The Cross Cut

C >> Courtney Ryley Cooper >> The Cross Cut

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Fairchild followed his gaze, to see in the torn rock above him only a
narrow streak now, fully an inch and a half narrower than the vein had
been before the powder holes had been drilled. It could mean only one
thing: that the bet had been played and lost, that the vein had been
one of those freak affairs that start out with much promise, seem to
give hope of eternal riches, and then gradually dwindle to nothing.
Harry shook his head.

"It won't last."

"Not more than two or three more shots," Fairchild agreed.

"You can't tell about that. It may run that way all through the
mountain--but what's a four-inch vein? You can go up 'ere in the
Argonaut tunnel and find 'arf a dozen of them things that they don't
even take the trouble to mine. That is, unless they run 'igh in
silver--" he picked up a chunk of the ore from the muck pile where it
had been deposited and studied it intently--"but I don't see any pure
silver sticking out in this stuff."

"But it must be here somewhere. I don't know anything about
mining--but don't veins sometimes pinch off and then show up later on?"

"Sure they do--sometimes. But it's a gamble."

"That's all we 've had from the beginning, Harry."

"And it's about all we 're going to 'ave any time unless something bobs
up sudden like."

Then, by common consent, they laid away their working clothes and left
the mine, to wander dejectedly down the gulch and to the boarding
house. After dinner they chatted a moment with Mother Howard,
neglecting to tell her, however, of the downfall of their hopes, then
went upstairs, each to his room. An hour later Harry knocked at
Fairchild's door, and entered, the evening paper in his hand.

"'Ere 's something more that's nice," he announced, pointing to an item
on the front page. It was the announcement that a general grand jury
was to be convened late in the summer and that one of its tasks
probably would be to seek to unravel the mystery of the murder of
Sissie Larsen!

Fairchild read it with morbidity. Trouble seemed to have become more
than occasional, and further than that, it appeared to descend upon him
at just the times when he could least resist it. He made no comment;
there was little that he could say. Again he read the item and again,
finally to turn the page and breathe sharply. Before him was a
six-column advertisement, announcing the strike in the Silver Queen
mine and also spreading the word that a two-million-dollar company
would be formed, one million in stock to represent the mine itself, the
other to be subscribed to exploit this new find as it should be
exploited. Glowing words told of the possibilities of the Silver
Queen, the assayer's report was reproduced on a special cut which
evidently had been made in Denver and sent to Ohadi by rush delivery.
Offices had been opened; everything had been planned in advance and the
advertisement written before the town was aware of the big discovery up
Kentucky Gulch. All of it Fairchild read with a feeling he could not
down,--a feeling that Fate, somehow, was dealing the cards from the
bottom, and that trickery and treachery and a venomous nature were the
necessary ingredients, after all, to success. The advertisement seemed
to sneer at him, to jibe at him, calling as it did for every upstanding
citizen of Ohadi to join in on the stock-buying bonanza that would make
the Silver Queen one of the biggest mines in the district and Ohadi the
big silver center of Colorado. The words appeared to be just so many
daggers thrust into his very vitals. But Fairchild read them all, in
spite of the pain they caused. He finished the last line, looked at
the list of officers, and gasped.

For there, following one another, were three names, two of which
Fairchild had expected. But the other--

They were, president and general manager, R. B. (Squint) Rodaine;
secretary-treasurer, Maurice Rodaine; and first vice-president--Miss
Anita Natalie Richmond!

CHAPTER XVIII

After that, Fairchild heard little that Harry said as he rambled on
about the plans for the future. He answered the big Cornishman's
questions with monosyllables, volunteering no information. He did not
even show him the advertisement--he knew that it would be as galling to
Harry as it was to him. And so he sat and stared, until finally his
partner said good night and left the room.

That name could mean only one thing: that she had consented to become a
partner with them, that they had won her over, after all. Now, even a
different light came upon the meeting with Barnham in Denver and a
different view to Fairchild. What if she had been playing their game
all along? What if she had been merely a tool for them; what if she
had sent Farrell at their direction, to learn everything he and Harry
knew? What--?

