The Mascot Of Sweet Briar Gulch Part 7

Jim flushed at the implied compliment. "You're right, Bud, I will."

"Great little papoose, ain't he?" said Bud, turning in his saddle before his starting rush. "Makings of a man there, all right. The boys in town are dead stuck on him. I'll have to give a complete history when I get back. I must get a gait on, or I'll have Uncle Sammy on my neck again--inspector started out with me this morning."

"The devil he did!" cried Jim indignantly, well knowing the hardships and dangers of the big rider's route.

"Oh, it's all right!" replied Bud with a wave of his hand. "Come out fine. When the lad first told me he'd been sent out to see why the mails was so late on this line, I told him I'd show him right on the spot, but he said there was no use getting hot about it, as he was only doing his duty, so I quieted down.

"He was a decent sort of feller. I thought to myself before we got under way, 'Now, there won't nothing happen this day--everything'll go as smooth and slick as grease, and this feller will report that I'm sojering,' that's the way it usually works, you know. But this time I played in luck.

"Two miles out of town we ran into a wild-eyed gang from somewhere, who was going to make us dance. We didn't dance, and I'll say for that inspector that he stood by me like a man, but he was awful sick at his stomach later on from the excitement.

"Next thing, the bridge was down at Squaw Creek, and we swum her. He'd have gone down the flume, if I hadn't got hold of his bridle. 'Nice mail route, this,' says he, as he got ash.o.r.e. 'Oh, you'd like it,' says I, 'if you got used to it.' I'd begun to wonder what was next myself. Ain't many people swimming Squaw Creek, as you perhaps know.

"Well, next was about ten mile along, just before you come to the old Tin-cup Camp. We was pa.s.sing the bluff there, and all of a sudden, rip, thump, biff! Down comes what looked like the whole side a-top of us. It weren't though. It was only a cinnamon had lost his balance, leaning over too far to see what we was. That bear landed right agin brother inspector's horse, and brother inspector's horse tried to climb a tree.

Inspector himself fell a-top of the bear. I da.s.sent shoot, for the devil himself couldn't have told which was inspector and which bear. Finally bear shakes himself loose and telescopes himself up the canon, the worst scared animile in the country. 'If you'll ketch my horse, I'll amble back again,' says the inspector. 'I've investigated this route pretty thorough, and find it's just as you say. Lamp-posts'll do me all right for a while.' Come out fine, didn't it?

"Whish there! Untie yourself, you yaller bone-heap!" And the mail was a quarter of a mile up the trail.

Jim pondered the information concerning Ches carefully, only to adhere to his original determination. He could not see any way in which the boy would be benefited by hearing the news. Still, the miner hated anything that savored of concealment or deception.

"I wish Anne was here to help me," he thought; "she'd know what to do."

He sat long, looking down, his hands clasped about his knees, drinking with old Tantalus. But the reverie ended as it always did--in action.

There was nothing for it but the claim. Success there meant success everywhere.

It was the knowledge that Anne, the boy, and all he wished to do for both depended on the pay-streak which had urged him to such a fury of effort.

His carelessness of his own life, that led him to slap his timbering up any way, was born of that same fury. And the consequences came like most consequences, without a moment's warning.

It was a still and beautiful noon. Ches had pulled out the last car before dinner, and started for the cabin.

A curious groaning and snapping from the tunnel halted him. It was the giving of the tortured timbers. On the heels of that came a dull, crushing roar. A blast of dust shot from the tunnel-mouth, like smoke from a cannon, preceded by a shock that nearly threw the boy off his feet.

Then all was still again. The sun shone as brilliantly as before, blazing down upon the ghastly face of a little boy, who, after one heart-broken cry of "Jim! Oh, Jim's killed!" sank down upon the ground, chewing the fingers thrust in his mouth, that the pain might make the black wave keep its distance.

For Ches knew that he was alone; that there was no human being within miles to help the man caught in the hand of that mischance but himself, so frantically willing, but so impotent.

"I must git me wits tergedder--I must!" and down came the teeth with all the strength of the boy's jaw. "Oh, what will I do? What will I do?" The little head waved from side to side in its agony, and a sudden sob struck him in the throat.

After that one small weakness rose Ches Felton, hero. To the mouth of the tunnel he went. Above the tumbled pile of dirt and timber ran a sort of pa.s.sage, between it and the roof.

A way along which a boy might crawl and find out if all the frames were down--to which the silence of the tunnel gave a bitter a.s.sent--or if by some most lucky chance one or two had held, and Jim be safe within.

