The Plunderer, Page 4

  CHAPTER IV

  THE BLACK DEATH

  It took seven days of exploration to reveal the condition of the Crossof Gold, and each night the task appeared more hopeless. The steelpipe line, leading down for three miles of sinuous, black length, froma reservoir high up in the hills, had been broken here and theremaliciously by some one who had traversed its length and with a heavypick driven holes into it that inflicted thousands of dollars ofexpense.

  The Pelton wheels in the power house, neglected, were rusted in theirbearings, and without them and the pipe line there could be noelectric power on which the mill depended. The mill had been strippedof all smaller stuff, and its dynamos had been chipped with an axuntil the copper windings showed frayed and useless. The shoes of thehuge stamps were worn down to a thin, uneven rim, battering on brokensurfaces. The Venners rattled on their foundations, and the plateshad been scarred as if by a chisel in the hands of a maniac.

  The blacksmith's tunnel--the tunnel leading off from the level--wasblocked by fallen timbers where a belt of lime formation cut across;and fragments of wood, splintered into toothpick size, had been thrownout when the mountain settled to its place. But a short distance fromthe main shaft, which was a double compartment, carrying two cages upand down, in every level the air was foul down to the five-hundredfoot, and below that the mine was filled with water.

  Patiently Dick and the veteran explored these windings as far as theymight until the guttering of their candles warned them that the airwas loaded with poison, and often they retreated none too soon toscale the slippery, yielding rungs of the ladder with dizzy heads.Expert and experienced, they were puzzled by what was disclosed.Either the mine had yielded exceedingly rich streaks and had been, inmining parlance, "gophered," or else the management had been asfoolish as ever handled a property.

  In the assay-house, where the furnaces were dust-covered, the scalecase black with grime, and the floor littered with refuse crucibles,cupels, mufflers, and worn buckboards, they discovered a bundle ofold tablets. Almost invariably these showed that the assays had beenmade from samples that would have paid to work, but this alone gavethem no hope.

  But this was not all. A mysterious enmity seemed to pursue all theirefforts. Yet its displays were unaccountable for by natural causes. Ontheir arrival at the mine they found water, fresh and clear, pipedinto every cabin, the mess-house, and the superintendent's quarters.They traced it back and discovered a small lake formed and fed by alarge spring on what was evidently land of the mine. It suddenlyfailed them, and proved unwholesome. An investigation of the tinyreservoir disclosed masses of poisonous weeds in the water. Theydecided that they must have been blown there after their arrival,cleared the supply and yet, but two days later, when there had been nowind of more than noticeable violence, the weeds were there again.They abandoned their water supply for the time being and resorted tothe stream at the bottom of the canyon.

  A day later one of their burros died mysteriously, and Bill, puzzled,said he believed that it had lost its sense of smell and eatensomething poisonous. On the day following the other died, apparentlyfrom the same complaint. The veteran miner grieved over them as forfriends.

  "I've been acquainted with a good many of 'em," he said, sorrowfully,"but I never knew two that had finer characters than these two did.They were regular burros! No cheaters--just the square, open andabove-board kind, that never kicked without layin' back their ears togive you warnin' and never laid down on the trail unless they wantedto rest. The meanest thing a burro or a man can do is to dievoluntarily when you're dependin' on him, or when he owes you work ormoney. So it does seem as if I must have been mistaken in these two,after all, because we may need 'em."

  Dick did not smile at his homily, for he caught the significance ofit, that the Croix d'Or would have to make a better showing than theyhad so far discovered to warrant them in opening it. They had comealmost to the end of the investigations possible. They scanned plansand scales in the office to familiarize themselves with the property,and there was but one portion of it they had not visited. That was ashaft which had been the "discovery hole," where the first find of orehad been made. And it was this they entered on the day when Fateseemed most particularly unkind. Yet even Fate appeared to relent, inthe end, through one of those trifling afterthoughts which lead men todo the insignificant act. They had prepared everything for theventure. They had an extra supply of candles, chalk for making acourse mark, sample bags for such pieces of ore as might interestthem, and the prospectors' picks and hammers when they started out.They were a hundred yards from the office when the younger manhesitated, stopped and turned back.

  "I've an idea we might need those old maps," he said. "We haven't goneover them very much and they might come in handy."

  Bill protested, but despite this Dick went back to the quarters andgot them. They were crude, apparently, compared with the later workwhen competent engineers had opened the mine in earnest; but doubtlesshad served their purpose. The men came to the mouth of the old shaftwhich had been loosely covered over with poles, and around which athicket of wild blackberry bushes had sprung up in stunted growth. Anhour's work disclosed the black opening and a ladder in a fair stateof preservation. They lowered a candle into the depths and saw that itburned undimmed, indicating that the air was pure, and then descendedcautiously, testing each rung as they went. The shaft was not morethan fifty feet deep, and they found themselves standing on the bottomand peering off into a drift which had been crudely timbered and hadfallen in here and there as the unworked ground had settled.

