CHAPTER V

THE "MISSED HOLE"

On the seventeenth sub-level of the Cousin Jack Mine the Spooner contract gang was working at high pressure. Two diamond drills were banging away like a battery of Gatling guns; men were rushing here and there, some were pushing small cars of red ore out through the drift to the level, where the electric trams would pick up the cars and rush them to the ore chutes. The pick men were breaking off the loosened pieces of ore dislodged by the last blast, while others were shoveling the ore into cars as if their very existence depended upon keeping up the pace.

Spooner himself, clad in a suit of oilskins, was shouting at his men, nagging, urging, threatening and directing in a perfect volley of explosive words.

A car had just been pushed out from the end of the drift where the drillers were working. It had reached a point directly underneath the rise and there it stuck, held fast by a piece of rock that had dropped to the track.

Spooner leaped forward with an angry roar.

"Out with it! I'll fire you both, you lazy, good for nothings!" he bellowed. "You ain't fit even to be swampers behind a pair of lazy mules. Push, I tell you! Push! Something will be doing here in a jiffy if you don't get that car out of the way!"

His words were prophetic in a measure, for something did happen a few seconds later, though Spooner was not the author of it. Rather was he the victim.

With a crash the trap door at the bottom of the rise burst open with a sound like a dynamite explosion in a new drift. A dark object was hurled out into the level, landing squirming on the soft ore in the car.

"What--what----"

Spooner did not finish what he was about to say. The dark object bounded from the ore car, landing with great force against the angry contractor. Spooner toppled over backwards, the breath pretty well knocked out of him, collapsing in the gutter at the side of the track.

Steve Rush had found the Spooner contract at last. The lad was not much the worse for his exciting slide, though he had been somewhat bruised when he burst through the wooden trap door at the lower end of the rise.

Steve was up in a twinkling. He looked about him and in a half laughing voice demanded:

"Where am I?"

"I reckon you're on seventeen," answered one of the miners.

"Where's the boss?"

"He's down there under you somewhere. I guess you knocked the daylight out of him. I hope you did. If it wasn't for my wife and family I'd a done it long time ago."

"Yes; I'd give a year's wages for the privilege of turning the diamond drill on him," added the head driller.

"Did I hit a man?" asked Steve anxiously.

"No; you hit an apology for a man," was the quick reply.

By this time young Rush was bending over, looking down into the shadows that hung over the gutter along the side of the track. He made out the figure of a man lying there.

"Help me get him up, men," he cried. "Don't you see that he is hurt?"

"Serve him right if he is," growled the trammer, the workman who pushed the cars of ore out into the main level.

"I tell you he is hurt. Lend a hand here!" commanded the boy sternly.

Something in his tone led the others to obey his order promptly. They gathered up Contractor Spooner and carried him over to where the light from the candles could be thrown on his face.

"Douse him with a pail of water," suggested the drill-man.

Someone quickly adopted the suggestion, with the result that Spooner sat up almost at once, choking, roaring and threatening between his gasps for breath.

"Who--who did it? Who did it?" snarled the contractor, struggling to his feet. "Who hit me?"

The man's hat had fallen from his head, and for the moment Steve did not answer. He was too fully absorbed in gazing at the harsh face of the man before him.

Balanced on Spooner's tall, angular body was a round, bullet-like head, with a rim of reddish-gray hair. His lips were protruding, sagging at each corner, while the lids over his prominent eyes blinked as though trying to run a race with each other.

"Who did it, I say?" roared the contractor, fixing his angry eyes upon the face of Steve Rush.

"I am afraid I am the guilty one, sir. But it was an accident. I will tell you how it occurred. I----"

Spooner gave the lad no opportunity to explain. Instead, the contractor, with an angry imprecation, started for Rush.

Steve's mind worked quickly. He was not afraid; he was considering whether it were best to run or to stand his ground, and he decided upon the latter.

"Stand back! Don't you touch me! I tell you it was an accident!" shouted the boy.

The contractor was too enraged to listen to reason, and as he sprang for Rush he thrust forth his long arms to grab the boy.

Spooner got a blow on the nose that sent him staggering backward, but Steve did not follow up the advantage he had gained. He could not expect to prove a match for the powerful miner, and perhaps he would not have been able to hit the latter as he did had the other been looking for anything of the sort. Spooner was more surprised than hurt.

"If you will wait, sir, I will explain. I am sorry I fell on you and sorry I had to hit you, but you mustn't lay your hands on me. You must----"

All work in drift seventeen had been suspended for the moment, and even the diamond drills had ceased their bang, bang, bang. Every man in the drift, save Spooner himself, had uttered a yell of delight when he saw the young miner's sturdy punch.

"Look out, lad; he's coming for you again. Spooner, remember he's a boy; don't do anything you'll be sorry for. You'll be----"

The contractor had started for young Rush again.

"Get out of here!" roared the man. "Out of here before I wring your miserable neck!"

Steve snatched up an iron bar that the trammers used to fasten the catches on the cars. He raised the bar over his shoulder.

"If you try to touch me I'll hit you, sir," said the lad in a tone so polite and pleasant that Spooner paused in amazement, then uttered a hoarse guffaw. Nevertheless he halted where he was, for he saw an expression in the eyes of the boy before him which spelled trouble. Furthermore, Spooner knew how strict the rules of the mine were, and now that he had had an opportunity to get control of himself he decided not to throw the young man out bodily.

"Get out of here before I help you, then. I can't stand everything. Go to work, you lazy louts! What do you mean by standing around on my time? I'll dock every man of you an hour's pay. Start those drills. Trammers, off with you. Are you going, boy?"

"No, sir."

"You're not going?"

"No, sir; I am going to work here."

