during the week which the camerons spent in camp at kay, it was amusing to notice the change in the appearance of the men at the mess. dilapidated flannel shirts and khaki trousers the worse for wear had been supplanted at supper time by self-conscious black suits and very white ties. the camp barber made enough money to tide him over many months.
mr. cameron had spent a very busy week, examining with loring all the details of the work, and daily his respect had grown for the man whom he had so despised. the evening before the last which she was to spend in kay, jean announced her intention of visiting the “workings” with her father when he should go the next day. loring said that it was not safe; her father protested; radlett argued with her, and as the net result of all she appeared the following morning with her determination unchanged.
the porch of the mess a few minutes before[292] breakfast time was always crowded. men on their way back from the night shift made a practise of stopping to exchange a few words. it was a quieter gathering than in the evening, for ahead lay the prospect of a long day’s work. yet an air of comfort always prevailed. the five minutes before breakfast made a precious interval in which to loaf, a delightful time when one could stretch himself against the wall and bask in the sunlight.
jean and her father came up to the veranda with a friendly “good morning” to those who were gathered there. a few of the loiterers talked respectfully to mr. cameron, whose fame as a mining expert was a wide one, and jean quickly became the center of a large group of men, eager to point out to her the different mountains, the grahams in the distance or the long sharp ridges of the neighboring range. they called her attention to the mist hanging low in the valley, curling softly in the farthest recesses. the mine foreman, usually the most shiftlessly dressed man in camp, twitched his polka-dotted tie into place when he thought that miss cameron’s attention was absorbed by the landscape.
[293]
stephen came across from his quarters among the last. he waited a moment before joining the group about miss cameron; and his eyes employed that moment in fixing a picture indelibly on his mind. as jean leaned lightly against the wall, in her dress of white linen crash, she made a picture which no one who saw could forget. her gray eyes were clear with the reflection of the morning light, and the sun searched for and illuminated the subtle tints of her hair. she had a pretty way of speaking as though everything she said were a simple answer to a clever question. men liked that. they thought her appreciative.
she looked up to notice loring’s glance upon her, and answered his “good morning” lightly. “you need not speak as though you were surprised, mr. loring,” she said, “i may have been late to breakfast five out of my six days, but that is no sign that it is a habit with me. besides, you know that to-day i am to visit the mine.”
“so you are still determined?” he asked. “really, miss cameron, it is not very safe. there might be an accident of some sort, and,” he went on, looking at her gown, “you will ruin your dress.”
[294]
“do you fancy that i travel with only one?” jean queried smiling. “it may be so, but not even my vanity shall deter me; i really must go.”
just then wah appeared on the veranda, and began to pound with his railroad spike on the iron triangle which, as at quentin, served for a dinner gong.
“la, la, boom, boom! breakfast!” he shouted, amidst the din which he was creating. “me bludder, steve, he almost late. la, la, boom, boom! hot cakes, hot cakes; oh, lubbly hot cakes, oh, lubbly, lubbly—!”
in the midst of his song he caught sight of jean, and stopping his pounding he beamed upon her.
“goodee morning, missee, goodee morning! missee on time this morning; how it happen?”
mckay angrily told him to shut up, but miss cameron stopped the rebuke, assuring wah that his reproaches had been well deserved.
several minutes after the others had begun their meal, radlett appeared at breakfast, still struggling against sleepiness. not even the clear early morning air had thoroughly aroused him. breakfasts at half-past six were a distinct[295] and not wholly appreciated novelty to baird. he slipped into his place beside jean, and endeavored to parry her banter upon his indolence. stephen, at his side of the table, was occupied in dispensing the platter of “flap jacks,” which wah, beaming with appreciation of their excellence, had set before him to serve.
“at what time do we visit the mine?” asked jean across the table.
“as soon after breakfast as you and your father are ready,” answered stephen. “the air is much better early in the day, before they have begun to shoot down there. but i wish that you would change your mind about going.”
jean turned to the mine foreman for assistance.