Fairchild sought to put the thought from him and failed. Now that he
looked at it in retrospect, everything seemed to have a sinister
meaning. He had met the girl under circumstances which never had been
explained. The first time she ever had seen him after that she
pretended not to recognize him. Yet, following a conversation with
Maurice Rodaine, she took advantage of an opportunity to talk to him
and freely admitted to him that she had been the person he believed her
to be. True, Fairchild was looking now at his idol through blue
glasses, and they gave to her a dark, mysterious tone that he could not
fathom. There were too many things to explain; too many things which
seemed to connect her directly with the Rodaines; too many things which
appeared to show that her sympathies were there and that she might only
be a trickster in their hands, a trickster to trap him! Even the
episode of the lawyer could be turned to this account. Had not another
lawyer played the friendship racket, in an effort to buy the Blue Poppy
mine?

And here Fairchild smiled grimly. From the present prospects, it would
seem that the gain would have been all on his side, for certainly there
was little to show now toward a possibility of the Blue Poppy ever
being worth anything near the figure which he had been offered for it.
And yet, if that offer had not been made as some sort of stiletto jest,
why had it been made at all? Was it because Rodaine knew that wealth
did lie concealed there? Was it because Squint Rodaine had better
information even than the faithful, hard-working, unfortunate Harry?
Fairchild suddenly took hope. He clenched his hands and he spoke, to
himself, to the darkness and to the spirits of discouragement that were
all about him:

"If it's there, we 'll find it--if we have to work our fingers to the
bone, if we have to starve and die there--we'll find it!"

With that determination, he went to bed, to awake in the morning filled
with a desire to reach the mine, to claw at its vitals with the
sharp-edged drills, to swing the heavy sledge until his shoulders and
back ached, to send the roaring charges of dynamite digging deeper and
deeper into that thinning vein. And Harry was beside him every step of
the way.

A day's work, the booming charges, and they returned to the stope to
find that the vein had neither lessened nor grown greater. Another
day--and one after that. The vein remained the same, and the two men
turned to mucking that they might fill their ore car with the proceeds
of the various blasts, haul it to the surface by the laborious, slow
process of the man-power elevator, then return once more to their
drilling, begrudging every minute that they were forced to give to the
other work of tearing away the muck and refuse that they might gain the
necessary room to follow the vein.

The days grew to a week, and a week to a fortnight. Once a truck made
its slow way up the tortuous road, chortled away with a load of ore,
returned again and took the remainder from the old, half-rotted ore
bins, to the Sampler, there to be laid aside while more valuable ore
was crushed and sifted for its assays, and readier money taken in. The
Blue Poppy had nothing in its favor. Ten or twenty dollar ore looked
small beside the occasional shipments from the Silver Queen, where
Blindeye Bozeman and Taylor Bill formed the entire working staff until
the much-sought million dollars should flow in and a shaft-house,
portable air pumps, machine drills and all the other attributes of
modern mining methods should be put into operation.

And it appeared that the million dollars would not be slow in coming.
Squint Rodaine had established his office in a small, vacant store
building on the main street, and Fairchild could see, as he went to and
from his work, a constant stream of townspeople as they made that their
goal--there to give their money into the keeping of the be-scarred man
and to trust to the future for wealth. It galled Fairchild, it made
his hate stronger than ever; yet within him there could not live the
hope that the Silver Queen might share the fate of the Blue Poppy.
Other persons besides the Rodaines were interested now, persons who
were putting their entire savings into the investment; and Fairchild
could only grit his teeth and hope--for them--that it would be an
everlasting bonanza. As for the girl who was named as vice-president--

He saw her, day after day, riding through town in the same automobile
that he had helped re-tire on the Denver road. But now she did not
look at him; now she pretended that she did not see him.
Before,--well, before, her eyes had at least met his, and there had
been some light of recognition, even though her carefully masked face
had belied it. Now it was different. She had gone over to the
Rodaines, she was engaged to marry the chalky-faced, hook-nosed son and
she was vice-president of their two-million-dollar mining corporation.
Fairchild did not even strive to find a meaning for it all; women are
women, and men do well sometimes if they diagnose themselves.

The summer began to grow old, and Fairchild felt that he was aging with
it. The long days beneath the ground had taught him many things about
mining now, all to no advantage. Soon they would be worth nothing,
save as five-dollar-a-day single-jackers, working for some one else.
The bank deposits were thinning, and the vein was thinning with it.
Slowly but surely, as they fought, the strip of pay ore in the rocks
was pinching out. Soon would come the time when they could work it no
longer. And then,--but Fairchild did not like to think about that.

