls charred and blackened, his absurd old hat quite gone. Indeed,
the grave and learned professor of ancient languages looked like a
broken slip of a boy in the big man's keeping.
There on the floor of the car another figure was resting. The face was
upturned to the light and though the eyes were closed the expression of
the mouth showed that the man had not fainted but was suffering great
pain.
Frieda touched Jean Bruce on the arm.
"It is not Ralph, but the new foreman who seems to be very badly hurt,"
she whispered. "Look, the other men are carrying him off. I can't tell
about Ralph's friend, Mr. Russell. But where is Ralph? Why hasn't he
come up with the others?"
And this last question of Frieda's was being echoed in the minds of the
waiting woman and girl.
Why had Jim brought up two of the wounded men and left the third, their
oldest friend, still in the depth of Rainbow Mine? It was impossible not
to believe that Jim had done this because these men were not too badly
injured to be helped.
For he had now placed his burden on the ground and was examining the
young man with the skill and care of a surgeon, while some one else
bathed the face. A stretcher had been secured for the foreman who was
now being taken to his own quarters to await the coming of a surgeon.
"Jim," Ruth Colter put her hand on her husband's shoulder and her face
was almost as white and strained as it had been during her last speech
with him, "the elevator is going down again and you are not going with
it. Tell us, please, what has happened to Ralph?"
Without waiting to hear her guardian's answer Frieda suddenly burst
into tears. Of course she had been dreadfully unnerved by the recent
accident and now this uncertainty about their friend, besides the sight
of their new acquaintance stretched out there at her feet as though he
were dead when the last time she had seen him he had been eating his
dinner, was more than she could bear.
"Ralph? Great Scott, I am a brute, Ruth, Jean, Frieda!" Jim Colter
exclaimed. "Why didn't I tell you at once? Ralph isn't badly hurt at
all; he is bruised and burnt and shaken up, but nothing more, so far as
I could tell. So of course he insisted that we bring up the two other
fellows first. It's a plain miracle that there's anything left of the
three of them. So far as I could understand somebody had fixed a bomb
down at the end of the pit shaft, but the thing was clumsily made and
only half went off. Ralph said they were blown about a good deal and the
atmosphere was pretty thick, but unless the new foreman has been injured
internally there was no great harm done. I think this young man has
nothing more serious the matter with him than a broken leg. And I expect
we shall be able to mend that for him at Rainbow Lodge."
At these words Henry Russell opened his eyes, but whether because of
Jim's suggestion or the pain he was enduring, or whether because the
sight of the girls, he groaned aloud and then closed his lips again.
"I don't think he wants to be taken to the Lodge," Frieda suggested
mournfully. "You see he wants us to think he has gone away."
Then possibly because Ruth's and Jim's nerves had both been strained
almost past endurance for the past half hour they laughed aloud at
Frieda's speech.
Jean had slipped away and it was her white and yet happy face that Ralph
Merrit saw first as he came back into the world of daylight again.
There, though he was staggering and nearly blind and covered with blood
and grime from the shock he had just received, he found Jean's hands
before any others and held them close for a moment while she murmured:
"I am so glad, so glad; it is because you have some big work to do in
the world that you have been saved, I am sure, Ralph."
A moment later Ralph was quietly accepting the congratulations of his
workmen, while he tried to explain to them just how the explosion had
taken place. That the bomb had been placed down the shaft by one of the
former miners there could be no shadow of doubt.