“it is perfectly safe, isn’t it, mr. burns? i know that all my father and mr. loring think is that i shall be in the way.”
burns laboriously protested against such an idea, and clumsily promised to look after her safety.
in the minutes that preceded the seven o’clock whistle, one by one the men straggled off to their work, nodding respectfully to jean and her father as they left, and calling out parting[296] gibes at wah. by the time that the whistle blew, the line of ponies picketed to the fence before the mess had disappeared, and the community was at work.
as soon after breakfast as mr. cameron had smoked his morning cigar, he joined radlett and loring, and with miss cameron all walked up to the mouth of the nearest shaft. burns met them at the shaft house, and selected from the pile of oilskins a “slicker” for miss cameron. she struggled helplessly with the stiff button-holes, and loring was obliged to button the coat for her. his fingers, though stronger than hers, were not much more efficient, owing to their trembling.
“where are the candles, burns?” asked loring.
burns pointed to a box in one corner of the shaft house. stephen took out a half dozen, and handed one to each of the visitors. he put a broken one into the spike candle holder which he carried, and slipped the others into his capacious pockets.
the “skip” shot up and was unloaded. “all ready!” called burns, steadying the bucket by the level of the shaft mouth. jean stepped[297] forward and looked at the bucket just a bit askance. loring showed her how to place her hands on the heavy iron links above the swivel, and how to stand on the edge of the bucket with her heels over the edge.
“look out that your skirt does not hit against the side of the shaft!” was his final injunction.
“can we go down now?” he asked burns.
“one second,” answered the foreman. “there is a load of sharpened drills to go down with us.”
in a moment the little “nipper” appeared with his armful of drills, and with a ringing clatter dropped them into the bottom of the bucket.
“i think we had better take mr. cameron to the four hundred level right away,” said stephen to burns. “i want him to see that new stope. the air isn’t very bad there, is it?”
“no, it’s pretty fair.”
“all right. lower away, four hundred!” called loring to the hoist engineer, at the same time swinging himself onto the bucket beside the others.
the skip began to drop slowly down the[298] timbered shaft. for the first twenty-five or thirty feet it was fairly light, and jean could see the joints in the rough-grained, greasy boards. then all became dark. she clutched the cable tightly and half closed her eyes. the water began to drip down hard from above, spattering sharply on their oilskins. loring, close beside her, whispered: “all right. just hold on tightly, miss cameron! great elevator, isn’t it?”
even while loring spoke, a chill struck to his heart. what if the hoist engineer failed in his duty! what if the bucket crashed into the black depths that lay below them, or shot wildly upward to be caught in the timbers at the top! what if jean cameron were to be snatched away as those others had been, through the wanton carelessness of the man in charge above! would any punishment be black enough for him? would eternity be long enough for him to make a decent repentance?
by the vigor of the answer which his heart made to the question, loring sensed the pang of remorse which had gnawed at his conscience without ceasing ever since that awful night. “that was what you did.” the words said[299] themselves over and over in his ear as the bucket slid downward.
the air began to turn from the pure clear atmosphere of the mountains to the heavy close humidity of the mine, murky even in its blackness.
“one hundred level,” explained stephen, as the bucket dropped past a candle which flickered dully in a smoky hole in the side of the shaft, the entrance to the drift which was even blacker than the shaft itself.
as they reached the lower levels, the water poured down faster. the bucket swung and twisted and jean leaned an imperceptible trifle closer to loring. he steadied her with his arm, although it may not have been strictly necessary for safety.
the bucket suddenly stopped and hung lifelessly steady.
“here we are, four hundred foot level,” called loring. “please stay just where you are, miss cameron, and we will help you off.” he swung himself onto the landing stage after the others, and taking both of jean’s hands in his, guided her safely into the drift.
she stood for a moment completely confused,[300] unable to make out anything. loring leaned out into the shaft, and pulling the bell cord, signaled to have the bucket raised again. then he took jean’s candle, and biting off the wax from about the wick, lighted it and his own, holding them under a small protecting ledge of rock. to jean’s unaccustomed eyes the little flickerings made small difference in the darkness. she stepped into a pool of water that lay in the middle of the drift, wetting her boots to the ankles.
