“THEY’RE CALLIN’ STRIKES ON ME”
Joe avoided Jean. His days were spent underground, and in the summer
evenings when he might have seen her with little trouble, he shunned
walks they had known of old together. He heard that she had sold the
little cottage that had been her only inheritance from her grandfather,
and he knew that this meant the severing of her last tie with the town.
The community, rejoicing in her success, whispered the fabulous terms
of her professional engagements.
Jean, with her trunk packed, had yet to see him before leaving
the valley, and he appeared at the cottage by a characteristic
inadvertence, leaning upon the gate as she closed the door for the last
time.
“Everybody’s sorry you’re goin’, Jean; but I guess you got to pull out.
You’ve outgrown the town and it’s you for the large cities now.”
“I have to go where my work is. I’m going to share another woman’s
studio in New York this fall. I’m going first to visit Mrs. Blair in
Maine.”
“Sure! York’s the place. The Blairs always go there,” Joe replied,
proud of his inner knowledge of the Craighills and their ways. “Walsh
and Whiskers blew in yesterday and took my boss to Pittsburg. He said
he’d be back in a day or two. He’s the busy little worker when he gets
started.”
They stood with a new restraint upon them at the gate that had known
their childhood and youth. Joe saw that his reference to Wayne had not
been fortunate, and he twisted his cap nervously.
“He’s come round all right, Jean. He’s pretty safe from the drink now.
He’s worked it off.”
“He can do anything he tries. And you’ve done a great deal to help
him. You wouldn’t have come back to the mines if you hadn’t thought he
needed you.”
“Oh, pshaw! Jean. But I guess I was stuck on him, all right, or I
wouldn’t have come back. I guess you know why he came here--it was for
you. And the goin’ to work--I guessed you did that, too. It listens
like you, Jean. And now he’s made over--and you made him. I want you to
be good to him.”
“He’s my friend and yours--that’s all, Joe,” she said firmly. “I may
not be in Denbeigh for a good while but I want to tell you before I go
that I’m still ready to come back to you. If you’ll give me another
chance I’ll do my best. I mean it, Joe, with all my heart.”
“I wish you’d stop thinking about that business. It ain’t no use, Jean.
And now you got a big chance and I’d only be in the way. You don’t want
to come back--not honest in your heart you don’t; you just think it’s
right; and Father Jim told you you oughtn’t to have left me--that the
divorce was a sin. But you’re free--and I’m not holding you.”
“If you want to come any time you can always find out where I am,” she
said. “I shall always be ready.”
“He came here because you had lived here. I guess I know him! I knew
that when we started from Gettysburg. And he’s workin’ now to please
you. You’re all he’s got. You can bet he wouldn’t take what he’s
takin’--the work and the boardin’ house diet--for nothin’. You got
him goin’, Jean; he wants you to see that he’s got good stuff in him.
He’s fightin’ off his thirst every day; that’s why he walks so much at
night. I don’t have to watch him any more--he’s got a grip on himself.
He comes into the boardin’ house after everybody’s gone to bed and
tumbles down in his bunk so dead tired he don’t hear nothin’ till the
old woman beats the tin pan. You ought to be proud, Jean, that a man
like him’s doin’ this for you.”
“Mr. Craighill’s a good man; he doesn’t need any help from me.”
“He’s the real gold,” added Joe, “and I want you to be good to him. I
want you to marry him, Jean.”
“Oh, Joe! Joe!” she cried despairingly, “don’t speak of such a thing!
You don’t know how foolish you are to talk so!”
“I’m sorry, Jean,” he answered humbly. “I want you to be happy--and
him.”
He bade her good-bye, and moved away dejectedly through the night. Jean
went to the house of the friends with whom she had been staying, and
the next morning left for New York.
* * * * *
Joe was at work in a dark cavern of the Florence colliery at the hour
of her departure. With his butty and their two labourers he had gone
to a far corner of the mine. There is no night of the outer world like
that of the pit beneath, and no atmosphere like that of the moist
air of a coal mine. The very silences have their own profundity, as
though heightened by the weight of darkness. Sounds of blasting, the
rumbling of mine cars in the gangways, the click of tools along the
coal measures--these and kindred sounds have an eerie and phantasmal
quality in the great dark. Voices are choked and muffled when men
speak, and speech in the coal world is limited to essential directions
and conferences; laughter is rarely heard. Indeed, a particular gravity
marks the coal miner, and he does not always lose it when he emerges
into sunlight. The hazard of his trade and the gloom in which he
labours under the crust of the spinning globe numb any joy he might
take in his own skill.