Ches climbed to the top and thrust his head into the gloom. "Jim!" he called, "Jim!" No answer.

Before him lay the ruin of his pardner's work. It was over this that his path lay, as deadly dangerous a path as could be found. The slightest disturbing of the roof above might bring down a thousand tons of dirt upon the one who ventured, slowly and hideously to crush his life out, there in the dark, beyond sight and sound of the cheerful world without.

With this knowledge before him, and his inborn fear of the dark hole, as daunting as the hand of death itself, he took his soul in his gripe, and wormed his way within.

Sometimes his back grazed a stone in the roof, and the touch of white-hot iron could not have been so terrible; sometimes a falling stone near him would make his heart leap and stop as he waited for the hill above to follow. Foot by foot he made it, twisting around the end of a post, scooping out the dirt most cautiously where the hole was too small for even his slight body.

Once the sharp end of a broken piece of lagging caught in his clothes, and he could go neither forward nor back. There, for a second, he broke down. Bracing up again, he managed somehow to get the old knife out of his pocket and cut himself free.

He could see little.

A gray spectral light filtered in here and there that defined nothing, even when his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness.

It was an endless journey. In places where the dirt closed in he would be a full minute progressing a foot, and a minute of such mortal terror as seldom falls to the lot of man of peace or soldier.

But it ended.

Suddenly the boy's outstretched hand encountered only emptiness below.

That frame had held. He dove into the s.p.a.ce head first, and landed on something soft and warm--the body of his pardner.

He had found him. In a paroxysm of joy, he flung himself upon the motionless figure and cried his heart out. This, too, he soon conquered.

Jim had just so much show--any delay might wipe it out. He searched the man's pockets until he found a match. By its light he saw the candle stuck into the post, and lit it. Then he knelt beside his pardner again.

It was a curious picture within that gloomy chamber underground. The miner lying stark, stretched to his full great length, appearing enormous in the flickering candle-light, and the child, white-faced, big-eyed, but steady as a veteran, wiping the blood from the ragged cut in the man's head.

Ches realized what had happened the instant before the calamity. Jim, startled by the noise of the yielding timbers, had made a rush, only to be struck down by the rock, that now lay within an inch of him; yet struck into safety for all that. Had he gone a yard farther, the life would have been smashed out of him instantly.

But now, what? The flowing blood sent a sickening chill through the boy.

Had he done this much only to be able to see his pardner die? He drove his teeth into his hand again at the thought. What was that? Was it a trick of the tunnel, his heart sounding in his own ears, or a rhythmic beat from outside? Hollow and dull fell that "clatter-clum-clatter-clum."

"Bud!" screamed Ches, "T'ank G.o.d, dat's Bud!"

After half a dozen efforts he climbed the dirt pile and went back through the treacherous holes. The rider came so fast! "Oh!" groaned the boy, "I'll never make it! Bud'll t'ink we're off somewheres an' pull on!--_Bud_! BUD!" he called at the top of his lungs; but the tunnel swallowed the little voice.

Desperation made him entirely reckless. It was any way to get out before the mail-man was beyond call. Glairy with sweat, he pulled, tugged, squirmed and wriggled along, until a dirty, small bundle rolled down almost under the mail-rider's feet.

"Whoa!" shouted Bud with an astonished oath. "What's the--why boy, what's the matter? d.a.m.n it! how you scart me!"

One look at him froze the man; he said no more, but waited, watching the working face of the child, who was mastering himself once more, in order to tell a quick, straight story, that no time might be lost.

"Der tunnel's fell in, Bud; Jim's in dere where der frame's held. He's livin' yet, but he's got a tur'ble cut in his head."

The mail-rider drew out paper and tobacco, and rolled a cigarette. It was his method of biting his hand. He loved the man inside that dark blotch on the hill-side with an affection only known where men are few and strong. And because he loved him, Bud was going to keep his head cool and clear, to find the right thing to do and do it the right way.

For all his calm outer man the mind within was whirling. He turned to the tense little face before him for help, and with an admiration that knew no bounds.

"How far back?" he asked.

"T'ree frames was held--dere was seven, ten foot apart--how much is dat?"

"Forty feet--ten foot apart! No wonder! Oh, Jim! How could you have been so careless?"

The boy's shoulders shook once. "He worked like er horse--now it's all gone an' he's in dere--" The face was contorted out of all humanity, but he held the tears back.

Bud leaped from his horse. "Never you mind, Chessy lad!" he cried, hugging up the little figure, "we'll get him out of that, by G.o.d!--Could we haul him out the way you went?"