as the echo of the whistle died away, loring raised himself, and staggered to his feet. not realizing what he did, he groped his way onward up the hill. as he passed the men hurrying home from the last shift, he noticed, as in a dream, the way in which the wet clothes clung to their skins, the heavy folds accentuated by the glare of the occasional electric light.
hughson, in the hoist shed, was cursing volubly at his delay in coming. as soon as he saw loring he grabbed his coat, and calling out a hurried imprecation, started down the hill.
stephen had scarcely stepped to his place by the drum, when the indicator clanged sharply one bell. mechanically he threw his weight against the lever, and shot the first bucket of ore mined by the shift high into the dim light, almost into the tripod framework upon which the cable hung.
[130]
uncomprehendingly, he watched the figures outside bang down the iron coverings over the shaft, and wheel the clanking ore car onto the tracks beneath the suspended bucket. the men seemed to loring to be possessed of magical deftness as they unshackled the full bucket, and clamped the swinging hook through the bar of the empty one. the loaded ore car bumped groaningly off on its journey down to the cribs, the iron coverings opened, and a voice called: “lower!”
at times stephen’s head cleared somewhat, and he noticed every detail in the hoist shed. he stared at the way the shadows from the one electric light fell on the rough boards. the water jug in the corner, the disordered tool box, the little pile of oily waste by the boiler, all photographed themselves on his eye. he noticed the great pile of beams in the back of the shed, the timbering for the new shaft, lettered with huge blue stencils, and watched with interest the flare in the furnace when the mexican stoker threw fresh armfuls of mesquite wood upon the fire.
then again all was whirl, and he was obliged to grip his stool to keep from falling. his hand[131] clung to the control lever with damp, clinging pressure.
every few minutes the gong would sound, telling that another load of ore was waiting to be raised. once he ran the “skip” so high above the shaft, that it crashed into the framework. it seemed to be some one entirely disconnected with himself who fumbled with the winch, and lowered the bucket again, until the shrill: “o. k.! ’sta ’ueno!” from the darkness outside told of the proper level. between the striking of the bells, stephen puzzled over the meaning of the white painted bands on the cable, which should have told him at what level the bucket was.
the time seemed to drag endlessly. still the buckets continued to come. just outside the door of the shed he could see the peg board that indicated the tally of buckets raised. he swore at it bitterly. “why can’t the checker put in two pegs at a time, until the board is full, and the shift finished?” he thought.
whenever the winch was in motion, the grating roar of the cable winding in or out seemed to be inside his own head. steadily he became more and more bewildered. his will was rapidly[132] losing the desperate fight for control. once he fell off his stool.
there was a slight delay in the work. the next bucket was slow in being signaled.
“what lazy men—what lazy men!” he murmured.
then clear and sharp rang the signal: “clang—clang—clang——clang!” loring was too dazed to remember that three bells before the one to hoist was the signal for “man on the bucket.” the one bell telling to raise, or two to lower, had conveyed their meaning automatically to him. the sudden change was incomprehensible.
“clang—clang—clang——clang!” again the indicator rang. this time with a sharp, insistent sound.
“perhaps they want it to come up fast. oh, very, very fast,” was the thought that came to him, and he threw the lever all the way over. fascinated, he watched the cable tearing past him on the drum.
“funny—they—should—signal—that—way,” he spoke aloud. “perhaps—they—are—drunk—too.”
faster and faster whirled the reel. the mark for the four hundred level flashed by. almost[133] in an instant the marking for the three hundred followed. the blur of white upon the cable, telling that the bucket was only two hundred feet below the surface seemed to come within a second. he did not see the marking for the last hundred feet.
suddenly, out of the bowels of the earth shot the bucket. for a sixtieth of a second two figures, standing on the edge, were outlined. loring heard a shriek, half drowned in a crash and roar, as the bucket, with its human freight, was hurled against the overhead supports.
he smiled foolishly, and hopelessly fingered the lever.
outside, by the shaft mouth, all was in wild confusion. shouts, curses, hoarse whispers, all were intermingled. then came the sound of feet, tramping in unison, and men entered the shed carrying a—thing—its head driven into its shoulders. loring looked—stared—then he knew.
like a knife cutting into the mist of dizziness came realization. the truth burned its way into his mind, and sobered him.
