The Plunderer. Norton Roy
goes. Stand back. No use in both of us getting it.”
He caught the end of the timber in his heavy hands, planted his feet firmly on the floor and heaved. The big timber creaked, but did not give. Again he planted himself and this time his great shoulders seemed to twist and writhe until the muscles cracked and then, with a crash, the barrier gave way. He sprang back with amazing quickness and they ran back up the drift for twenty or thirty feet while the mass again readjusted itself and settled slowly into position. A cloud of dust bellowed toward them, half-choking them with its gritty fineness, and then, in a minute, the air had cleared. They went cautiously forward.
“Well, we got some farther, anyhow, unless she comes down while we’re working through. We’ve got a hole to crawl into, and that’s something,” the big miner asserted.
Before he could say anything more Dick had crowded him to one side and was entering the aperture. He had prevented his partner from taking the first perilous chance. Painfully he made his way, while the man behind listened with terrified apprehension; for none knew better than he the risk of that progress.
“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 brushing 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 scraped 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 God’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, Dick!”
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 crashing 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, reassured 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 God!”
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 Dick, almost with a moan, thrust his candlestick into a timber and savagely tore his shirt 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,” Dick assented, 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 assume 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 mass 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,” Dick 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. Dick 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 Dick boosted