“I tell you—look out!”
“Look out hell! I’ll look out for you when you come down!” snarled
Smith. “You’ll get some more of the medicine you got awhile ago!”
“If you are alive,” Juan called back. And he suddenly snapped the jaws
of the bucket as it hung in the air. It was near Smith’s head and he
ducked. As the bucket swung away, Juan looked down and laughed aloud.
Smith clenched a great fist and shook it savagely. He stood undecided,
but Juan paid him no further attention and he presently turned back to
his work.
For ten minutes they worked, the one guiding the bucket, the other
cleaning the ash pan. And then the locomotive backed off the pit and
another took its place. The new engine stopped so that Smith was
compelled to stand at the edge of the gaping hole into which the bucket
was dropping.
From above Juan watched him, calculating. It was so easy to drop the
bucket on him, clutch him tight, and plunge him down beneath the dark
waters of the pit. It would not take long. A very few minutes and Sammee
would have a companion.
He thought of Sammee, and the laugh that had come from Smith when Sammee
died. Sudden rage swept him and he halted the bucket in mid-air and
started it on a swoop in the direction of the squat figure below.
Something stayed him. He checked the bucket, swung it back and dropped
it down beneath the waters. And as he did so, he fiercely berated
himself. It was so easy; might well be an accident.
While he turned the matter over in his mind, the bucket scooped the last
of the ashes from the pit bottom and came up half full. Juan dropped
them into the ash car and halted the bucket in mid-air. It was his last
chance. Not that night would another such opportunity occur.
They would probably be separated by yards in another few minutes. No
chance for an accident then. And when eight o’clock came, and he was on
the ground again, Smith might do as he promised—probably would.
Juan’s hands strayed over the controller handles. He tensed—but the
moment passed. He drew a deep breath.
“No!” he muttered to himself in Spanish. “I will not kill!”
And he lowered the bucket to swing the section in place. The jaws closed
on the I-beam, gripped; the cables tautened and the heavy section arose.
High Juan swung it. And as he slowed it in the air, one edge dipped
down. Down it went, towards Smith. Juan saw, and leaned from the window
to shout a warning.
Smith looked up, saw the great section in the air above him, tilting
down, down, upon him. Already nervous, he sprang back in alarm. His heel
slipped between the two slats and caught. He tripped, fell backward, and
his head struck against the great steel trailer casting of the engine.
He uttered no sound. His body went inert; he rolled to one side and
slipped into the brooding waters of the pit with a sullen splash. The
heavy rubber boots he wore carried him under at once.
Juan leaned far out and gazed at the swirl in the dark waters below. It
subsided; the floating blanket of cinders drew together and heaved in
diminishing swells over the spot. The sound of a tolling bell from a
departing locomotive came muffled through the eery hush of the early
morning. At the sound Juan shuddered and crossed himself.
“Dios! It is the will of God!” he said to himself fiercely.
* * * * *
Five minutes, three minutes, and it would all be over. No one had seen.
He had but to turn his head, to light a cigarette, nay, just to scramble
out across the crane and spend futile minutes summoning help, and the
thing would be done.
He looked down at the black water, and suddenly a shudder wrenched him
and he cried:
“Santa Maria! I can not!”
He jerked back inside and his hands flashed to the controls. With a
lurch the crane rumbled down the pit. The bucket dropped, and while it
was descending the jaws opened and allowed the heavy section to fall the
last five feet.
Back over the opening the crane sped. The last tiny tremor on the
surface had smoothed out. The water lay black and silent below.
Juan leaned out, suddenly cool. The crane stopped and the bucket
dropped. He watched it disappear beneath the surface. Somewhere below
was Smith. Somewhere, and the black water was thirty feet deep!
It was Juan, not the bucket, who reached down with a great mailed fist.
Deep he groped, to the very bottom. Slowly, skilfully, that he might not
injure with the power of his might, he felt about. The world of men, the
shops, faded as the whole of his mind centered on the bit of bottom deep
below.
With his cable-thewed muscles he groped, foot by foot. And at last he
was rewarded. Gently he closed the jaws. They gripped. He stayed them. A
motor overhead whirred. The wet, sleek cables slipped up out of the
water. The top of the bucket broke water. Juan leaned far out and
watched breathlessly. Up, first the pulley at the top, then the
half-opened jaws. Then—a dark object between the jaws.
Juan exhaled his bated breath in a rush of relief. He swung the bucket
to one side, laid the great bulk of Smith carefully on the slatwork
covering and then lifted the bucket and swung it to one side. He gazed
down at the sprawling figure for a moment and swallowed. And as he
turned to the ladder at his back and started for aid, he murmured
philosophically:
“Dios! It is the will of God!”
And the lone star looked down through the trap door overhead and blinked
approvingly.
[Notes on the Text: This story appeared in _Adventure Magazine_, January
15, 1928. It is believed to be in the public domain in the United
States; copyright status may differ in other countries.]