In the Heart of a Fool Part 16

Now, when the old year with all its work lay down in the innumerable company of its predecessors, and the bells rang and the whistles blew in South Harvey to welcome in the new year, the midnight sky was blazoned with the great torches from the smelter chimneys, and the pumps in the oil wells kept up their dolorous whining and complaining, like great insects battening upon an abandoned world. In South Harvey the lights of the saloons and the side of the dragon's sp.a.w.n glowed and beckoned men to death. Money tinkled over the bars, and whispered as it was crumpled in the claws of the dragon. For money the scurrying human ants hurried along the dark, half-lighted streets from the ant hills over the mines.

For money the cranes of the pumps creaked their monody. For money the half-naked men toiled to their death in the fumes of the smelter. So the New Year's bells rang a pean of welcome to the money that the New Year would bring with its toll of death.

"Money," clanged the church bells in the town on the hill. "Money makes wealth and since we have banished our kings and stoned our priests, money is the only thing in our material world that will bring power and power brings pleasure and pleasure brings death."

"And death? and death? and death?" tolled the church bells that glad New Year, and then ceased in circling waves of sound that enveloped the world, still inquiring--"and death? and death?" fainter and fainter until dawn.

The little boy who heard the bells may have heard their plaintive question; for in the morning twilight, sitting in his nightgown on his high chair looking into the cheerful mouth of the glowing kitchen stove, while the elders prepared breakfast, the child who had been silent for a long time raised his face and asked:

"Grant--what is death?" The youth at his task answered by telling about the buried seed and the quickening plant. The child listened and shook his head.

"Father," he asked, addressing the old man, who was rubbing his chilled hands over the fire, "what is death?" The old man spoke, slowly. He ran his fingers through his beard and then addressing the youth who had spoken rather than the child, replied:

"Death? Death?" and looked puzzled, as if searching for his words.

"Death is the low archway in the journey of life, where we all--high and low, weak and strong, poor and rich, must bow into the dust, remove our earthly trappings, wealth and power and pleasure, before we rise to go upon the next stage of our journey into wider vistas and greener fields."

The child nodded his head as one who has just appraised and approved a universe, replying sagely, "Oh," then after a moment he added: "Yes."

And said no more.

But when the sun was up, and the wheels sc.r.a.ped on the gravel walk before the Adams home, and the silvery, infectious laugh of a young mother waked the echoes of the home, as she bundled up Kenyon for his daily journey, the old man and the young man heard the child ask: "Aunty Laura--what is death?" The woman with her own child near in the very midst of life, only laughed and laughed again, and Kenyon laughed and Lila laughed and they all laughed.

CHAPTER XVI

GRANT ADAMS IS SOLD INTO BONDAGE AND MARGARET FENN RECEIVES A SHOCK

Perhaps the sound of their laughter drowned the mournful voices of the bells in Grant Adams's heart. But the bells of the New Year left within him some stirring of their eternal question. For as the light of day sniffed out, Grant in a cage full of miners, with d.i.c.k Bowman and one of his boys standing beside him, going down to the second level of the mine, asked himself the question that had puzzled him: Why did not these men get as much out of life as their fellows on the same pay in the town who work in stores and offices? He could see no particular difference in the intelligence of the men in Harvey and the workers in South Harvey; yet there they were in poorer clothes, with, faces not so quick, clearly not so well kept from a purely animal standpoint, and even if they were st.u.r.dier and physically more powerful, yet to the young man working with them in the mine, it seemed that they were a different sort from the white-handed, keen-faced, smooth-shaven, well-groomed clerks of Market Street, and that the clerks were getting the better of life. And Grant cried in his heart: "Why--why--why?"

Then d.i.c.k Bowman said: "Red--penny for your thoughts?" The men near by turned to Grant and he said: "h.e.l.lo, d.i.c.k--" Then to the boy: "Well, Mugs, how are you?" He spoke to the others, Casper and Barney and Evans and Hugh and Bill and Dan and Tom and Lew and Gomer and Mike and d.i.c.k--excepting Casper Herd.i.c.ker, mostly Welsh and Irish, and they pa.s.sed around some more or less ribald greetings. Then they all stepped upon the soft ground and stood in the light of the flickering oil torches that hung suspended from timbers.

Stretching down long avenues these flickering torches blocked out the alleys of the mine in either direction from the room, perhaps fifty by forty feet, six or seven feet high, where they were standing. A car of coal drawn by forlorn mules and pushed by a grinning boy, came creaking around a distant corner, and drew nearer to the cage. A score of men ending their shift were coming into the pa.s.sageways from each end, shuffling along, tired and silent. They met the men going to work with a nod or a word and in a moment the room at the main bottom was empty and silent, save for the groaning car and the various language spoken by the grinning boy to the unhappy mule. Grant Adams turned off the main pa.s.sage to an air course, where from the fans above cold air was rushing along a narrow and scarcely lighted runway about six feet wide and lower than the main pa.s.sage. Down this pa.s.sage the new mule barn was building.