“my god!” he sobbed. “the signal was for men on the bucket.” it flashed upon him[134] what had happened. the men, standing upon the edge of the bucket, holding onto the cable, had been dashed into the tripod framework, which overhung the shaft mouth, a scant ten feet above the ground.
shaking, as with ague, he stepped outside to the shaft.
a crowd of mexicans were jabbering. the voices of several americans carried above the soft slur of the spanish. some one was holding lantern over the mouth of the shaft, and cautiously peering down. up the hill came the sound of running feet.
“here’s the doc, now!” called some one.
they showed dr. kline the body on the floor of the hoist box. he merely glanced at it, then picking up a burlap sack laid it over the head.
“where is the other man?” he asked curtly.
some one, with a quick gesture, pointed towards the shaft. “down there.”
a small, close set ladder, for use in case of emergency, ran down the shaft. down this two of the americans started to climb. the group by the edge watched breathlessly, while the light of their lantern dropped—dropped—dropped.
[135]
for the first twenty feet the lantern illuminated the greasy sides of the shaft, bringing out clearly the knots and chinks in the boards. then the light shrank into the darkness, became a mere dot. after a long minute the dot began to sway back and forth. but so far down was it that it seemed to have a radius only of inches.
“they have found him,” breathed mckay, who had reached the scene. on the iron piping of the shaft pump tapped dully the signal to lower slowly. loring started for his place at the engine.
“get to hell out of here! you’ve done enough harm for one night.”
hughson, with his white night-shirt half out of his trousers, his boots unlaced, and his eyes still heavy from sleep, shoved him aside and took hold of the lever. slowly he lowered the “skip.” it seemed to loring an hour before it reached the bottom.
then again on the pipe, for the bellrope was broken, was rapped the signal. “one—one—one——one.” in the night air the clank of the taps on the metal sounded ghostly.
[136]
slowly the bucket came to the surface. the two men who had descended were holding in it a swaying figure. many hands lifted the figure gently to the ground. the doctor bent over it, then shook his head.
“nothing doing,” he said dryly, and they laid the body beside the other.
a commanding voice echoed through the group. it was mr. cameron’s.
“where is loring?” he asked decisively.
stephen, in the background, turned away, and, with a face like chalk etched with acid, stumbled down the hill. complete agony possessed him. hitherto, when he had failed, he had hurt himself alone. now he was little better than a murderer. drunk on duty, when men’s lives were dependent upon him!
by some blind instinct he found his way to his tent, pulled back the flap, and entered. lynn was snoring quietly in his corner. his boots lay on the floor, strange shapes in the dark. the alarm clock standing on the table close by his head ticked softly and monotonously.
loring gasped for breath, swayed, and fell unconscious upon his cot.
[137]
the bodies of the two miners had been carried to the hospital, and with hughson in charge of the hoist, the ore buckets were again coming up, when mr. cameron and mckay left the scene of the accident and through the darkness groped their way down the hill.
“some one told me that he’d seen loring drinking this evening,” said mckay.
“that explains all,” answered mr. cameron gruffly. “i should have known! i should have known! after the experience with men that i have had, to put a man like loring in a position of responsibility! i am the one who is to blame for this. and yet he did seem to have pulled himself together. this will finish him, though. mark me, mckay, before this he has been going to hell with the brakes on. now he will run wild. two men dead! that is a rather heavy reckoning for mr. stephen loring to settle with himself. if i did not owe so much to him, i would have him in prison for to-night’s work.”
mckay nodded solemnly.
“i liked him a lot. i thought that he had different stuff in him. as you say, this will probably finish his chances; but it may,” he[138] hesitated, “it may make a man out of him. if this don’t, god himself can’t help him.”
“what were the names of the men?” asked mr. cameron.
“marques was one. he used to work for me. the other was a new man, duran, or doran, some one said was his name.”
“were they married?” queried mr. cameron.
“no.”
“that is a blessing. well, good night, mckay. i shall see loring in the morning.”
“good night,” answered mckay, and he added under his breath: “i think i’d rather not be loring in the morning. too bad! too bad!”
there was a light in mr. cameron’s house. as her father tramped up the steps jean threw open the door and came towards him. her hair fell in waves over her dressing-gown. the candle in her hand threw its light into eyes which asked an anxious question from beneath their arching brows.
