Foxfire (36 page)

They resumed the agonizing crawl, heave, rest—crawl, heave, rest—up the hundred and fifty feet to the next level.

When they reached this next station, Dart stumbled off the ladder, laid his burden carefully down, and collapsed, panting, on a pile of lagging. He waited only long enough to regain his breath, and until the trembling of his muscles subsided, then he sprang to the telephone.

He thought for several seconds that this too would not answer, and he tried to calculate their chances of hauling Craddock the remaining eight hundred and fifty feet up the manway to the top.

Then he heard a click, and Riley's voice said, “Hello—Yes, sir? Hello?”

“Christ in Heaven!” cried Dart. “What's happening? Why didn't you answer the signals?”

“You didn't signal, Mr. Dartland—” said the thin voice plaintively, a trifle aggrieved, “not after the alert. I've been watching.”

“You damn fool, you're drunk—” began Dart, and stopped. He knew that Riley would not be drunk—there was something wrong with the signal wires then—He reached over and jerked the handle.

“There's your signal now,” said Riley through the phone. “You didn't give it before.”

“I
did
—but never mind now. There's a man hurt—Craddock. Bring the cage up to this level and then get us out of here fast.”

 

From the time they reached the surface and the blessed cool night air, the scene became blurred for Dart, though the judgment which had told him the split second when he must stop making fruitless signals to the top and start cutting fuses did not fail him.

As he got off the cage he saw Olaf and the graveyard crew lounging by the collar and smoking unconcernedly waiting to go on shift. It was not yet midnight. The whole episode underground from alert signal to the reaching of Riley by telephone from the next level had taken but twenty-five minutes. Dart pushed through the men, who started to murmur and exclaim as they saw Craddock. He walked into the hoist house, and pulled down the lever that set off the siren. The high throbbing warning of disaster screamed through the night, into the sleeping bunkhouse, down the quiet canyon.

“What're you doing that for!” cried Riley from the hoistman's chair. “There's nothing wrong!”

“There's plenty wrong,” said Dart—“and a dying man.”

Riley twisted around to see two of the miners carrying the inert form into the hoist house, laying it down on piled coats as Dart directed them. Dart turned to one of the silent miners. “Take my car and bring the doctor back, while I telephone.” Then man nodded and ran down the hill.

At the sound of the siren Tiger jumped up in his hiding place by the tailings dump. A wild exultation possessed him. Now they all knew, now he might reappear innocently, as though roused from the bunkhouse, mingle with the others and savor the delicious success.

He circled around so as to arrive from the proper direction and walked towards the hoist house. And then against the lighted doorway he saw the outline of Dart's tall figure. He stopped dead, reeling—staring unbelieving. Dart raised his left arm in the air, a commanding characteristic gesture.

“No—” Tiger whimpered. “It can't be him.” As he stared shaking sobs rose in his throat.

One of the miners from the bunkhouse ran past him crying, “What's up, Burton, d'you know? What's happened?”

At once the hysteria left him, and the habits of years came back to his support. “Don't know,” he answered in his soft colorless voice. “Just going to find out.”

He walked on unobtrusively to the hoist house and slipped amongst the murmuring crowd, watching and listening. There might still be a way to turn the fiasco to advantage.

 

Down in the Dartland cabin Tessie and Amanda had just gathered up the cards, and were rinsing out the beer glasses.

Tom, tilting back his chair, thumbs in armholes, and contemplating his pile of matches, chuckled, “A bit rough on the fair sex, that's wot I am—but you ladies couldn't expect to win against an old—” He brought his chair down with a thud. “ 'Ark! Wot's that!”

Tessie swiveled from the sink, white-faced, she stared at her husband. “The sireen—” she whispered. Again they heard it faintly born by the west wind, down the canyon.

“Cripes!” Tom jumped to his feet. “Summat's gone wrong on the 'ill!”

Amanda gave a low choking cry.

“Naow, dear—” said Tessie quickly, putting her arm around the girl. “It'll be all right. Ye mustna let yourself get dithery.”

Tom grabbed his coat. “I'm running back for me car, must get up there. Stay with Mrs. Dartland, Tess!”