Grant went to his work, and just outside the barn, snuffed a sputtering torch that was dripping burning oil into a small oily puddle on the damp floor. The room was cold. Three men were with him and he was directing them, while he worked briskly with them. Occasionally he left the barn to oversee the carpenters who were timbering up a new shaft in a lower level that was not yet ready for operation. Fifty miners and carpenters were working on the third level, clearing away pa.s.sages, making shaft openings, putting in timbers, constructing air courses and getting the level ready for real work. On the second level, in the little rooms, off the long, gloomy pa.s.sages lighted with the flaring torches hanging from the damp timbers that stretched away into long vistas wherein the torches at the ends of the pa.s.sage glimmered like fireflies, men were working--two hundred men pegging and digging and prying and sweating and talking to their "buddies," the Welsh in monosyllables and the Irish in a confusion of tongues. The cars came jangling along the pa.s.sageways empty and went back loaded and groaning. Occasionally the piping voice of a boy and the melancholy bray of a mule broke the deep silence of the place.

For sound traveled slowly through the gloom, as though the torches sapped it up and burned it out in faint, trembling light to confuse the men who sometimes came plodding down the galleries to and from the main bottom. At nine o'clock Grant Adams had been twice over the mine, on the three levels and had thirty men hammering away for dear life. He sent a car of lumber down to the mule barn, while he went to the third level to direct the division of an air shaft into an emergency escape. On one side of this air shaft the air came down and there was a temporary hoist for the men on the third level and on the other side a wooden stairway was to be built up seventy feet toward the second level.

At ten o'clock Grant came back to the second level by the hoist in the air shaft and as he started down the low air course branching off from the main pa.s.sage and leading to the new mule barn, he smelled burning pine; and hurrying around a corner saw that the boy who dumped the pine boards for the mule barn had not taken the boards into the barn, nor even entirely to the barn, but had dumped them in the pa.s.sage to the windward of the barn, under the leaky torch, and Grant could see down the air course the ends of the boards burning brightly.

The men working in the barn could not smell the fire, for the wind that rushed down the air course was carrying the smoke and fumes away from them. Grant ran down the course toward the fire, which was fanned by the rushing air, came to the lumber, which was not all afire, jumped through the flames, slapping the little blazes on his clothes with his hat as he came out, and ran into the barn calling to the men to help him put out the fire. They spent two or three minutes trying to attach the hose to the water plug there, but the hose did not fit the plug; then they tried to turn the plug to get water in their dinner pails and found that the plug had rusted and would not turn. While they worked the fire grew. It was impossible to send a man back through it, so Grant sent a man speeding around the air course, to get a wrench from the pump room, or from some one in the main bottom to turn on the water. In the meantime he and the other two men worked furiously to extinguish the fire by whipping it with their coats and ap.r.o.ns, but always the flames beat them back. Helplessly they saw it eating along the mine timbers far down the vacant pa.s.sage. Little red devils of flame that winked maliciously two hundred feet away, and went out, then sprang up again, then blazed steadily. Grant and the two men tugged frantically at the burning boards, trying to drag them out of the pa.s.sageway into the barn, but only here and there could an end be picked up, and it took five minutes to get half a dozen charred boards into the barn. While they struggled with the charred boards the flames down the pa.s.sage kept glowing brighter and brighter. The men were conscious that the flames were playing around the second torch below the barn. Although they realized that the man they sent for the wrench had nearly half a mile to go and come by the roundabout way, they asked one another if he was making the wrench!

Men began poking their heads into the course and calling, "Need any help down there," and Grant cried, "Yes, go to the pump in the main balcony with your buckets and get water." The man sent for the wrench appeared down the long pa.s.sage. Grant yelled,

"Hurry--hurry, man!" But though he came running, the fire seemed to be going faster than he was. They could hear men calling and felt that there was confusion at the end of the air course where it turned into the main pa.s.sage ahead of the flames. A second torch exploded, scattering the fire far down the course. The man, breathless and exhausted, ran up with the wrench. Then they felt the air in the air course stop moving. They looked at one another. "Yes," said the man with the wrench, "I told 'em to reverse the fans and when we got the water turned on we'd hold the fire from going to the other end of the pa.s.sage." He said this between gasps as he tugged at the water plug with the wrench. He hit it a vicious blow and the cap broke.

The fan had reversed. The air was rushing back, bringing the flames to the barn. They beat the fire madly with their coats, but in two minutes the roaring air had brought the flames upon them. The loose timber and shavings in the barn were beginning to blaze and the men ran for their lives down the air course. As they ran for the south pa.s.sage, the smoke followed them and they felt it in their eyes and lungs. The lights behind them were dimmed, and those in front grew dim. They reached the pa.s.sage in a cloud of smoke, but it was going up the air shaft and did not fill the pa.s.sage. "Mugs," yelled Grant to a boy driving an ore car, "run down this pa.s.sage and tell the men there's a fire--where's your father?"