  "There doesn't seem to be much of anything here except some starvedquartz," Bill said, staring at the wall after they had gone in somethirty or forty feet, and they had come to a place where the lagginghad dropped away. He caught another piece of the half-rotted timberingand jerked it loose for a better inspection. It gave with a dullcrack, then, immediately after, and seeming almost an echo, there wasa terrific rumble, and a report like the explosion of a huge gun backin the direction of the shaft. Their candles flickered in the airimpact, and for an instant they feared that the roof was coming downon them to crush them out of all resemblance to human beings.

  They turned and ran toward the shaft. A few loose pebbles and piecesof rock were dripping from above like a shower of porphyry. For aninstant they dared not step out, but stood inside the drift, waitingfor what might happen and staring at each other with set faces exposedin the still flickering light. They had said nothing up to this time,being under too great stress to offer other than sharp exclamations.

  "Sounds like that shaft had given way!" the veteran exclaimed. "If ithas----"

  He leaned forward and looked into Dick's face.

  "If it has," the latter took up, "we are in a bad predicament."

  They stood tensed and anxious until the pebbles stopped falling and asilence like that of a tomb, so profound as to seem thick and dense,invaded the hollows; then Dick started out into the shaft. He felt arestraining hand on his arm.

  "Wait a minute, boy," the elder man said. "You're the owner here. It'sdangerous. I ought to be the one to go first and find out what'shappened. You wait inside the drift."

  But Dick shook his hand off and stepped out to look upward. A denseblackness filled what should have been a space of light. This he hadpartially expected from the fact that when they came out toward theshaft there had been no sign of day; but he had not anticipated such acomplete closing of the opening.

  "Lord! We're buried in!" came an exclamation from behind him, and hefelt a sudden sinking of the heart.

  "I'll go easily till I come to it," he said, his voice soundingstrained and loud although he had spoken scarcely above a whisper."You stand clear so that if anything gives, Bill, you won't becaught."

  The elder miner would have protested, but already he was slowly andcautiously climbing the ladder. Step by step he ascended, holding thelight above his head to discover the place where the shaft had givenway, and then Bill, standing anxiously below, heard a
harsh shout.

  "I think the ladder will bear your weight as well as mine. Come uphere."

  The big man climbed steadily upward until he stood directly beneaththe younger man's feet. He ventured an exclamation that was almost anoath.

  "Not the shaft at all," he said, an instant later. "It's just abowlder so big that it filled the whole opening. We're plugged andpenned in here like rats in a trap!"

  Dick took his little prospecting hammer and tapped the bowlder, atfirst gently, then with firmer strokes, and looked down at his partnerwith a distressed face.

  "Hear that?" he exclaimed, rather than questioned. "It's a big one,and solid. It sounds bad to me."

  For a minute they waved their candles round the edge, inspecting theresting place of the rock that had imprisoned them. Everywhere it wasset firmly. A fitted door could have been no more secure. Theyconsulted, and at last Bill descended and stepped back into theentrance to the drift to avoid falling stone, while the younger manattacked the edge beneath the bowlder, inch by inch, trying to findsome place where he could pick through to daylight. At last, his armwearied and the point of his prospecting hammer dulled, he rested.

  "Come down, Dick, and I'll take a spell," Bill called up from below,and he obeyed.

  The big miner, without comment, climbed up, and again the vault-likespace was filled with the persistent picking of steel on stone. For ahalf-hour it continued, and then, slowly, Bill descended. He sat downat the foot of the shaft, wiped the sweat from his face, thrust hiscandlestick in a crevice and rolled a cigarette before he saidanything, and then only as Dick started to the foot of the ladder.

  "It's no use," he said. "We're holed up all right. I picked cleararound the lower edge and there isn't a place where she isn't restingon solid rock. Nothing but dynamite could ever move that stone. Unlesswe can find some other way out we're----"

  He paused and Dick added the finishing word, "Gone!"

  "Exactly! No one knows we're here. No one comes to the mine. We're inthe old works which I don't suppose a man has been inside of in fiveor ten years, and the map shows that it doesn't connect with the otherones. Answer--the finish!"

  Dick pulled the worn and badly drawn plans from his pocket and thenlighted his own candle, indulging in the extravagance of two that hemight study the faint and smudged penciled lines.

  "Here, Bill," he said, pointing at the drawing. "These two side driftseach end in what are now sump holes. We've got to watch out for them.That makes it safe for us to take the main drift and see where itleads. The two end drifts evidently ran but a few feet and were thenabandoned. So, if these plans are any good, they, too, are safe, if wecan get into them."

