Camp Venture Part 34

But the driver was his own sufficient adviser as to how to overcome such obstacles as were met, and Tom was greatly interested to observe the skill and good judgment with which the man did this.

"There is science," he said, "in everything, even in driving a wagon over a rough mountain where there is no road."

But Tom got no response from the driver, who seemed a taciturn fellow, and who in fact never once spoke during the journey except to scold his mules with shocking profanity. Even when he decided to halt about noon to feed the animals, he said not one word to Tom, but simply stopped the wagon, unhitched the mules and gave them their food, hitching them up again when he thought it proper to do so and resuming his journey.

"Obviously," thought Tom, "that fellow has been used to driving alone. I wonder if he has forgotten how to talk? Or is it that he never thinks?

Even the weather doesn't inspire him to make a remark, for he hasn't once asked my attention to the fact that the rain has ceased and that the sun is breaking through the clouds. He certainly can't be cla.s.sified as a companionable personage, but at any rate he knows how to manage mules and get a wagon over difficulties, and after all that's what he is employed to do. He gets on wonderfully, too, considering the difficulties of the road. I suppose it is like the case of the man who tied his cravats so beautifully because, as he said, he 'gave his whole mind to it.'"

So, silently they proceeded on their way and just before sunset the wagon was stopped on the outskirts of the new Camp Venture.

The boys all rushed out to greet Tom and compliment him on his skill and success in bringing the supplies over so difficult a route. Tom greeted them all in turn, and then said:

"Try your hands, boys, and see if any of you can extract a single unnecessary word from that driver. I haven't been able to get anything out of him except vituperation for his mules."

The driver meanwhile was stripping his mules of their harness and arranging to give them the oats and fodder that he had brought with him for their use.

The Doctor filled a tin cup with coffee--for the boys had heard Tom coming and made supper ready against his arrival--and carried the steaming liquid out to the driver whose clothes were still sopping wet, and offered it to him, saying:

"You are very wet and it must have been a hard struggle to get your wagon up here. Drink this to warm you and when you get your mules fed, come to our fire and have some supper. You must be hungry."

The man took the cup, drank its contents, handed it back to the Doctor and muttered the single abbreviated word, "'Bleeged," by which the Doctor understood that he meant, "I am obliged to you."

Finally the man having disposed of his mules for the night, came to the camp fire for his supper. He received it in silence and proceeded to devour it like the hungry man that he was. Still he uttered not a word.

At last Jim Chenowith tried his hand at drawing him into conversation.

"It must have been pretty tough work to get a wagon up here," he said, tentatively. The man said not a word in reply. This exasperated Jim and presently he stood up before the wagoner and angrily demanded:

"What's the matter with you? Why don't you answer a civil question?"

To this the man answered, "Hey?" at the same time putting his hand to his ear in a futile effort to understand.

"The man is almost stone deaf," said the Doctor. "That is the explanation of his silence."

Tom laughed at himself for not having made this discovery, and then crept into the bunk prepared for him in the new camp house.

CHAPTER XLI

"_His Majesty, the King_"

The Doctor was an advocate of leisurely eating, but he impatiently hurried the boys through their breakfast the next morning and set them at work upon the bank with picks and shovels. He explained to them as he had before explained to Tom, that "outcrop" coal--that is to say, the edge of a coal seam exposed by any circ.u.mstance and left long exposed, deteriorates in quality and value.

"All the combustible parts of this exposed coal have been evaporated,"

he said, "until now the stuff is worth scarcely more than so much shale.

But unless my knowledge of geology fails me, there lies behind this stuff, some of the very richest coal in Virginia. Our task is to dig in here and find out whether we have here a valuable coal mine or nothing at all."

"Suppose it is the kind of coal you think, Doctor," said Jack, "what is such a mine worth?"

"Nothing and everything. It all depends upon circ.u.mstances. A year or two ago the finest coal deposit in the world, located where this is would have been worth no more than the detritus from the hill that is piled up all around here. Such a mine at this place now, is incalculably valuable."

"But what makes so vast a difference?" asked Ed.

"The railroad," answered the Doctor. "A year ago this coal would have been worthless, simply because there was no market for it anywhere within reach. Now the railroad brings the market to the mouth of the mine, as it were. But come, let's get to work. If you want me to talk about King Coal, I'll do it to-night after supper. Just now we must dig for his majesty." Then he grabbed a pick and broke out again singing--

"Old King Coal Was a jolly old soul," etc.

The boys dug with a will and by nightfall they had dug away three or four feet of the face of the cliff. Every now and then the Doctor would take a bit of the exposed coal and examine it critically under a strong magnifying gla.s.s. Every time he did so, he broke out again into the song about "Old King Coal." The boys had never seen him so jubilant.