September came, and with it the grand jury. But here for once was a
slight ray of hope. The inquisitorial body dragged through its various
functionings, while Farrell stood ready with his appeal to the court
for a lunacy board at the first hint of an investigation into Crazy
Laura's story. Three weeks of prying into "vice conditions", gambling,
profiteering and the usual petty nonsense with which so many grand
juries have managed to fritter away time under the misapprehension of
applying some weighty sort of superhuman reasoning to ordinary things,
and then good news. The body of twelve good men and true had worn
themselves out with other matters and adjourned without even taking up
the mystery of the Blue Poppy mine. But the joy of Fairchild and Harry
was short-lived. In the long, legal phraseology of the jury's report
was the recommendation that this important subject be the first for
inquiry by the next grand inquisitorial body to be convened,--and the
threat still remained.

But before the two men were now realities which were worse even than
threats, and Harry turned from his staging late one afternoon to voice
the most important.

"We 'll start single-jacking to-morrow," he announced with a little
sigh. "In the 'anging wall."

"You mean--?"

"We can't do much more up 'ere. It ain't worth it. The vein 's
pinched down until we ain't even getting day laborer's wages out of
it--and it's October now."

October! October--and winter on the way. October--and only a month
until the time when Harry must face a jury on four separate charges,
any one of which might send him to Canon City for the rest of his days;
Harry was young no longer. October--and in the dreamy days of summer,
Fairchild had believed that October would see him rich. But now the
hills were brown with the killing touch of frost; the white of the
snowy range was creeping farther and farther over the mountains; the
air was crisp with the hint of zero soon to come; the summer was dead,
and Fairchild's hopes lay inert beside it. He was only working now
because he had determined to work. He was only laboring because a
great, strong, big-shouldered man had come from Cornwall to help him
and was willing to fight it out to the end. October--and the
announcement had said that a certain girl would be married in the late
fall, a girl who never looked in his direction any more, who had
allowed her name to become affiliated with that of the Rodaines, now
nearing the task of completing their two million. October--month of
falling leaves and dying dreams, month of fragrant beauties gone to
dust, the month of the last, failing fight against the clutch of grim,
all-destroying winter. And Fairchild was sagging in defeat just as the
leaves were falling from the shaking aspens, as the moss tendrils were
curling into brittle, brown things of death. October!

For a long moment, Fairchild said nothing, then as Harry came from the
staging, he moved to the older man's side.

"I--I did n't quite catch the idea," came at last. Harry pointed with
his sledge.

"I 've been noticing the vein. It keeps turning to the left. It
struck me that it might 'ave branched off from the main body and that
there 's a bigger vein over there some'eres. We 'll just 'ave to make
a try for it. It's our only chance."

"And if we fail to find it there?"

"We 'll put a couple of 'oles in the foot wall and see what we strike.
And then--"

"Yes--?"

"If it ain't there--we 're whipped!"

It was the first time that Harry had said the word seriously.
Fairchild pretended not to hear. Instead, he picked up a drill, looked
at its point, then started toward the small forge which they had
erected just at the foot of the little raise leading to the stope.
There Harry joined him; together they heated the long pieces of steel
and pounded their biting faces to the sharpness necessary to drilling
in the hard rock of the hanging wall, tempering them in the bucket of
water near by, working silently, slowly,--hampered by the weight of
defeat. They were being whipped; they felt it in every atom of their
beings. But they had not given up their fight. Two blows were left in
the struggle, and two blows they meant to strike before the end came.
The next morning they started at their new task, each drilling holes at
points five feet apart in the hanging wall, to send them in as far as
possible, then at the end of the day to blast them out, tearing away
the rock and stopping their work at drilling that they might muck away
the refuse. The stope began to take on the appearance of a vast
chamber, as day after day, banging away at their drill holes, stopping
only to sharpen the bits or to rest their aching muscles, they pursued
into the entrails of the hills the vagrant vein which had escaped them.
And day after day, each, without mentioning it to the other, was
tortured by the thought of that offer of riches, that mysterious
proffer of wealth for the Blue Poppy mine,--tortured like men who are
chained in the sight of gold and cannot reach it. For the offer
carried always the hint that wealth was there, somewhere, that Squint
Rodaine knew it, but that they could not find it. Either that--or flat
failure. Either wealth that would yield Squint a hundredfold for his
purchase, or a sneer that would answer their offer to sell. And each
man gritted his teeth and said nothing. But they worked on.

