Collection 1980 - Yondering (v5.0) (8 page)

I never worked in a coal mine, only in hard-rock mines in the West, in one copper mine, in several silver, lead, and zinc or gold mines. Often several minerals were found in the same mine. In some silver or copper mines enough gold is found to pay the expense of mining. I was never an expert miner, although I’ve worked with a stopper. Usually they had me tramming or on the business end of a muck stick (shovel), and at the latter, I always felt I need take second place to no man. (I was probably wrong.) I was also a better than fair hand with a double jack (sledgehammer)
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In the larger mines we usually came out to the station to eat our lunches and to wait when the shift was over to let the miners count their shots. Those were great times for me, as many of the older miners had worked the boom camps such as Tonopah, Goldfield, Rawhide, Cripple Creek, Leadville, Central City, and Virginia City. Resting time was also a time when they told stories or talked about characters they had known such as Ten-Day Murphy, Slasher Harrington, and Shorty Harris
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Shorty was always a favorite character of mine because of the rare sort of character he was. He made big mining discoveries but never cashed in on any of them, but at the end he was buried standing up at the bottom of Death Valley, and he would have liked that
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Boxing had always been a major interest of mine, and we had a tough old Irish miner there who had boxed a four-round exhibition with John L. Sullivan and several who had known Jack Dempsey when he was a saloon bouncer or worked in the mines. They had also seen him fight. And Malloy, Johnny Sudenberg, and some of the early fighters
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I met Jack briefly once when eating lunch in his New York restaurant but, never told him I’d fought in some of the same places or worked in the same mining camps
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There were miners there who had seen Joe Gans fight Battling Nelson for the world’s lightweight title in Goldfield. Joe Gans won on a foul in forty-two rounds
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There are still stories from those days that I must write and will write. There are ghost stories, fight stories, and even the story of a man who was going to raise the dead. He even invited everybody to come and see him do it
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T
HE TRICKLE OF sand ceased, and there was silence. Then a small rock dropped from overhead into the rubble beneath, and the flat finality of the sound put a period to the moment.

There was a heavy odor of dust, and one of the men coughed, the dry, hacking cough of miner’s consumption. Silence hung heavily in the thick, dead air.

“Better sit still.” Bert’s voice was quiet and unexcited. “I’ll make a light.” They waited, listening to the miner fumbling with his hand lamp. “We might dislodge something,” he added, “and start it again.”

They heard his palm strike the lamp, and he struck several times before the flint gave off the spark to light the flame. An arrow of flame leaped from the burner. The sudden change from the impenetrable darkness at the end of the tunnel to the bright glare of the miner’s lamp left them blinking. They sat very still, looking slowly around, careful to disturb nothing. The suddenness of the disaster had stunned them into quiet acceptance.

Frank’s breathing made a hoarse, ugly sound, and when their eyes found him, they could see the dark, spreading stain on his shirt front and the misshapen look of his broken body. He was a powerful man, with blond, curly hair above a square, hard face. There was blood on the rocks near him and blood on the jagged rock he had rolled from his body after the cave-in.

There was a trickle of blood across Bert’s face from a scalp wound but no other injuries to anyone. Their eyes evaded the wall of fallen rock across the drift, their minds filled with awareness.

“Hurt bad?” Bert said to Frank. “Looks like the big one hit you.”

“Yeah,” Frank’s voice was low. “Feels like I’m stove up inside.”

“Better leave him alone,” Joe said. “The bleeding seems to be letting up, and there’s nothing we can do.”

Frank stared down at his body curiously. “I guess I’m hurt bad.”

He turned his head deliberately and stared at the muck pile. The cave-in had left a slanting pile of broken rock that reached toward them along the drift, cutting them off completely from the outside world, from light and air. Behind them was the face of the drift where Rody had been drilling. From the face of the drift to the muck pile was a matter of a few feet. Frank touched his dry lips with his tongue, remembering what lay beyond the cave-in.

It could scarcely have been the tunnel alone. Beyond it was the Big Stope. He reached over and turned out the light. The flame winked, and darkness was upon them.

“What’s the idea?” Joe demanded.

“Air,” Frank said. “There’s four of us, and there isn’t going to be enough air. We may be some time in getting out.”

“If we get out,” Joe said.

Rody shifted his weight on the rock slab where he was sitting, and they heard the rasp of the coarse denim. “How far do you reckon she caved, Frank?”

“I don’t know.” Then he said what they all feared. “Maybe the Big Stope went.”

“If it did,” Rody commented, “we might as well fold our cards and toss in our hands. Nobody can open that stope before the air gives out. There’s not much air in here for four men.”

“I warned Tom about that stope,” Joe said. “He had no right to have men working in here. That stope was too big in the first place. Must be a hundred feet across and no pillars, and down below there was too much weight on the stulls. The posts were countersunk into the laggin’ all of two inches, like a knife in butter.”

“The point is,” Frank said, “that we’re here. No use talking about what should have been. If any part of the stope went, it all went. There’s a hundred feet of tunnel to drive and timber, and workin’ in loose muck isn’t going to help.”

No one spoke. In the utter blackness and stillness of the drift they waited. There was no light, no sound. All had been cut off from them. Joe wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.

The blackness of a mine, the complete darkness, had always bothered him. At night in the outer world, no matter how clouded the sky, there is always some light, and in time the eyes will adjust, and a man can see—a little, at any rate. Here there was no light, and a man was completely blind.

And there was no sound. Only two hundred feet to the surface, yet it might as well have been two thousand. Two hundred feet of rock between them and the light, and that was the shortest route. By the drift or tunnel it was a quarter of a mile to the shaft where the cage could take them to the surface.

Above them was the whole weight of the mountain, before them the solid wall where they had been drilling, behind them the mass of the cave-in, thousands of tons of broken rock and broken timbers.