“No—” cried Amanda. “I've got to go with you. I've got to go—”

Tessie gave her an anxious look. “We best take her, Tom—it'd be worse for her waiting—I know.”

He ran outside and back towards the town. The women stood together by the roadside; Tessie went back in the house and brought out Amanda's coat, put it over the girl's shoulders. As they stood there they saw the flickering lights of a car pelting down the mine road, it streaked past them——

“That's
our
car!” whispered Amanda clutching at Tessie's arm. “But that isn't Dart driving....”

“That means naught, dearie,” said Tessie staunchly. “See they're getting the doctor, that's all.”

Down by the Company hospital they could see Hugh running toward the car. As it passed again, Amanda called out “Stop, Hugh—tell me—” But he did not stop; he shouted something from which only two words came back to them, “accident” and “Dart.”

Oh, dear God, thought Tessie. She kept her arm around the girl, but Amanda stood rigid as a stone statue, she made no sound.

Tom came up at once in his car, and the girl remained rigid and silent in her corner of the seat, though Tessie tried to manufacture soothing chatter.

There was a crowd outside the hoist house as they came up to it, other cars parked by the collar—and miners streaming up, gaping through the windows, questioning each other.

Tom hailed one of them who stood nearest. “God blast it, wot's
'appened,
Mac?”

“Something underground, on the thousand with Dartland,” answered the young miner.

“Is Mr. Dartland——” began Tom, glancing at Amanda.

“Oh,
he's
okay,” said the miner. “It's old Craddock what's hurt.”

Amanda made a small mewing sound, she slipped down and forward through Tessie's quick grasp.

“Naow, naow, dear,” cried Tessie, shaking her a little, “your man's all right, didn't you hear? Bear up naow, do. Think o' the baby!”

A long shiver ran through the girl's body and she stood up straight. She walked resolutely ahead of Tessie and into the hoist house. The outside ring of miners gave way for her, staring curiously.

She saw Dart standing alone against the wall, near a cleared space where Hugh bent over the quiet figure of Craddock on the floor. She saw that Dart's jacket was hanging in ribbons from his shoulders. She saw blood on his dirt-blackened chin, and a purple lump on his forehead where it had hit one of the rungs. She saw that he looked dazed, his bloodshot eyes passed over her with momentary recognition, and then returned to the huge indicator by the hoist man. Then she saw his right hand, and she gave a sharp cry. “Dart—your hand!”

Hugh looked up from his examination of the still form on the floor, he followed the direction of her horrified gaze. Then he removed the stethoscope from his neck and threw it in his bag.

“Well, Craddock's gone all right,” he announced, getting up off his knees. “Nothing to be done. Better take him away, boys.”

Two of the miners shambled forward, and at the same time there was a commotion around the door. Mablett strode in, and behind him glided Tiger Burton, who had during the last few minutes been waiting outside for Mablett's arrival.

Mablett cast a quick glance at Craddock's body while the men bore it off, then turned on Dart. "
Now
what in hell've you been up to? What's the meaning of all this—? This time you've gone too far, my lad—you've killed a man with your God-damn crazy——”

“Hold on a minute, Mablett!” cried Hugh sharply, pushing him aside as a gasp went up from the men. “You can sound off when I've fixed that hand.”

He walked up to Dart and lifted the injured hand. It was swollen to the size of a baseball from which the thumb and first finger dangled in a bloody pulp. “Pretty thing,” said Hugh rummaging in his black bag. “Just what were you doing with it? Looks like burns.”

Dart stared down at his hand and then he raised his head and looked at Mablett. “I cut the fuses,” he said, “when the last signal wasn't answered.”

“You never gave it, sir—” Riley pushed forward his anxious face peering from the foreman to the superintendent. “I never
got it,
sir,” he said plaintively to Mablett.

“Pedro Ramirez!” cried Dart, turning towards the assembled miners.

Pedro came forward shuffling, the foolish grin on his face. He had no idea what the foreman wanted now, but he nodded amiably. “Si, si—brav' hombre. He cut fuses so we not blow up. Then we climb manway with Craddock, bad climb, Craddock too heavy.”

“Did you see Mr. Dartland give the blast signal?” It was a new voice from the back of the room. Amanda wheeled around with the others to see Tyson limping towards them, leaning on his Filipino's shoulder.