  The elder miner peered at the plans and studied them. He stood up andblew out his candle. He thrust his hands into his pockets.

  "I've got three candles left," he said, "and I cain't just exactly saywhy I put that many in unless the Lord gave me a hunch we'd need 'em.How many you got!"

  "One in my pocket, and this."

  "Then we'd better move fast, eh?"

  They took a desperate chance on foul air and plunged down the drift,pausing only now and then when they came to the first side drifts tomake sure of their course. They were informed by the plans that theyhad barely three hundred feet to explore, yet they had gone evenfarther than that before they came to a halt, a threatening one, fordirectly ahead of them the timbering had given way, the shaft caved,and there seemed at first no opening through the debris.

  "Well, this looks pretty tough!" exclaimed Bill, stooping down andexamining the face of the barrier.

  His companion lighted his own candle and together they went over theface of the obstruction.

  "It looks to me as if we could open her up a little if we can shiftthis timber here and use it as a lever," he said, pointing to oneprojecting near the roof.

  "May bring the whole mountain down, but it's our only chance," agreedBill. "Here she goes. Stand back. No use in both of us getting it."

  He caught the end of the timber in his heavy hands, planted his feetfirmly on the floor and heaved. The big timber creaked, but did notgive. Again he planted himself and this time his great shouldersseemed to twist and writhe until the muscles cracked and then, with acrash, the barrier gave way. He sprang back with amazing quickness andthey ran back up the drift for twenty or thirty feet while the massagain readjusted itself and settled slowly into position. A cloud ofdust bellowed toward them, half-choking them with its gritty fineness,and then, in a minute, the air had cleared. They went cautiouslyforward.

  "Well, we got some farther, anyhow, unless she comes down while we'reworking through. We've got a hole to crawl into, and that'ssomething," the big miner asserted.

  Before he could say anything more Dick had crowded him to one side andwas entering the aperture. He had prevented his partner from takingthe first perilous chance. Painfully he made his way, while the manbehind listened with terrified apprehension; for none knew betterthan he the risk of that progress.

  "All right, but be careful," a voice came to him faintly from thedistance. "She's bad, but the air over here seems good. It's a closeshave."

  The big miner dropped down and began crawling through beneath the tonsof balanced rock, which might give at any instant. Larger than hisyounger companion, he found it more difficult for his great shoulderspersisted in brushing at all times, and now and then he was compelledto squeeze himself through a narrow place that for a moment threatenedto be impossible. Once a timber above him gave a little and a rockcrowded down until only by exerting his whole force could he sustainit while he scraped his hips through from under it. Then as itdescended between his legs he found one of them pinioned. He shut histeeth desperately to avoid shouting, and twisted sidewise, and back,to and fro, at the imminent danger of dislodging everything above him.He heard an anxious voice calling outside and replied that he wascoming and was all right. He rested for an instant to regain breath,then made a desperate forward effort to find that his foot alonecaught him. Again he rolled from side to side, and again he rested.

  "Bill! Bill! For God's sake, what has happened?" he heard an agonizedcall from ahead.

  "I'm all right, boy," he called back patiently. "Just keep away fromthe hole so I can get air. I'm--I'm just findin' some places a littletight."

  His reply did not seem to allay the solicitude of his companion, whocalled again, "Can I help you in any way?"

  "Only by keeping clear. I'll make another try. Stand clear so if shecomes down you won't be caught. If she does come--well--good-bye,Dick!"

  As he spoke the final word he made another fiercely desperate effortfrom his new position. There was a ripping, searing pain along thelength of his foot which he disregarded in that supreme attempt andsuddenly he seemed to slide forward while back of him came acrunching, grinding noise as the disturbed rock which had pinioned himsettled down into place. He crawled desperately forward. A lightflared in his eyes and he felt strong hands thrust under his arm pitsand was jerked bodily out to the floor of the drift. They felltogether and the candle, falling with them, was extinguished. Theywere overwhelmed, as they lay there in the darkness, gasping, by aterrific crashing impact as if the whole mountain had given way and attheir very feet huge rocks thundered down. They crawled farther alongon hands and knees and the falling rock seemed to pursue themmalignantly. For an age it seemed as if the whole drift would give wayas each set of timbers came to the strain and failed to hold. Thenagain all was still.

  Strangling, sweating, spent, they got to the side wall and raisedthemselves up, gasping for fresh air. Their senses wavered and swoonedin that half-suffocation and slowly they comprehended that they werestill alive and that the dust was settling. "Are you all right?" theycalled to each other in acute unison, their voices betraying a greatapprehension, and then, reassured for the instant, they sagged weaklyagainst the walls and each reached out to find the other. Their handsmet and clasped fervently and, again in unison, they said, "ThankGod!"

