The Plunderer Part 5

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

The big miner dropped down and began crawling through beneath the tons of balanced rock, which might give at any instant. Larger than his younger companion, he found it more difficult for his great shoulders persisted in brus.h.i.+ng at all times, and now and then he was compelled to squeeze himself through a narrow place that for a moment threatened to be impossible. Once a timber above him gave a little and a rock crowded down until only by exerting his whole force could he sustain it while he sc.r.a.ped his hips through from under it. Then as it descended between his legs he found one of them pinioned. He shut his teeth 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 was coming and was all right. He rested for an instant to regain breath, then made a desperate forward effort to find that his foot alone caught him. Again he rolled from side to side, and again he rested.

"Bill! Bill! For G.o.d's sake, what has happened?" he heard an agonized call from ahead.

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

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

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

As he spoke the final word he made another fiercely desperate effort from his new position. There was a ripping, searing pain along the length of his foot which he disregarded in that supreme attempt and suddenly he seemed to slide forward while back of him came a crunching, grinding noise as the disturbed rock which had pinioned him settled down into place. He crawled desperately forward. A light flared in his eyes and he felt strong hands thrust under his arm pits and was jerked bodily out to the floor of the drift. They fell together and the candle, falling with them, was extinguished. They were overwhelmed, as they lay there in the darkness, gasping, by a terrific cras.h.i.+ng impact as if the whole mountain had given way and at their very feet huge rocks thundered down. They crawled farther along on hands and knees and the falling rock seemed to pursue them malignantly. For an age it seemed as if the whole drift would give way as each set of timbers came to the strain and failed to hold. Then again all was still.

Strangling, sweating, spent, they got to the side wall and raised themselves up, gasping for fresh air. Their senses wavered and swooned in that half-suffocation and slowly they comprehended that they were still alive and that the dust was settling. "Are you all right?" they called to each other in acute unison, their voices betraying a great apprehension, and then, rea.s.sured for the instant, they sagged weakly against the walls and each reached out to find the other. Their hands met and clasped fervently and, again in unison, they said, "Thank G.o.d!"

A match spluttered dimly through the dark and dust-clogged air, a candle slowly took flame and they looked at each other. Bill was leaning against the wall, weakly, and trying to recover his strength.

A tattered trousers leg clung above his bared leg and foot where he had wrenched himself loose from the rock, and torn his boot away in so doing. Along the length of the white flesh was a flaring line of red, where the point of rock had cut deeply when he made that last desperate struggle to escape. He dropped to the floor and clutched his wound with his hands while d.i.c.k, almost with a moan, thrust his candlestick into a timber and savagely tore his s.h.i.+rt off and rent it into 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, old partner?"

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

In their thankfulness for the last escape they had almost forgotten the fact that their situation was still almost hopeless, and that perhaps the speedy end would have been preferable to one more agonizing, more slow, to come. They got to their feet at last and hobbled forward, the big man resting half his weight on his friend's shoulder and making slow progress. Again they were centered on the faint hope that beyond was some sort of opening, because now they knew but too well that their retreat was effectually cut off. If there was no opening ahead they were doomed. They consulted the plan again and went 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 of solid stone where the prospectors had finished!

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

"Yes. That's back there about fifty feet," d.i.c.k a.s.sented, finding that it required an effort to steady his voice. "The other one is behind that barrier."

They looked at each other, reading the same thought. They had but one more chance and that was almost futile; for the plans indicated that the side drift extended but a score or so of yards and had then been abandoned. They felt their feet faltering when they turned into it, dreading the end, dreading the revelation that must tell them they were to die in this limited burrow in the hills. But courageously they tried to a.s.sume an air of confidence. They did not speak as they progressed, each dreading that instant when he would again face an inexorable barrier. They counted their steps as they went, to themselves. They came to the twentieth, twenty-first, twenty-second, and were peering fixedly ahead. Together they stopped and turned toward each other. Dimly in the faintly thrown light of the candle beams, they could see it, the dusky gray ma.s.s where hope had pictured a continuing blackness. The wall leered at them as they stood there panting, despairing, desperate as trapped animals. Their imaginations told them the end.

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

"But it won't take long, Bill," d.i.c.k replied. "The air, you know. It can'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 they stopped in their tracks and shouted. Bill suddenly loosened his hold on the younger man's shoulder and began hopping forward, and the light threw huge, grotesque, strangely moving shadows on the wall ahead of them. d.i.c.k ran after him, crowding on his heels and shouting meaningless hopes. Abruptly they came to a right-angle drift, and then, but a few yards down it, they discovered an upraise, crude and uncared-for, but climbing into the higher darkness, and down this there streamed fresh air.

It was such a one as prospectors make, having here and there a pole with cleats to serve as a ladder, then ascending at an incline which, though difficult, was not impossible, and again reverting to rocky footholds at the sides. Up this d.i.c.k boosted his partner, thrusting a shoulder beneath his haunches and straining upward with the exultation of reaction. They were saved! He knew it! The fresh air told that story to their experienced nostrils. Up, up, up they clambered for a long slanting distance and then fell out on the floor of another drift, at whose end was a shadowy light. Again they hobbled down a long length, ever approaching their goal. Bill stopped and leaned against 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 was opened for the second time here. They didn't complete the plans because they knew the old work was useless. d.i.c.k, we've been through some pretty hard times together and had some narrow shaves; but I don't care for many more like that! Come on. Help me out. I want you to take a look and see if my head is any whiter than it was at nine o'clock this mornin' when we went into that other hole."