On the surface there would be tense, frightened men, frightened not for themselves but for those entombed below—and they could not know that anyone was alive.

The skip would be coming down now, bringing men to attack that enormous slide. On top men would be girding for the struggle with the mountain. Around the collar of the shaft men and equipment would be gathered to be sent below. Near the warehouse men would be standing, and some women, tense and white, wondering about those below. And the men who were buried alive could only wait and hope.

“Got a chew, Bert?” Joe asked.

“Sure.” Bert pushed his hand into the darkness, feeling for Joe’s. Their hands were steady. Joe bit off a chew, then passed the plug back, their hands fumbling in the dark again.

“We ain’t got a chance!” Rody exclaimed suddenly. “She might have caved clear to the station. Anyway, there’s no way they can get through in time. We ain’t got the air to last five hours even if they could make it that quick.”

“Forget it,” Joe said. “You wouldn’t do nothing but blow your money on that frowzy blonde in Kingman if you got free.”

“I was a sap for ever coming to work in this lousy hole,” Rody grumbled. “I was a sap.”

“Quit crabbing,” Bert said mildly. “We’re here now, and we’ve got to like it.”

There was a long silence. Somewhere the mountain creaked, and there was a distant sound of more earth sliding.

“Say”—Frank’s voice broke into the silence—“any of you guys work in Thirty-seven?”

“You mean that raise on the Three Hundred?” Bert asked. “Sure, I put in a couple of shifts there.”

“Aren’t we right over it now?”

“Huh?” Joe moved quickly. “How high up were they?”

“Better than ninety feet.” Frank’s tone was tight, strained. He held himself, afraid to breathe deep, afraid of the pain that would come. He was not sure what had happened to him. Part of his body was numb, but there was a growing pain in his belly as the shock wore off. He knew he was in deep trouble, and the chances of his getting out alive were small. He dreaded the thought of being moved, doubted if he would survive it.

“If that raise was up ninety feet”—Joe spoke slowly, every word standing alone—“then it ain’t more than ten feet below us. If we could dig down—”

“Ten feet? In that kind of rock?” Rody sneered. “You couldn’t dig that with a pick. Not in a week. Anyway, Thirty-seven ain’t this far along. We’re thirty yards beyond at least.”

“No,” Frank said, “I think we’re right over it. Anyway, it’s a chance. It’s more than we’ve got now.”

There was a long silence while they turned the idea over in their minds. Then Joe said, “Why a raise here? There’s no ore body here. That’s supposed to be further along.”

“Air,” Bert said. “They wanted some circulation.”

He got up, and they heard him fumbling for a pick. They heard the metallic sound as it was dragged toward him over the rock. “Better move back against the muck pile,” he said. “I’m digging.”

“You’re a sap,” Rody said. “You’ve got no chance.”

“Shut up!” Joe’s tone was ugly. “If you ain’t willing to try, you can go to hell. I want out of here.”

“Who’re you tellin’ to shut up?” They heard Rody rise suddenly. “I ain’t never had no use for you, you—”

“Rody!” Frank’s tone was harsh. “I’ve got a pick handle, and I know where you are. You go back where you were and keep your mouth shut. This is a hell of a time to start something.”

A light flared in Frank’s hand, and he hitched himself a little higher to see better. “That’s right, Bert. Start right there. Some of that top stuff will just flake off.”

Sweat beaded his strained white face. One big hand clutched a pick handle. Slowly, as if he had difficulty in moving them, his eyes shifted from face to face. He stared at Rody the longest. Rody’s stiff black hair curled back from a low forehead. He was almost as broad as Frank but thicker.

The sodden blows of the pick became the ticking clock of the passing time. It was a slow, measured beat, for the air was already thickening, and the blows pounded with the pulse of their blood. The flame of the carbide light ate into their small supply of air, burning steadily.

Bert stopped, mopping his face. “She’s damn hard, Frank. It’s going to take the point off this pick in a hurry.”

“We’ve got four of them,” Frank said. The whole front of him was one dark stain now. “I always carry a pick in a mine.”

Bert swung again, and they watched as the point of the pick found a place and broke back a piece of the rock. The surface had been partly shattered by the explosions as the drift was pushed farther into the mountain. It would be harder as they got down farther.

Frank’s big hands were relaxed and loose. He watched the swing of the pick, and when Joe got up to spell Bert, he asked him, “Anybody on top waitin’ for you?”

“Uh-huh.” Joe paused, pick in hand. “A girl.”

Rody started to speak but caught Frank’s eye and settled back, trying to move out of reach of the pick handle.

“My wife’s up there,” Bert said. “And I’ve got three kids.” He took off his shirt and mopped his body with it.

“There’s nobody waitin’ for me,” Frank said. “Nobody anywhere.”

“What d’you suppose they’re doing out there?” Bert said. “I’d give a lot to know.”

“Depends on how far it caved.” Joe leaned on the pick handle, gasping for breath. “Probably they are shoring her up with timbers around the station or at the opening into the Big Stope.”

He returned to work. He swung the pick, and a fragment broke loose; a second time and another fragment. Bert sat with his elbows on his knees, head hanging, breathing heavily. Frank’s head was tipped back against the rock, his white face glistening like wet marble in the faint light that reached him.

It was going to be a long job, a hard job, and the air was growing worse. Being active, they were using it more rapidly, but it was their only chance. Nobody could get through to them in time. As Joe worked, the sweat streamed from his body, running into his eyes and dripping from his chin. Slowly and methodically he swung the pick, deadened to everything but the shock of the blows. He no longer noticed what progress he made; he had become an automaton. Bert started up to relieve him, but Joe shook his head. He was started now, and it was like an infection in his blood. He needed the pick. He clung to it as to a life line.