When they quitted the work and began to prepare supper, the Doctor went into the shaft they had started, broke out a bushel or two of the deepest coal yet reached, and placed it on the fire. He watched it intently as it burned, and just as supper was ready he said:

"We've got it, boys, and no mistake. This is a great mine of the very best coal in the world for making gas, steam and c.o.ke, and as these hills are full of iron ore, the mine is precisely where it ought to be.

When we dig a little further into that bank we shall come to coal that can be shovelled into a furnace with iron ore on top of it, and used to smelt iron without the trouble or expense of c.o.king. Or we can make as good c.o.ke of it as there is in the world, and the vein is eight or nine feet thick, which means a lot, and it has a perfect rock roof, which means a lot more, and the volcanic upheaval which shoved it up here has kindly so placed it that it trends upward, so that in mining it we shall not have to do any pumping. All we've got to do is to dig trenches on each side of our coal car tracks and let the water run out by force of gravitation. I tell you boys, we've discovered the most valuable coal mine in all this region, and as if to make matters still better, it lies just high enough up the mountain to enable us to chute its product down to the railroad without any expense whatever for hauling."

"Well now," said Jack, "all that is good news. But we boys don't understand the thing the least bit. So you are to explain it to us after supper. You are to stop singing 'Old King Coal' and explain to us upon what grounds his majesty's authority rests."

"All right," said the Doctor, with truly boyish enthusiasm. "After supper I'll tell you all about my liege lord Old King Coal. Meantime won't somebody give me another cup of coffee and about a dozen more rashers of that paper-thin bacon? I'm hungry."

Jack replenished the Doctor's cup, and Ed cut for him a dozen or twenty very thin slices of bacon, leaving him to broil them for himself on the end of a stick and devour them as fast as they were broiled. Tom divided a pone of corn bread with him and the supper proceeded to its conclusion.

"Now then," called Tom, when the tin plates and tin cups had been washed and set up on the wall shelf which the Doctor had made for them, "we're ready to hear all about 'Old King Coal' and his claims upon our allegiance."

"Oh, no you're not," said the Doctor. "It would take me weeks to tell you the little I know on that subject and something like a lifetime for anybody who knows more to tell you 'all about' King Coal. But I'll tell you a little any how."

"First of all tell us why you call it 'King Coal,'" said Ed.

"Because in our age it is king," quickly answered the Doctor. "Without it every one of our industries would come to an end; every factory would stop; every steams.h.i.+p would be laid up forever; every electric light would go out; every railroad would become 'two streaks of rust and a right of way'; in short the whole fabric of modern civilization would tumble to the ground. You see every age has its key note. When men had no better implements than rough stones those people who had most stones were the easy conquerors of the rest. When they began to fas.h.i.+on stones into arrowheads, axes and the like, the people who lived in stony countries had a still greater advantage. When men learned to work metals--well you see the way it went. In the pastoral ages the man whose land produced most gra.s.s was the 'king pin' of his community and owned more cattle than anybody else. In the military ages the people who fought best were the supreme ones, and the rest were their dependants.

In ecclesiastical ages the great prelates dominated, and so on through a long catalogue. Now ours is an industrial age and coal lies at the very root of productive industry. Without it we can't make steam or get power enough for any of the vast enterprises of modern civilization. It smelts iron out of rocks that would not give it up without King Coal's command. It enables us to make steel and to fas.h.i.+on metals to answer our requirements in a thousand ways. It runs our steams.h.i.+ps, our factories, our railroads and pretty much everything else that we depend upon to make life easy, to enable us to interchange our products with people at a distance and generally to make ourselves comfortable. In short our whole civilization depends upon coal. That's why I call coal 'king.' If there ever was a monarch in this world whose authority could not be questioned without destruction to those revolting against it, that monarch is 'Old King Coal.'"

"But if we had no coal, why couldn't we do all these things with wood?"

asked Jim.

"First, because we haven't enough wood," answered the Doctor. "We are using up our supply of wood much too rapidly already, and there coal is rendering us another important service. It is enabling us to use iron and steel for building materials, and a thousand other purposes for which we once used wood, and thus to spare our wood."

"What is your 'secondly,' Doctor?" asked Ed.

"Why secondly, wood cannot do the work."

"Why not?"

"Because it hasn't enough suns.h.i.+ne in it."

"How do you mean?"

"Why you know, don't you, that all the heat we get out of burning fuel of any kind, is simply so much suns.h.i.+ne stored up for us and released by burning?"

"I confess I didn't know that," said Tom. "Or at any rate I never thought of it. Now that I do think of it, I see how it is with wood. But what has suns.h.i.+ne to do with coal, buried as it is deep under rocks and earth?"