“careful!” said loring, taking her by the arm. “keep your eyes on burns’s candle ahead there. i will see that you don’t fall.”
for a couple of hundred yards they walked on straight ahead down the drift. jean’s eyes began to grow accustomed to the gray blackness, and now, when the roof of the tunnel grew suddenly lower, she stooped almost by instinct.
“look out for the winze, miss!” called back burns.
“all right!” answered loring. “this runs to the next level, a hundred feet down,” he explained, as he helped jean to cross the plank which bridged a black chasm. she noticed the rails of a little track which ran beneath their[301] feet, and almost as she was on the point of asking its purpose, from far ahead in the darkness came a shrill, weird whistle, and a heavy rumble.
loring caught her and held her back against the side wall as a “mucker” ran past, wheeling a heavy ore car towards the shaft and whistling as warning to clear the track. she began to feel the effects of the powder fumes in the air, and it made her head heavy and drowsy. she felt that she had come into a new, supernatural universe, where all was noisy, dark, and strange.
at last the drift broadened out into a large, irregular-shaped chamber.
“esperanza stope,” said loring to miss cameron. “here is where they have struck the contact vein, where the porphyry changes to limestone.” he held his candle close to the dark wall of rock, and she could see the green crusting betokening the copper.
“this will assay pretty close to ten per cent, won’t it, burns?” asked loring.
“it ran to twelve, yesterday,” answered the foreman.
they stood still for a moment. all about[302] them, as in the crypt of some vast cathedral, were specks of light, showing through the dense air, the candles of the miners. now and then in the blur there appeared a distorted shape, as some one moved before a candle. through all, loud, insistent, steady, rang the clink-clang, clink-clang, clink-clang of the drills and hammers, as a dozen miners drove home the holes into the breast of the stope, the tapping of the cleaning rods, as they spooned out the mud, and the rattle of shovels on rock, as the “muckers” loaded the ore cars. mixed with these sounds was a sharp hissing, as the miners drew in their breath, swaying back for the driving blow on the heads of the drills. as she grew accustomed to the dim light, jean could make out the miners who were nearest to her, as, in teams of two, stripped to the waist, their bodies shiny with sweat, they battered on the walls. faintly the lines of grim archways began to grow out of the dark, where rough pillars had been left to support the roofing. far off, up a cross-cut, she could see more candles swaying. two men near her were toiling at a windlass, raising the water from a new winze. she leaned against the wall, and something rattled tinnily. it was[303] a pile of canteens, all warm with the heat of the air.
jean gasped with the very wonder of the scene. to the others it was merely the commonplace of their work.
burns called out to loring: “we are going to take mr. cameron through to the new stope. it is pretty hard climbing getting through to there. i guess the lady had better wait here with you, mr. loring.”
the voices of the rest of the party sounded faint and far away. jean watched the light of their candles sway and dip, as they walked off down a tunnel, then disappear as a supporting pillar hid them from view.
loring led her to one side of the stope, and drove the spike of his candle stick into a niche in the soft rock wall. he pointed to a pile of loose ore.
“we can sit here until your father returns. they are not working this end of the stope now,” he said.
she nodded and seated herself with her back against the wall. silent, with her chin propped firmly in her clenched hands, she strained her eyes to look at the dim lights and shadows at[304] the other end of the stope, and watched the shadows grow into things, as she stared. far beneath her, in the solid rock, she heard faint indistinct taps. a trifle awed by the mystery she turned to loring.
“what is that sound?” she asked.
“those are ‘tommy knockers,’” he answered gravely. “they are the ghosts of men who were killed in an explosion here, tapping steadily for help.”
“really?” she asked, half laughing.
“it might be,” answered loring, “but the fact of it is that those are men drilling on the next level. the sound now and then carries clear through the rock.”
the candle in the niche behind her cast a dim light over the soft curves of jean’s cheeks, rising delicately above the rough yellow oilskin coat. loring beside her, looked down at her intently. turning, she inadvertently brushed against his sleeve, and he quivered as though it had been a blow. the silence was growing oppressive with significance. suddenly jean broke it, saying: “mr. loring, i may not have another opportunity of speaking with you alone while we are in kay. i must use this chance[305] to tell you what pleasure it has given me to hear of your achievements here, of your courage in the riot and of—” jean paused and seemed to choose her words carefully, “of your victory.”