October gave up its fight. The first day of November came, to find the
chamber a wide, vacuous thing now, sheltering stone and refuse and two
struggling men,--nothing more. Fairchild ceased his labors and mopped
his forehead, dripping from the heat engendered by frenzied labor;
without the tunnel opening, the snow lay deep upon the mountain sides,
for it had been more than a week since the first of the white blasts
had scurried over the hills to begin the placid, cold enwrapment of the
winter. A long moment, then:

"Harry."

"Aye."

"I 'm going after the other side. We 've been playing a half-horsed
game here."

"I 've been thinking that, Boy."

"Then I 'm going to tackle the foot wall. You stay where you are, for
a few more shots; it can't do much good, the way things are going, and
it can't do much harm. I was at the bank to-day."

"Yeh."

"My balance is just two hundred."

"Counting what we borrowed from Mother 'Oward?"

"Yes."

Harry clawed at his mustache. His nose, already red from the pressure
of blood, turned purplish.

"We 're nearing the end, Boy. Tackle the foot wall."

They said no more. Fairchild withdrew his drill from the "swimmer" or
straightforward powder hole and turned far to the other side of the
chamber, where the sloping foot wall showed for a few feet before it
dived under the muck and refuse. There, gad in hand, he pecked about
the surface, seeking a spot where the rock had splintered, thereby
affording a softer entrance for the biting surface of the drill. Spot
after spot he prospected, suddenly to stop and bend forward. At last
came an exclamation, surprised, wondering:

"Harry!"

"Yeh."

"Come here."

The Cornishman left his work and walked to Fairchild's side. The
younger man pointed.

"Do you ever fill up drill holes with cement?" he asked.

"Not as I know of. Why?"

"There 's one." Fairchild raised his gad and chipped away the softer
surface of the rock, leaving a tubular protuberance of cement
extending. Harry stared.

"What the bloody 'ell?" he conjectured. "D' you suppose--" Then, with
a sudden resolution: "Drill there! Gad a 'ole off to one side a bit
and drill there. It seems to me Sissie Larsen put a 'ole there or
something--I can't remember. But drill. It can't do any 'arm."

The gad chipped away the rock. Soon the drill was biting into the
surface of the foot wall. Quitting time came; the drill was in two
feet, and in the morning, Fairchild went at his task again. Harry
watched him over a shoulder.

"If it don't bring out anything in six feet--it ain't there," he
announced. Fairchild found the humor to smile.

"You 're almost as cheerful as I am." Noon came and they stopped for
lunch. Fairchild finished the remark begun hours before. "I 'm in
four feet now--and all I get is rock."

"Sure now?"

"Look."

They went to the foot wall and with a scraper brought out some of the
muggy mass caused by the pouring of water into the "down-hole" to make
the sittings capable of removal. Harry rubbed it with a thumb and
forefinger.

"That's all," he announced, as he went back to his dinner pail.
Together, silently, they finished their luncheon. Once more Fairchild
took up his work, dully, almost lackadaisically, pounding away at the
long, six-foot drill with strokes that had behind them only muscles,
not the intense driving power of hope. A foot he progressed into the
foot wall and changed drills. Three inches more. Then--

"Harry!"

"What's 'appened?" The tone of Fairchild's voice had caused the
Cornishman to lean from his staging and run to Fairchild's side. That
person had cupped his hand and was holding it beneath the drill hole,
while into it he was pulling the muck with the scraper and staring at
it.

"This stuff's changed color!" he exclaimed. "It looks like--"

"Let me see!" The older man took a portion of the blackish, gritty
mass and held it close to his carbide. "It looks like something--it
looks like something!" His voice was high, excited. "I 'll finish the
'ole and jam enough dynamite in there to tear the insides out of it. I
'll give 'er 'ell. But in the meantime, you take that down to the
assayer!"

CHAPTER XIX

Fairchild did not hesitate. Scraping the watery conglomeration into a
tobacco can, he threw on his coat and ran for the shaft. Then he
pulled himself up, singing, and dived into the fresh-made drifts of a
new storm as he started toward town; nor did he stop to investigate the
fast fading footprints of some one who evidently had passed the mine a
short time before. Fairchild was too happy to notice such things just
now; in a tin can in his side pocket was a blackish, muggy mixture
which might mean worlds to him; he was hurrying to receive the verdict,
which could come only from the retorts and tests of one man, the
assayer.

