Part 7 (1/2)
Jim flushed at the implied compliment. ”You're right, Bud, I will.”
”Great little papoose, ain't he?” said Bud, turning in his saddle before his starting rush. ”Makings of a man there, all right. The boys in town are dead stuck on him. I'll have to give a complete history when I get back. I must get a gait on, or I'll have Uncle Sammy on my neck again--inspector started out with me this morning.”
”The devil he did!” cried Jim indignantly, well knowing the hards.h.i.+ps and dangers of the big rider's route.
”Oh, it's all right!” replied Bud with a wave of his hand. ”Come out fine. When the lad first told me he'd been sent out to see why the mails was so late on this line, I told him I'd show him right on the spot, but he said there was no use getting hot about it, as he was only doing his duty, so I quieted down.
”He was a decent sort of feller. I thought to myself before we got under way, 'Now, there won't nothing happen this day--everything'll go as smooth and slick as grease, and this feller will report that I'm sojering,' that's the way it usually works, you know. But this time I played in luck.
”Two miles out of town we ran into a wild-eyed gang from somewhere, who was going to make us dance. We didn't dance, and I'll say for that inspector that he stood by me like a man, but he was awful sick at his stomach later on from the excitement.
”Next thing, the bridge was down at Squaw Creek, and we swum her. He'd have gone down the flume, if I hadn't got hold of his bridle. 'Nice mail route, this,' says he, as he got ash.o.r.e. 'Oh, you'd like it,' says I, 'if you got used to it.' I'd begun to wonder what was next myself. Ain't many people swimming Squaw Creek, as you perhaps know.
”Well, next was about ten mile along, just before you come to the old Tin-cup Camp. We was pa.s.sing the bluff there, and all of a sudden, rip, thump, biff! Down comes what looked like the whole side a-top of us. It weren't though. It was only a cinnamon had lost his balance, leaning over too far to see what we was. That bear landed right agin brother inspector's horse, and brother inspector's horse tried to climb a tree.
Inspector himself fell a-top of the bear. I da.s.sent shoot, for the devil himself couldn't have told which was inspector and which bear. Finally bear shakes himself loose and telescopes himself up the canon, the worst scared animile in the country. 'If you'll ketch my horse, I'll amble back again,' says the inspector. 'I've investigated this route pretty thorough, and find it's just as you say. Lamp-posts'll do me all right for a while.' Come out fine, didn't it?
”Whish there! Untie yourself, you yaller bone-heap!” And the mail was a quarter of a mile up the trail.
Jim pondered the information concerning Ches carefully, only to adhere to his original determination. He could not see any way in which the boy would be benefited by hearing the news. Still, the miner hated anything that savored of concealment or deception.
”I wish Anne was here to help me,” he thought; ”she'd know what to do.”
He sat long, looking down, his hands clasped about his knees, drinking with old Tantalus. But the reverie ended as it always did--in action.
There was nothing for it but the claim. Success there meant success everywhere.
It was the knowledge that Anne, the boy, and all he wished to do for both depended on the pay-streak which had urged him to such a fury of effort.
His carelessness of his own life, that led him to slap his timbering up any way, was born of that same fury. And the consequences came like most consequences, without a moment's warning.
It was a still and beautiful noon. Ches had pulled out the last car before dinner, and started for the cabin.
A curious groaning and snapping from the tunnel halted him. It was the giving of the tortured timbers. On the heels of that came a dull, crus.h.i.+ng roar. A blast of dust shot from the tunnel-mouth, like smoke from a cannon, preceded by a shock that nearly threw the boy off his feet.
Then all was still again. The sun shone as brilliantly as before, blazing down upon the ghastly face of a little boy, who, after one heart-broken cry of ”Jim! Oh, Jim's killed!” sank down upon the ground, chewing the fingers thrust in his mouth, that the pain might make the black wave keep its distance.
For Ches knew that he was alone; that there was no human being within miles to help the man caught in the hand of that mischance but himself, so frantically willing, but so impotent.
”I must git me wits tergedder--I must!” and down came the teeth with all the strength of the boy's jaw. ”Oh, what will I do? What will I do?” The little head waved from side to side in its agony, and a sudden sob struck him in the throat.
After that one small weakness rose Ches Felton, hero. To the mouth of the tunnel he went. Above the tumbled pile of dirt and timber ran a sort of pa.s.sage, between it and the roof.
A way along which a boy might crawl and find out if all the frames were down--to which the silence of the tunnel gave a bitter a.s.sent--or if by some most lucky chance one or two had held, and Jim be safe within.
Ches climbed to the top and thrust his head into the gloom. ”Jim!” he called, ”Jim!” No answer.
Before him lay the ruin of his pardner's work. It was over this that his path lay, as deadly dangerous a path as could be found. The slightest disturbing of the roof above might bring down a thousand tons of dirt upon the one who ventured, slowly and hideously to crush his life out, there in the dark, beyond sight and sound of the cheerful world without.
With this knowledge before him, and his inborn fear of the dark hole, as daunting as the hand of death itself, he took his soul in his gripe, and wormed his way within.
Sometimes his back grazed a stone in the roof, and the touch of white-hot iron could not have been so terrible; sometimes a falling stone near him would make his heart leap and stop as he waited for the hill above to follow. Foot by foot he made it, twisting around the end of a post, scooping out the dirt most cautiously where the hole was too small for even his slight body.