“father, what is the matter?” jean exclaimed, as mr. cameron advanced.
“there has been an accident at number three hoist,” answered mr. cameron.
[139]
jean drew a quick sharp breath. “is mr. loring hurt?” she asked, bending forward to look into her father’s face.
mr. cameron looked at her hard. then a grim humor glinted in his eyes as he answered: “loring hurt? well—not—exactly.”
without a word jean turned and led the way into the living-room, where the hastily lighted lamp flared high, leaving a smooch of smut on the chimney and casting bright reflections on the rough planks of the board wall. the girl walked calmly to the table and lowered the wick of the lamp. then she tossed back the masses of her hair, and turning sharply to her father she uttered one word: “well?”
“well!” echoed mr. cameron, throwing himself into a chair by the fireplace. “well! i should say that was a curious word to describe to-night’s doings.”
“what do you mean?”
“mean? i mean that your mr. loring is a damned scoundrel.”
“i do not believe it. you speak too harshly. you are angry.”
“hum! perhaps.”
jean stood with downcast eyes. suddenly[140] she raised them like a condemned man about to receive his sentence.
“what has he done?”
“he has murdered two mexicans.”
jean shivered and drew the folds of her dressing gown closer about her. “mr. loring murderer! impossible!”
“nothing is impossible to a man when he is drunk.”
“oh, he was drunk, was he? at the shaft, suppose.”
the note of relief in jean’s tone seemed to add the last touch to mr. cameron’s exasperation.
“do you think it was any excuse that loring was drunk on duty with men’s lives in his hands? you women have a queer code.”
“no,” observed jean, “it is not an excuse. it is an explanation. that i can understand. the other i could not.”
“yes, and i can understand it, too. it means that i was a fool for trusting him. i should never have done it, never!”
jean cameron stole around to the back of her father’s chair and leaned over till her face almost touched his. “remember,” she said[141] in a low tone, “if he has lost two lives, he saved one.”
“damn me! am i likely to forget it?” mr. cameron answered, shaking off his daughter’s hands which had been laid lightly on his shoulders. “why else did i take him on as hoist engineer? it was paying a debt, so i thought. but i had no right to pay at other men’s risk; and after all i had done for him he could not have the decency to keep sober on duty—well, it is too late to think of that now.”
jean turned away and twisted the curling ends of her hair slowly about her finger ends. “tell me just what happened,” she said unsteadily.
“it is a short story,” her father answered gruffly. “two men in the cage at the bottom of the mine signaled to raise—engineer, drunk, sets lever at top speed. if you cannot imagine what happened, you may take a lantern and go over yonder to see.”
jean sank shuddering on the window-seat and buried her head in the cushions. her silence calmed her father’s wrath as her speech had stirred it. “there, there!” mr. cameron said soothingly, as he walked across to the[142] window and stroked the bowed head. “it is nothing for you to be so downhearted about, my lass. you had nothing to do with it.”
still the girl lay motionless.
“come, come, jean! it is all over now for those poor fellows, and as for loring, you will never see him again.”
the figure on the window-seat stirred slightly, and from the pillows a muffled voice asked tremulously, “what will be done to him?”
“that depends,” answered mr. cameron, “on whether the mexicans decide on a demonstration between now and to-morrow morning.”
“oh!” cried jean, suddenly sitting up and wheeling about with pale cheeks and flashing eyes, “they dare not. you would never allow it. why are there no men guarding him? it is as bad as murder.”
“not quite,” her father replied slowly. “besides, if the mexicans were drunk, you could not hold them responsible. that would be—what is it?—‘not an excuse, but an explanation.’ however, loring is safe enough for to-night, and i promise you he will be far away by to-morrow.”
with these words mr. cameron thrust his[143] hands into his pockets, and rising, strode up and down the room, the boards creaking under his slow tread. his daughter leaned against the window, staring out into the night.
“oh!” she whispered, as if to some presence palpable though invisible, “how could you? how could you do it after what you promised me?” then she turned her head and caught sight of her father’s resolute back.
“he is rather a lovable person,” she said, with a little catch in her voice. “don’t you think he will feel badly enough without much being said to him about—about the accident?” her father laughed a short, uncompromising laugh.