  A match spluttered d
imly through the dark and dust-clogged air, acandle slowly took flame and they looked at each other. Bill wasleaning against the wall, weakly, and trying to recover his strength.A tattered trousers leg clung above his bared leg and foot where hehad wrenched himself loose from the rock, and torn his boot away inso doing. Along the length of the white flesh was a flaring line ofred, where the point of rock had cut deeply when he made that lastdesperate struggle to escape. He dropped to the floor and clutched hiswound with his hands while Dick, almost with a moan, thrust hiscandlestick into a timber and savagely tore his shirt off and rent itinto strips. He stooped over and with hasty skill bandaged the wound.

  "It's not bad, I hope," he said, "but it does hurt, doesn't it, oldpartner?"

  "That's nothin'," bravely drawled the giant, striving to force a grinto his pain-drawn lips. "Don't worry now, boy! Think what might havehappened if I'd been there a minute or two longer, or if I couldn'thave got loose at all!"

  In their thankfulness for the last escape they had almost forgottenthe fact that their situation was still almost hopeless, and thatperhaps the speedy end would have been preferable to one moreagonizing, more slow, to come. They got to their feet at last andhobbled forward, the big man resting half his weight on his friend'sshoulder and making slow progress. Again they were centered on thefaint hope that beyond was some sort of opening, because now they knewbut too well that their retreat was effectually cut off. If there wasno opening ahead they were doomed. They consulted the plan again andwent forward. Abruptly they came to a halt, shutting their jaws hard.They had come to the end of the main drift and it was a blank wall ofsolid stone where the prospectors had finished!

  "Well, old man, there's still the two side drifts to examine," saidBill with a plain attempt to appear hopeful that did not in the leastdeceive the other.

  "Yes. That's back there about fifty feet," Dick assented, finding thatit required an effort to steady his voice. "The other one is behindthat barrier."

  They looked at each other, reading the same thought. They had but onemore chance and that was almost futile; for the plans indicated thatthe side drift extended but a score or so of yards and had then beenabandoned. They felt their feet faltering when they turned into it,dreading the end, dreading the revelation that must tell them theywere to die in this limited burrow in the hills. But courageously theytried to assume an air of confidence. They did not speak as theyprogressed, each dreading that instant when he would again face aninexorable barrier. They counted their steps as they went, tothemselves. They came to the twentieth, twenty-first, twenty-second,and were peering fixedly ahead. Together they stopped and turnedtoward each other. Dimly in the faintly thrown light of the candlebeams, they could see it, the dusky gray mass where hope had pictureda continuing blackness. The wall leered at them as they stood therepanting, despairing, desperate as trapped animals. Their imaginationstold them the end.

  "Well, old man"--Bill's voice sounded with exceptional softness--"theydidn't extend this drift any farther. All we can do now is to go upand sit down at the foot of it, and--wait!"

  "But it won't take long, Bill," Dick replied. "The air, you know. Itcan't last forever."

  They trudged forward for the few remaining yards and then, abruptly,the candle they were carrying gave a little flicker. This time theystopped in their tracks and shouted. Bill suddenly loosened his holdon the younger man's shoulder and began hopping forward, and the lightthrew huge, grotesque, strangely moving shadows on the wall ahead ofthem. Dick ran after him, crowding on his heels and shoutingmeaningless hopes. Abruptly they came to a right-angle drift, andthen, but a few yards down it, they discovered an upraise, crude anduncared-for, but climbing into the higher darkness, and down thisthere streamed fresh air.

  It was such a one as prospectors make, having here and there a polewith cleats to serve as a ladder, then ascending at an incline which,though difficult, was not impossible, and again reverting to rockyfootholds at the sides. Up this Dick boosted his partner, thrusting ashoulder beneath his haunches and straining upward with the exultationof reaction. They were saved! He knew it! The fresh air told thatstory to their experienced nostrils. Up, up, up they clambered for along slanting distance and then fell out on the floor of anotherdrift, at whose end was a shadowy light. Again they hobbled down along length, ever approaching their goal. Bill stopped and leanedagainst the side wall and voiced his exultation.

  "I know where we are," he exclaimed. "This is the blacksmiths' tunnel.They made that upraise following the ore, and that's why the mine wasopened for the second time here. They didn't complete the plansbecause they knew the old work was useless. Dick, we've been throughsome pretty hard times together and had some narrow shaves; but Idon't care for many more like that! Come on. Help me out. I want youto take a look and see if my head is any whiter than it was at nineo'clock this mornin' when we went into that other hole."