"He's up yon way," called the boy, pointing in the opposite direction as he ran. "You tell him." The fire was roaring down the air course behind them, and Grant and the three men knew that in a few minutes the reverse air would be sucking the flames up the air shaft, cutting off the emergency escape for the men on the first and second levels.

Grant knew that the emergency escape was not completed for the third level, but he knew that they were using the air chute for a temporary hoist for the men from the third level and that the main shaft was not running to the third level.

"Run down this pa.s.sage, Bill," called Grant. "Get all those fellows.

Evans, you call the first level; I'll skin down this rope to the men below." In an instant, as the men were flying on their errands, his red head disappeared down the rope into the darkness. At the bottom of the hoist in the third level Grant found forty or fifty men at work. They were startled to see him come down without waiting for the bucket to go up and he called breathlessly as his feet touched the earth: "Boys, there's a fire above on the next level--I don't know how bad it is; but it looks bad to me. They may get it out with a hose from the main bottom--if they've got hose there that will reach any place."

"Let's go up," cried one of the men. As they started toward him, Grant threw up his hand.

"Hold on now, boys--hold on. The fans will be blowing that fire down this air shaft in a few minutes. How far up have you got the ladders?"

he asked.

Some one answered: "Still twelve feet shy." There was a scramble for the buckets, but no one offered to man the windla.s.s and hoist them up the air shaft. Grant was only a carpenters' boss. The men around the buckets were miners. But he called: "Get out of there, Hughey and Mike--none of that. We must make that ladder first--get some timbers--put the rungs three feet apart, and work quick."

He pointed at the timbers to be used for the ladders, stepped to the windla.s.s and cried:

"Here, Johnnie--you got no family--get hold of this windla.s.s with me.

Ready now--family men first--you, Sam--you, Edwards--you, Lewellyn."

Then he bent to the wheel and the men in the bucket started up the shaft. The others pounded at the ladder, and those who could find no work clambered up the stairs to the bottom of the gap that separated them from the second level. As the men in the buckets were nearly up to the second level, where the hoist stopped, Grant heard one of them call: "Hurry, hurry--here she comes," and a second later a hot, smoky wind struck his face and he knew the fan was turned again and soon would be blowing fire down the air course.

The men had the ladder almost finished. The men above on the stairs smelled the smoke and began yelling. The bucket reached the top and was started down. Grant looked up the air shaft and saw the fire--little flickering flames lighting up the shaft near the second level. The air rushing down was smoky and filled with sparks. The ladder was ready and the men made a rush with it up the stairway. Most of their lamps were put out and it was dark in the stairway. The men were uttering hysterical, foolish cries as they rushed upward in their panic. The ladder jolting against the sides of the chamber knocked the men off their feet and there was tumbling and swearing and tripping and struggling.

Grant grabbed the ladder from the men and held it above his head, and called out:

"You men go up there in order. You'll not get the ladder till you straighten up."

The emergency-pa.s.sage was filling with smoke. The men were coughing and gasping.

Up and down the stairs men called:

"Brace up, that's right."

"Red's right."

"We'll all go if we don't straighten up."

In a moment there was some semblance of order, and Grant wormed his way to the top holding the ladder above him. He put one end of it on a landing and nailed the foot of the ladder to the landing floor. Then he stood on the landing, a great, powerful man with blazing eyes, and called down: "Now come; one at a time, and if any man crowds I'll kill him. Come on--one at a time." One came and went up; when he was on the third rung of the ladder, Grant let another man pa.s.s up, and so three men were on the ladder.

As the top man raised the trapdoor above, Grant and those upon the ladder could see the flames and a great gust of smoke poured down. The man at the top hesitated. On the other side of the part.i.tion in the air chute the smoke was pouring and the fire was circling the top of the emergency escape through which the men must pa.s.s.

"Go ahead or jump down," yelled Grant.

Those on the ladder and on the landing who could see up cried:

"Quick, for G.o.d's sake! Hurry!"

And in another second the first man had scrambled through the hole, letting the trapdoor fall upon the head of the scrambling man just under him. He fell, but Grant caught him, and shoved him into the next turn upon the ladder.

After that they learned to lift their hands up and catch the trapdoor, but they could see the flames burning the timbers and dropping sparks and blowing smoke down the emergency shaft. Ten men went up; the fire in the flume along the stairs below them was beginning to whip through the board part.i.tion. The fan was pumping the third level full of smoke; it was carried out of the stairway by the current. But the men were calling below. Little Ira Dooley tried to go around Grant ahead of his turn at the ladder. The cheater felt the big man's hand catch him and hold him.

The men below saw Grant hit the cheater upon the point of the jaw and throw him half conscious under the ladder. The men climbed steadily up.