Into town and through it to the scrambling buildings of the Sampler,
where the main products of the mines of Ohadi found their way before
going to the smelter. There he swung wide the door and turned to the
little room on the left, the sanctum of a white-haired, almost
tottering old man who wandered about among his test tubes and "buttons"
as he figured out the various weights and values of the ores as the
samples were brought to him from the dirty, dusty, bin-filled rooms of
the Sampler proper. A queer light came into the old fellow's eyes as
he looked into those of Robert Fairchild.

"Don't get 'em too high!" he admonished.

Fairchild stared.

"What?"

"Hopes. I 've seen many a fellow come in just like you. I 've been
here thirty year. They call me Old Undertaker Chastine!"

Fairchild laughed.

"But I'm hoping--"

"Yep, Son." Undertaker Chastine looked over his glasses. "You 're
just like all the rest. You 're hoping. That's what they all do; they
come in here with their eyes blazing like a grate fire and their faces
all lighted up as bright as an Italian cathedral. And they tell me
they 've got the world by the tail. Then I take their specimens and I
put 'em over the hurdles,--and half the time they go out wishing there
was n't any such person in the world as an assayer. Boy," and he
pursed his lips, "I 've buried more fortunes than you could shake a
stick at. I 've seen men come in here millionaires and go out
paupers--just because I 've had to tell 'em the truth. And I 'm
soft-hearted. I would n't kill a flea--not even if it was eatin' up
the best bird dog that ever set a pa'tridge. And just because o' that,
I 've adopted the system of taking all hope out of a fellow right in
the beginning. Then if you 've really got something, it's a joyful
surprise. If you ain't, the disappointment don't hurt so much. So
trot 'er out and let the old Undertaker have a look at 'er. But I 'm
telling you right at the start that it won't amount to much."

Sobered now, Fairchild reached for his tobacco can, which had been
stuffed full of every scrap of slime that he and 'Arry had been able to
drag from the powder hole. Evidently, his drill had been in the ore,
whatever it was, for some time before he realized it; the can was
heavy, exceedingly heavy, giving evidence of purity of something at
least. But Undertaker Chastine shook his head.

"Can't tell," he announced. "Feels heavy, looks black and all that.
But it might not be anything but straight lead with a sprinkling of
silver. I 've seen stuff that looked a lot better than this not run
more 'n fifteen dollars to the ton. And then again--"

He began to tinker about with his pottery. He dragged out a scoop from
somewhere and prepared various white powders. Then he turned to the
furnace, with its high-chimneyed draft, and filled a container with the
contents of the tobacco can.

"Let 'er roast, Son," he announced. "That's the only way. Let 'er
roast--and while it's getting hot, well, you just cool your heels."

Long waiting--while the eccentric old assayer told doleful tales of
other days, tales of other men who had rushed in, just like Fairchild,
with their sample of ore, only to depart with the knowledge that they
were no richer than before, days when the news of the demonetization of
silver swooped down upon the little town like some black tornado,
closing down the mines, shutting up the gambling halls and great
saloons, nailing up the doors, even of the Sampler, for years to come.

"Them was the times when there was a lot of undertakers around here
besides me," Chastine went on. "Everybody was an undertaker then.
Lor', Boy, how that thing hit. We 'd been getting along pretty well at
ninety-five cents and a dollar an ounce for silver, and there was men
around here wearing hats that was the biggest in the shop, but that did
n't come anywhere near fittin' 'em. And then, all of a sudden, it hit!
We used to get in all our quotations in those days over the telephone,
and every morning I 'd phone down to Old Man Saxby that owned the
Sampler then to find out how the New York market stood. The treasury,
you know, had been buying up three or four million ounces of silver a
month for minting. Then some high-falutin' Congressman got the idea
they didn't want to do that any more, and he began to talk. Well, one
morning, I telephoned down, and silver 'd dropped to eighty-five. The
next morning it went to seventy. The House or the Senate, I 've
forgotten which, had passed the demonetization bill. After that,
things dragged along and then--I telephoned down again.

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