CHAPTER V

THE AGED ENGINEER

The sunlight was good to see again--good as only sunlight can be when men have not expected ever again to be enlivened by its glory. They were astonished at the shortness of the time of their imprisonment.

They had lived years in dread thought, and but a few hours in reality.

They had suffered for the spans of lives to find that the clock had imperturbably registered brief intervals. They had played the gamut of dread, terror, and anguish, to learn how trivial, after all, was the completed score.

"I think that will do," said d.i.c.k, with a sigh of relief, as he straightened up from bandaging Bill's leg. "The st.i.tches probably hurt some, but aside from a day's stiffness I don't think you will ever know it happened."

"Won't eh?" rumbled the patient. "Sure, the leg's all right; but it ain't bruised limbs a man remembers. They heal. You can see the scars on a man's legs, but only the Lord Almighty can see those on his mind, and they're the only ones that last. d.i.c.k, now that it's all over, I ain't ashamed to tell you that there was quite a long spell down there underground when I thought over a heap of things I might have done different if I'd had a chance to do 'em over again. And, boy, I thought quite a little bit about you! It didn't seem right that a young fellow like you, with so much to live for, should be snuffed out down there in that black place, where the whole mountain acted as if it was chasin' us, step by step, to wipe us off the slate."

He stood on his feet and limped across the room to his coat in an effort to recover himself, and d.i.c.k, more stirred than he cared to admit by the affection in his voice, tramped out to the little porch in front and pretended to whistle a tune, that proved tuneless. He looked at the little valley around the shoulder of the mountain at the head of the ravine, which they had so carelessly invaded that morning, and shuddered. Inside he heard Bill moving around, and then after a time his steps advancing stiffly, and turned to see him coming out.

"I think," he said smiling, "that we're ent.i.tled to a rest for to-day.

By to-morrow you'll be all right again, unless I'm mistaken. Let's put in the day looking over these old records."

Bill grinned whimsically and a.s.sented. He could keep quiet when he had to; but the day following found him again restlessly investigating anything that seemed worth the trouble and the afternoon saw him standing looking upward toward the same valley of dread.

"I've got over it a little," he said to the younger man, "and do you know I'm right curious to go over there and see how big that rock was that tumbled into the mouth of the old shaft. Want to come along?"

d.i.c.k had sustained that same curiosity, so together they made their way to the beginning of the previous day's disaster. They chilled when they saw how effectually they had been caught; for the bowlder completely filled the entrance to the shaft and would have proved a hopeless trap had they tried to escape by burrowing around its edge.

It rested, as they had discovered, on solid rock, and its course down the hillside was clearly marked.

"What gets me," said the veteran miner, "is what could have started it. I noticed it up there when we went in. It was sort of poised on that little ledge you see, and it didn't have to roll more than thirty feet."

He began to climb up the bowlder's well-defined path, and suddenly called to his partner with a hoa.r.s.e shout, needlessly loud.

"Come up here," he said. "That bowlder never started itself! Some one helped it. What do you think of that?"

d.i.c.k hastily climbed up to his side and looked. The rock around was bare of growth or covering, so that no footprints could be discerned; but a rock rested there that had plainly been used as a fulcrum. The surface beneath it was weather beaten and devoid of moisture, which indicated that it had lain there but a short time, probably only from the time of its mission on the preceding day. They found themselves standing up and staring around at the surrounding hills as if seeking sight of the man who had attempted to murder them.

"We'll find out about this!" Bill exclaimed. "Good thing we know enough to look."

He limped to the edge of the barren spot and began to circle around its edge, while d.i.c.k did likewise, following his example. They found a footprint at last and took the trail. It did not lead them far before they came to a path on top of the hill that was so well used that any attempt to follow it was useless; but, intent on seeing where it led, they walked along it as it led straight away toward the timber.

Scarcely inside the cool shadows of the tamaracks they paused and looked at each other understandingly; for thrown carelessly into a clump of laurel was a long, freshly cut sapling, that had been used as a lever. They recovered it from its resting place and inspected it.

There was no doubt whatever that it had been the instrument of motion.

Its scarred end, its length, and all, told that the man who had used it had carried it this far to discard it, believing his murderous work done.

"I noticed that rock, as I said before," declared Bill. "You noticed how round it was on one side? Well, a man could take this lever, and by teetering on it until he got it in motion, finally upset it. The chances were a hundred to one it would land in the mouth of the shaft.

And it's a cinch, it seems to me, he wouldn't do that for fun."

d.i.c.k shook his head gravely.

"But who could it be?" he insisted. "Who is there that could want us out of the way badly enough to murder us? No one here knows or cares a continental about us! It seems incredible. It must have been sheer carelessness of some restless loafer who wanted to see the rock roll."

Yet they knew that the theory was scarcely tenable. They walked farther along the path and found that it was one used by workmen, evidently, leading at last down the steep mountain side and across to the Rattler. They surmised that it must be one made by the timber cutters for the mine, and learned, in later months, that the surmise was correct.

"It makes one thing certain," Bill declared that evening when, candidly discouraged, they sat on the little porch in front of the office they had made their home and discussed the day's findings. "And that is that until we get a force to work here, if we ever do, it ain't a right healthy place for us. Of course with a gang of men around there wouldn't be a ghost of a chance for any enemy to get us; but until then we'd better watch out all the time. I begin to believe that about everything that's happened to us here has been the work of somebody who ain't right fond of us. Wish we could catch him at it once!"

There was a grim undercurrent in his wish that left nothing to words.

They remembered that in all the time since their arrival they had seen no other human being, the Rattler men having left them as severely alone as if they had been under quarantine.