Oh, thank God! she thought. He'll straighten this out. She did not understand what was happening, nor what it was that was forcing Dart on the defensive. She saw that Mablett was hostile, but she discounted that. She had not seen Tiger Burton who stood just behind Mablett's bulk, and whose whispers completed the work he had started when he greeted Mablett at his car.

Tyson limped wearily into the open circle by Dart, and repeated his question to Pedro. “Did you see Mr. Dartland give the signal?”

Pedro was frightened now. Here was the big boss himself asking questions. He licked his lips. “I dunno,” he said. “I was in the cage. He
say
he did.”

Mablett exploded into a roar, he lunged forward, shaking his fist at Dart and yelling at the general manager, “God-damn bastard! You can't be blind to
this,
Mr. Tyson! Don't you see what he's done? Never gave the signal, showing off, make the men think he's a hero, cutting fuses, wasting all that work, hauling that poor Craddock up the manway, responsible for his death—all to prove his point—to get the better of me about that God-damn telephone cable!”

Tyson shook his head. “Wait—Quiet—Keep quiet, Lute. Riley, come here.”

Tyson questioned the hoistman in a low voice. Dart stood in the same position against the wall, staring out over the heads of the hushed crowd. He seemed unconscious of Hugh, who was dressing and bandaging his injuries.

Tyson dismissed Riley. He turned and looked over the group until his tired eyes lighted with relief on Tom Rubrick. Here was a man friendly to Dart, one whose word might be trusted. “Tom,” he said, “go down to the thousand-foot level now and try the signal while we watch.”

“Yes, sir,” said Tom slowly. “There might be a break in the line just that last hundred and fifty feet, that would explain why it didn't come through.” And as he went off to the shaft, he prayed that the signal would not work. And he tried not to think of the conversation with Dart earlier in the evening about the fight with Mablett over the telephone cable, and of Dart's farewell remark—“Well, time will tell.”

Riley back at his post pulled the lever, the great hoist drum roared, the cable played out, and every eye watched the indicator as it crawled downward to the white number marked 1000. It stopped. There was silence. Then the light bulb on the wall flashed scarlet, and the sound of the horn rasped across the room.

All heads turned in Dart's direction, but on his face there was no change, not a muscle quivered.

“You better go home now, Dartland,” said Tyson. “Get some rest and take care of that hand.”

The manager spoke very quietly, but not a man who heard him doubted what his opinion was. It showed in the sadness of his eyes as he looked at the young foreman, and it showed in the way he allowed Mablett to accompany him outside and listened to his furious indictment.

The men scattered without talking much. They watched Dartland and his wife and the doctor get into the car, and those three did not say anything either to each other. The men were puzzled and uncertain, many sympathetic with Dartland, who had shown a hell of a lot of guts whatever the reason. But you couldn't get around it there'd been an accident in the mine and a man had died from it.

T
HE NEXT DAY
Amanda suffered deeply for her husband. Though he was running some fever and his hand was in a condition that moved Hugh to violent profanity, Dart insisted on going back to the mine and facing his detractors.

Tom Rubrick drove him to the mine, since Dart could not drive, and tried to reason with him. “Ye should've stayed in bed, lad, like the doctor says. Give 'em time to cool off up there. They'll overlook a bit of a mistake, when they've cooled off. Ye meant no 'arm, I know.”

Dart twisted around and gave Tom a strange look.

“Such a look as I ever seen,” Tom told Tessie later, “like 'e was King George 'imself and I was a mad dog yapping at 'im. Yet I was fair sorry for 'im. It's bad for 'im all right, and that poor young wife o' 'is. They was all aginst 'im up on the 'ill.”

“Oh, dear. Oh, dear,” said Tessie. “What will they do?”

“I fear the old man'll fire 'im. Mablett's 'ot for it. Keeps yammering that Dartland's dangerous. Tiger Burton's acting foreman already.”

Dart's interview with Tyson and Mablett in the General Manager's Office that morning had been doomed from the start. Tyson, forced into a distressing muddle he had neither will nor strength to cope with, had already made up his mind, and Dart's attitude did nothing to change it.