The Complete Novels of Mark Twain (Illustrated). Mark Twain
of men. Finally, the settling of a weekly account exhausted his means. He could not afford to run in debt, and therefore he gave the men their discharge. They came into his cabin presently, where he sat with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands—the picture of discouragement and their spokesman said:
"Mr. Sterling, when Tim was down a week with his fall you kept him on half-wages and it was a mighty help to his family; whenever any of us was in trouble you've done what you could to help us out; you've acted fair and square with us every time, and I reckon we are men and know a man when we see him. We haven't got any faith in that hill, but we have a respect for a man that's got the pluck that you've showed; you've fought a good fight, with everybody agin you and if we had grub to go on, I'm d——d if we wouldn't stand by you till the cows come home! That is what the boys say. Now we want to put in one parting blast for luck. We want to work three days more; if we don't find anything, we won't bring in no bill against you. That is what we've come to say."
Philip was touched. If he had had money enough to buy three days' "grub" he would have accepted the generous offer, but as it was, he could not consent to be less magnanimous than the men, and so he declined in a manly speech; shook hands all around and resumed his solitary communings. The men went back to the tunnel and "put in a parting blast for luck" anyhow. They did a full day's work and then took their leave. They called at his cabin and gave him good-bye, but were not able to tell him their day's effort had given things a mere promising look.
The next day Philip sold all the tools but two or three sets; he also sold one of the now deserted cabins as old, lumber, together with its domestic wares; and made up his mind that he would buy provisions with the trifle of money thus gained and continue his work alone. About the middle of the afternoon he put on his roughest clothes and went to the tunnel. He lit a candle and groped his way in. Presently he heard the sound of a pick or a drill, and wondered, what it meant. A spark of light now appeared in the far end of the tunnel, and when he arrived there he found the man Tim at work. Tim said:
"I'm to have a job in the Golden Brier mine by and by—in a week or ten days—and I'm going to work here till then. A man might as well be at some thing, and besides I consider that I owe you what you paid me when I was laid up."
Philip said, Oh, no, he didn't owe anything; but Tim persisted, and then Philip said he had a little provision now, and would share. So for several days Philip held the drill and Tim did the striking. At first Philip was impatient to see the result of every blast, and was always back and peering among the smoke the moment after the explosion. But there was never any encouraging result; and therefore he finally lost almost all interest, and hardly troubled himself to inspect results at all. He simply labored on, stubbornly and with little hope.
Tim staid with him till the last moment, and then took up his job at the Golden Brier, apparently as depressed by the continued barrenness of their mutual labors as Philip was himself. After that, Philip fought his battle alone, day after day, and slow work it was; he could scarcely see that he made any progress.
Late one afternoon he finished drilling a hole which he had been at work at for more than two hours; he swabbed it out, and poured in the powder and inserted the fuse; then filled up the rest of the hole with dirt and small fragments of stone; tamped it down firmly, touched his candle to the fuse, and ran.
By and by the dull report came, and he was about to walk back mechanically and see what was accomplished; but he halted; presently turned on his heel and thought, rather than said:
"No, this is useless, this is absurd. If I found anything it would only be one of those little aggravating seams of coal which doesn't mean anything, and—"
By this time he was walking out of the tunnel. His thought ran on:
"I am conquered . . . . . . I am out of provisions, out of money. . . . I have got to give it up . . . . . . All this hard work lost! But I am not conquered! I will go and work for money, and come back and have another fight with fate. Ah me, it may be years, it may, be years."
Arrived at the mouth of the tunnel, he threw his coat upon the ground, sat down on a stone, and his eye sought the westering sun and dwelt upon the charming landscape which stretched its woody ridges, wave upon wave, to the golden horizon.
Something was taking place at his feet which did not attract his attention.
His reverie continued, and its burden grew more and more gloomy. Presently he rose up and, cast a look far away toward the valley, and his thoughts took a new direction:
"There it is! How good it looks! But down there is not up here. Well, I will go home and pack up—there is nothing else to do."
He moved off moodily toward his cabin. He had gone some distance before he thought of his coat; then he was about to turn back, but he smiled at the thought, and continued his journey—such a coat as that could be of little use in a civilized land; a little further on, he remembered that there were some papers of value in one of the pockets of the relic, and then with a penitent ejaculation he turned back picked up the coat and put it on.
He made a dozen steps, and then stopped very suddenly. He stood still a moment, as one who is trying to believe something and cannot. He put a hand up over his shoulder and felt his back, and a great thrill shot through him. He grasped the skirt of the coat impulsively and another thrill followed. He snatched the coat from his back, glanced at it, threw it from him and flew back to the tunnel. He sought the spot where the coat had lain—he had to look close, for the light was waning—then to make sure, he put his hand to the ground and a little stream of water swept against his fingers:
"Thank God, I've struck it at last!"
He lit a candle and ran into the tunnel; he picked up a piece of rubbish cast out by the last blast, and said:
"This clayey stuff is what I've longed for—I know what is behind it."
He swung his pick with hearty good will till long after the darkness had gathered upon the earth, and when he trudged home at length he knew he had a coal vein and that it was seven feet thick from wall to wall.
He found a yellow envelope lying on his rickety table, and recognized that it was of a family sacred to the transmission of telegrams.
He opened it, read it, crushed it in his hand and threw it down. It simply said:
"Ruth is very ill."
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