This life in the earth was not to Joe’s liking, and he had never
expected to return to it. Love of Wayne Craighill alone had brought
him back to the pit; otherwise the pitcher’s box or a chauffeur’s
seat would have claimed him. And to-day, with Jean vanishing into an
unknown world and Wayne in Pittsburg, whence--there was no telling--he
might not return, Joe’s outlook on life partook of the surrounding
gloom, and he was disposed to deal severely with his labourer, a clumsy
Austrian who was forever getting in the way and mislaying tools. Joe
was a skilled hand, which is to say that he knew the hundred and one
things that expert miners know, and the trick of clean, expeditious and
safe mining. His “shots” were lucky this morning, and by noon he had
shaken down his required tonnage.
As he waited for his butty to finish, Joe lounged down the gangway. He
was a social being and he found solace in watching the twinkling lamps
of other workmen along the black corridor.
Craig, the engineer, and the fire boss passed on a round of inspection
and asked him if he had seen any fresh traces of squeezing or of gas.
Both had been observed lately in the colliery, and it had even been
said that a general subsidence was in progress throughout the wide,
honeycombed acreage of the Florence property. In every great colliery
there are frequent disquieting rumours, and a collapse rarely comes
without intimations familiar to the sophisticated eye and ear, and Joe
was not alarmed.
He confirmed the fears of the engineer to-day by his own testimony.
The “working” of the pillars in his own neighbourhood had increased
within twenty-four hours, as marked by chipping. The vein above, which
was mined simultaneously, was crowding the supports of the lower vein;
in remoter places there had been complete subsidence. A car-load of
timbers roared by, sent forward to prop the roof at points where the
danger had become acute. The explosion of his butty’s last shot
boomed dully behind, and Joe continued on a little farther. There was
a feeling of panic in the air. Men hurried by in the gloom, talking
excitedly, but he felt no fear; his experience of a larger world had
made him impatient of the ignorance of many of the men who spent their
time delving underground. Most of their accidents were due, he knew,
to their own carelessness. He would himself take a look at the farther
workings where the squeeze had become critical. A trip of cars bearing
a timber gang rumbled by. He hugged the wall to allow it to pass, and
yelled at the retreating workmen derisively. His curiosity was now
piqued, and he went on, in the conceit of his own superior wisdom,
toward the centre of the disturbed area.
A foreman with a crowd of men at his heels went by at a run, but he
chaffed them on their alarm. They had been ordered out, he had learned,
by the engineer.
“There’s some men working in the new gangway back there!” one of the
panic-stricken miners shouted.
“I’ll get ’em out!” cried Joe. “Give me that lamp.”
He exchanged caps with a man who had a safety lamp and ran up the
gangway. He began to realize that the alarm was not without reason. He
paused once and sniffed the air, and held his lamp to the coal wall in
various places, without finding traces of gas: but the evidences of
squeeze became more and more apparent as he penetrated farther into
the workings. He had volunteered to get the men out of the new gangway,
and he was now intent upon fulfilling this promise. The conditions were
serious, but the overchanging strata might adjust themselves without a
general collapse; or even if the catastrophe were inevitable it might
not come for days or weeks.
He had reached a region whose lines were strange to him, and the
cracking and splintering were more prevalent; but the flow of air was
good and he kept on. He saw faint lights ahead, the lamps of the men he
sought; they had taken warning of their own senses and were retreating
toward the shaft.
“We left a man back there--a fall of slate caught him,” shouted one.
“Don’t leave him in there. There’s plenty of time,” Joe yelled; but
they scampered by, huddled together in their fear.
He crowded into the opening of the new gangway and peered about. In
a moment he heard the moans of the injured man and crawled to where
he lay. His body was half covered by débris, and hearing Joe he cried
out in a strange tongue for help. A great slab of slate lay across
his back, and this Joe proceeded to lift by the aid of a crowbar. The
sounds of the straining of the crust grew less ominous for a time, and
as Joe strove to free the prisoner he had no fear of being unable to
escape. So long as the gangway was not blocked by falling rock and the
air supply continued good, it would be merely a matter of time to reach
the shaft and safety.
Perhaps ten minutes passed before he had moved the heavy slate, but
when the miner was quite free he could not rise, and when Joe had
lifted him to his feet his legs seemed paralyzed. He was an old man--a
Pole--who begged Joe in his meagre English not to leave him.
“You can’t walk, partner; I guess you got to ride out,” said Joe. He
got down on his knees and drew the crippled miner across his back,
supporting him by the legs, and crawled out into the main gangway. It
was as dark as pitch, and the oppressive silence continued; there was
in it now something unearthly that struck Joe ominously, but he hurried
with his burden down the long tunnel. He could stand nearly upright,
but the tramway was rough and covered with particles of coal, and his
progress was slow. He was aware that the clasp of the injured man’s
arms on his shoulders relaxed suddenly, and as, with the loss of his
hold his body slipped back, Joe laid him down in the tramway and held
the lamp to his face. The man was quite dead.