"Oh, you are, eh? Well, I think I shall have something to say about that. You're not going to work here, and I should like to know what you are doing down in this mine, anyway. I'll have the mine captain put you out. It's my opinion that you are not here for any good, and you're lucky if he doesn't turn you over to the mine police."

"I have been assigned to work in this drift. The superintendent ordered me to report to you, sir. I am ready to go to work."

The contractor gazed at the boy with a puzzled expression on his face.

"You, a boy like you, work here? Pooh! What do you think this is, a kindergarten?"

"I am able to do a day's work; besides, it is the superintendent's orders, sir."

Spooner knew the boy had the best of him there. The superintendent's orders were to be obeyed, no matter if Spooner was mining on a contract agreement.

"Very well; if you want to work you shall have all the work you can do. I'll see the superintendent about your case when I go up to-day noon."

"What shall I do?"

"Do? Don't you see anything to do?"

"I see some things I should like to do," answered Steve Rush in a significant tone, eyeing the contractor steadily.

"Get hold of that shovel. I can't break your head as I ought to do, but the shovel will break your back before you get through with this day's work."

Steve grasped the shovel and began throwing the ore into the waiting car.

Spooner eyed the lad narrowly for a few moments. He was obliged to admit that Rush handled the shovel as well as any man he had ever had in his gang.

"You ought to be in the bull gang," jeered the contractor. "Yes, sir, you are wasting your talents working in an ore drift."

"What is a bull gang?" questioned the lad between shovels.

"That is the gang that shifts the timber down into the mine," answered the man shoveling by Steve's side. "The timber-men below take the stuff and build the supports and the lagging to keep the levels from caving in, you know."

"Where's your candle?" demanded Spooner. "You're a nice sort of a miner to come to work without a candle in your stick!"

"I lost it. You see, I lost my way and had a time getting here," explained Steve.

"Get one when you go up to-day noon. And remember you get only two hours' pay for the forenoon. If you're ever late like this again you are through right then and there."

Steve did not answer. He shoveled with all his might.

"Ready for the powder," called the head drill-man.

All the men save Steve and the powder-man laid down their tools and moved off. The boy continued at his work, his shovel making a steady scrape, scrape as he threw the ore up into the car.

In the meantime the powder-man was adjusting a charge of dynamite in each of the holes in the ore made by the drills.

"Well, boy?" called Mr. Spooner.

"Yes, sir."

"Are you going to stay there and have your fool head blown off?"

"Why----"

"Don't you see, they're going to fire a charge of dynamite. Get out of that!"

"Stand c-l-e-a-r!" called the powder-man in a sing-song tone.

All hands ran back so as to be well out of the way, and now that Steve understood what was being done, he shouldered his shovel and moved leisurely off in the direction taken by the others.

"That's the worst of a fool kid," grumbled the contractor. "They don't know enough to come in out of the wet----"

"The fuse is fired! Look out!" warned the powder-man, starting away from the scene on a run.

Steve watched the sputtering, squirming fuse far down the drift as the flame neared the charge of dynamite, six pounds all told. It seemed to him that all of them were in a dangerous position, but not being familiar with blasting, he supposed the miners knew their own business best.

It is always an anxious moment in the mines when, gathered in an expectant group, the workers underground stand waiting for the charge of dynamite to explode. It is seldom that anyone speaks during this brief period of suspense until the flash comes, followed by a puff of white smoke, a heavy report and a rain of rock and ore.

In this instance the wait seemed unusually long. The flash did not come.

"Missed hole," announced Spooner in a tone of disgust. "Five minutes of valuable time lost. That's the way the money goes in this gang. Get in there and attach a new fuse, powder-man. Don't be all day about it, either. If I wasn't around here to watch things we wouldn't get half a dozen tons a day out of this drift. First thing you know we'll all be out of a job. Come, are you going to get in there?"

"It ain't safe," answered the powder-man, shaking his head, sending a shower of grease from his candle into the face of Steve Rush.

"I see I've got to do it myself," exclaimed Spooner, grabbing a handful of fuses from the shoulders of the man who handled the dynamite.

The powder-man reached for his fuses, but the contractor already had them in his hand and was striding toward the drift.

The powder-man hesitated, then started after him on a trot.

"It's again' the rules, sir, to go in until ten minutes after firing the fuse when there's a missed hole," he warned.

"Rules!" jeered the contractor. "I'm the rules. I guess I'm running this drift."

By this time both men had reached the dome-like space where the drift ended, which included a very rich vein of iron ore.

Steve Rush shaded his eyes and, stooping over, peered into the drift. He was looking between the two men who at that moment were arguing excitedly. They appeared to have forgotten that they were treading on dangerous ground, but long familiarity with high explosives had made them careless.

The lad saw something a few feet beyond them that caused his heart to leap. A tiny spark had sprung up from the darkness, then as suddenly died out.

"Look out!" shouted the young miner, now keenly alive to the danger of the men ahead.

"Keep that kid still, or throw him down on the next level!" called Spooner over his shoulder. "I expect he'll have an attack of hysterics when we fire the blast."

"I tell you it isn't a missed hole!" cried the boy.

"Don't be a fool," jeered the head trammer.

Steve did not hear him. The boy had started off with a bound. His hat dropped from his head and his shovel fell clattering to the ground. "Come back, I tell you!" shouted Rush.

A few seconds more and he was right upon them. Without wasting further words of warning, he grabbed the contractor, and with surprising strength for one of his build, Steve hurled Spooner far out into the drift, that official bellowing his rage at the indignity.

Steve reached for the powder-man. His hands had just been laid on the man's shoulders when there came a blinding flash, a detonating report, a rending and tearing of rocks, then a shower of ore and stone.

Darkness settled over the drift and all was still.