“oh,” answered stephen, with an attempt at ease, while all the time his heart was beating like a trip-hammer, “i suppose baird has been talking about me; but you must not take him too literally. there is no libel law against flattery, and so men speak their minds about their friends as freely as they would like to do about their enemies. miss cameron,” he said suddenly, “i have never thanked you for the note which you sent me when i left quentin. but you must know how grateful i felt. i did not deserve your trust; but i cannot tell you how it helped me.”
she shook her head slowly, and when she spoke her voice was very soft. “i am glad if it helped you, but you would have won your fight without it, i think.” her tone held a shadow of question.
“the whole struggle would not have seemed worth while without that, and without the truest friend in the world to help. miss cameron, baird radlett came to me when i had[306] fallen as low as a man could fall. he and your note saved me.”
“no,” answered jean, “you saved yourself. i think you were saved from the time of that dreadful night at quentin, only you did not know it.”
the roar of an ore car rushing by drowned her voice. a moment later stephen spoke in a hard, dry tone. “i am not sure,” he said, “that i know exactly what salvation means. if it means that i am not likely to make a beast of myself any more, or murder any more men, i am glad to believe it is so; but after all what does it matter to me? i have lost my chance, thrown it away, and life cannot hold anything particularly cheerful for me after that.”
“no, no!” jean exclaimed with a swift inexplicable pang at her heart. “you must not say that. there are chances ahead in life for every one.”
“yes, chances; but not the chance.”
“am i the chance?” jean asked, in a voice so low that it could scarcely be heard above the echoes.
loring bowed his head, with such dejection in his bearing as struck to the heart of the girl[307] beside him. jean had been thinking, thinking hard. the quick throbbing in her temples attested to the intensity of her mood. she knew in that instant that she cared for the man at her side; but how much? enough to run the risk?
“mr. loring,” she said at length slowly, as if weighing her words, “i know that you care for me; but, and it is hard to say”—she laid her hand on his arm and tried to meet his eyes—“but i don’t quite trust you.” she felt his arm stiffen and quiver, but she went on, although her voice broke: “i know that you are brave. i owe my life to that.” she paid no attention to the gesture with which he waved aside all obligation. “i respect you more than i can say for the fight that you have made against habit, only—”
“only?” echoed stephen slowly.
“only—oh, can’t you see that if i were to marry you and all the time there were in my heart a doubt, even though the merest shadow, that neither of us could be happy?”
loring crushed between his fingers a piece of the soft ore and let the fragments trickle to the ground before he spoke. “it is more than[308] year now, jean. must the shadow last forever? is what i have done to remain forever unpardoned?” he spoke with the slowness of an advocate who knows his case is lost, yet fights to the end.
“it is not that, stephen. i could forgive almost anything that you have done. but there is one thing that you have done, that try as i would, i could never forget. stephen, let me ask it of you. what is the most essential quality of all in a—a—friend?”
“honesty,” answered loring, without a moment’s hesitation.
“and suppose you knew that a friend had utterly fallen from honesty?”
“i should then feel that the word “friend” no longer applied.”
loring was dazed. he did not know of her cousin’s story of his dishonesty in his relations with his guardian. he thought only of the promise he had made to her on their ride in quentin and the manner in which he had broken it. “yes,” he went on slowly, “i suppose when a man breaks his solemn word he shatters forever the mold of his character.”
“i want you to understand that it is only[309] because i cannot forget that one thing, that my trust in you is not absolute.”
loring straightened himself, and for a second turned his head away. “that,” said he, “is why i said i had lost the chance.”
a wave of pity swept over jean. “and yet, stephen,” she whispered, “i—”
“oh, steve! where are you?” came from out of the darkness. “we are going up now. mr. cameron thinks we have a fine strike there.”
stephen helped jean to her feet. then silently he led the way back to the shaft.