Satisfied of this, Joe sprang to his feet and on the instant the walls
of the earth about him shook with a mighty commotion. Just behind him
the tunnel shut with a sharp snap as of a monster’s jaws, and the
expelled air swept by him like a hurricane, knocking him down, and he
lay very still, with his face to the ground, expecting an inflow of
gas or an explosion. He judged from the sound that the collapse had
occurred some distance behind him, and as he lay coughing in the dust
he heard the thunder and rumble of other convulsions of the earth at
more remote points. The driving blast of air had extinguished his lamp
but he thrust out his hands and found himself quite free. He had lost
his sense of direction, but crawled along the tramway to the body of
the dead miner and got his bearings and again started toward the shaft.
He had gone about forty yards when he began stumbling upon débris; in
ten yards more a wall of rock and slate rose before him.
He missed, now, the current of sweet air that had seemed to continue
after the first shock, and he suddenly felt the bite of the dread gas
in his nostrils. He threw himself flat and waited, his face pressed
against his coat-sleeve. Waves of the foul air poured in upon him
from all sides of the black, narrow chamber that imprisoned him. He
staggered to his feet and beat with his hands on the grim barricade.
His ears rang with a horrible fierce clamour; before his eyes in the
dense dark flashed lights in weird, fantastic and unimaginable colours.
“They’re callin’ strikes on me,” he muttered, and blinded, choking and
fighting for breath he began crawling back--back, as though from that
smothering poison there could be any retreat.
* * * * *
Stories of the catastrophe met Wayne on his way up the valley, though
it was said that no lives had been lost; but when he reached Denbeigh
the officials had checked their pay-rolls and Joe and the Pole were the
only miners not accounted for. No one doubted that both had perished.
Repeated efforts had already been made to penetrate into the mine, and
volunteers were not lacking. Joe had been popular with all classes and
the fact that he had turned his back on safety to succour a fallen
comrade added poignancy to the general sorrow.
A huge crowd stood helplessly about the silent breaker, and when he had
gathered the latest news Wayne sought Craig at the superintendent’s
office, where the mine officials were conferring with the State
inspectors, and made himself known. It was not a time for explanations;
Wayne bent with them over the blue-prints of the workings.
“We’ll try getting in through the upper slope as soon as it’s safe,”
said the engineer. “It’s all to the bad down there--I’ve gone myself as
far as possible, and some of my men were knocked out by the gas and had
to be carried out.”
“But the men may be alive--and one of them is my friend.”
The engineer looked at Craighill curiously. This was not the Wayne
Craighill he remembered from his days at the “Tech,” and not the man
he had heard of from time to time as dissolute and worthless. But
Wayne had taken his own courses at the Institute, and on technical
matters used the terminology of the mines; but the engineer shook his
head at Wayne’s suggestions. They were interesting, but impracticable.
The small loss of life was miraculous, considering the extent of the
collapse; there was much cause for gratitude, and the engineer’s chief
concern, it was clear, was to save the property of his employers.
“There are two men down there; they may not be dead,” Wayne insisted.
“If they weren’t crushed to death, they have been smothered by gas or
maybe drowned,” declared the engineer.
“Work only from the upper slope--turn every air fan you can get in
there--every fan in the valley, if necessary, and you can do it. Those
men must be about there,” and he indicated a point on the blue-print.
“From the stories of the men who met Joe going toward the new gangway
you can hit pretty close to the place where the fall stopped him.”
“But it might be weeks.”
“So it might. I will do it in less time if you will help me.”
“But the cost of doing it your way----”
“I will pay for it myself.”
“My superiors----”
“I will attend to them. I will pay the bills. Get every man you can use
and every fan and pump in the district.”
A big price to pay for the bodies of two dead men, they said in the
valley when the work had been begun; and the miners who had seen the
big teamster patiently going about his work a few days before did
not understand at once how he had become a leading figure in the
place--commanding, directing, himself labouring ceaselessly, to gain
ingress to the huge, black, poisonous cavern.
It was not until the fifth day that they broke into the barricade
of the lower slope, whose walls still menaced, and where wholesome
air could only be coaxed by prodigious effort; and Wayne was first
of all into the tomb where Joe had died. He found him lying with one
arm thrown across the body of the broken-backed Pole he had tried
to save. It seemed that in the hour of his death he had thus sought
companionship--Joe, who had loved light and life and the ways of cities
and the haunts of men.
Men came from far to do honour to the poor, blackened body of Joe
Denny, who had come into kinship with all heroic dead, and they buried
him--it was Wayne’s idea--beside the friendless Pole in the fairest
spot the town commanded. Mrs. Blair came with Jean, and Walsh and
Wingfield were there, too--and Paddock read the office for the dead.
But this was not enough, and at the end the minister stood beside Joe’s
grave and spoke to the great throng of the beauty of the life that had
gone out, of the nobility of its sacrifice and the glory of it, so that
eyes were wet that had never known tears. And when he had finished,
as the sun dipped low behind the hills, he raised his hands above the
crowd and blessed them, and it seemed that a great peace fell upon the
world.