Hard Money

by Short, Luke;

  “You do mind your business, don’t you?” Vannie murmured, and then she laughed shortly, almost nervously. “You see, I’m trying to tell you about me.”

  “Then who is Jake?” Seay countered.

  Vannie didn’t answer immediately. “Jake Fell. He made his fortune and lost it in the rush of ’49.”

  “I’ve heard of him. Everybody has.”

  “You see, I lived with him,” Vannie said simply. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. His wife was hopelessly insane for thirty years in an asylum back East. We—we just wanted to live together and we did—without marriage. He lived to see the beginning of this Tronah rush, lived long enough to make another fortune in the Golgotha mine and leave it to me.”

  Seay swiftly came to his feet and stood beside her. “You don’t have to do this,” he said brusquely. “I know now.” Vannie looked away. Sitting down then, facing her, he added, “Yes, we’re two of a kind. And bless Maizie Comber for seeing it.”

  Vannie’s laugh was explosively warm and rich as she leaned back against the pillar. “My, but that’s a relief. You see, I feel I always have to give fair warning before I can let myself like anybody. It’s—a kind of protection, I suppose.”

  Seay was about to answer when Ben appeared out of the darkness.

  “They want you in there, Vannie,” Ben drawled.

  “Why, Ben?”

  “This opry singer is aimin’ to sing,” Ben said. “They figured to have you play the piano.”

  “Oh,” Vannie said shortly, then, “All right, Ben. I’ll be in immediately.”

  When Ben had gone Vannie sat still a moment, then rose. Seay was beside her. “Look here, Vannie. Where can I see you again?”

  “Ask anywhere in town. I live on the primmest street in the primmest house and always keep my shades up.” She laughed again, that rich, disturbing laugh that had life and meaning to it and was strangely without bitterness. They walked in silence to the door. Hugh and Sharon were going in, and Sharon saw them. She nodded and said, “Hello, Vannie,” and Hugh spoke in complete friendliness. In those three seconds that Seay watched Sharon he could see nothing except genuine openness in her manner.

  “Tell me,” he murmured to Vannie as they stepped inside. “Does …?”

  Vannie looked swiftly up at him. “Yes, Phil, Sharon really likes me.”

  Before he could mask the surprise in his face Vannie let go his arm and moved through the room. Seay stopped at the door and was glad that he could hang back here, where he would not have to sit before these people, who were crowding into chairs. Vannie walked straight to the ivory and gold piano and conversed briefly with Patti as the general talking quieted a little. He watched Vannie, not Patti, and he felt a curious pride in this woman.

  Sharon Bonal said at his elbow, “Did you hear her tonight?”

  Seay turned to find her standing beside him, the fragrance of her close and desirable. A slow hostility began to take hold of him, but her way now was amiable and casual enough, holding neither defiance nor amusement, only a kind of intimate reserve, without her anger and resentment, which, save for that first night at Union House, had been plain in her face and plainer in her manner. Whenever she saw him she had a fresh chaste loveliness that almost startled him. He was thinking that it might have been her speech, for the first time kind and welcoming, that made the change.

  “I worked too late,” he answered.

  “I’ve never heard her before,” Sharon went on. “I didn’t know singing could be so lovely.”

  “She’s young, isn’t she?”

  “I don’t know. She’s almost as beautiful as Vannie, though,” Sharon said simply.

  Obliquely, Seay looked at her, wondering what lay behind this comparison, but Sharon was observing Patti intently.

  The first notes of the “Ah! non giunge” from Sonnambula came thin and precise, bringing silence. Seay felt a hand on his arm. Ben stood behind him, face urgent, and he jerked his head toward the foyer.

  Sharon saw him and looked from Ben to Seay as Seay turned and muttered an excuse.

  Sharon nodded slightly, and he followed Ben out onto the porch. Ben walked rapidly down the steps and turned to the left, and Seay caught up with him. “What is it, Ben?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s important, I reckon.”

  They headed out toward the carriage barns. Under the huge old cottonwood Ben stopped, and Seay brushed into him before he could check his pace. Something moved in the blackness near the trunk, and he wheeled to face it.

  “Phil?” someone asked, and immediately Seay recognized Jimmy Hamp’s voice. His horse shied a little at the noise, and Jimmy pulled him closer.

  “Oh,” Seay said, his voice chill with dislike.

  “You get over to the tunnel,” Jimmy said quietly. “Get over fast.”

  “Why?”

  “Trouble.”

  Seay stepped closer. “What kind of trouble, Jimmy?”

  “That’s all I can tell you. Get over there and get over fast.”

  There was quiet menace in Seay’s voice as he reached for the reins of Jimmy’s horse. “You sold me, Jimmy. Is this another one?”

  “Get over to the tunnel, you bullheaded fool!” Jimmy said desperately. “It’ll be too late tomorrow to believe me when you’ll likely find me with a slug in my back.”

  He wheeled his horse, and Seay heard him gallop off toward the barns. For an irresolute second Seay stood motionless, and then he said to Ben, “Saddle me a horse, Ben. And hurry it!”

  Chapter Eight

  Over toward the tunnel mouth, in the light of the flares, men were frantically rigging a hitch for six mules. The string of cars waiting for the mules was already jammed with excited men when Seay rode up and dismounted. He caught sight of Lueter bent over a clevis, and he ran toward him. Putting a hand on his shoulder, Seay spun him around.

  “What’s happened?” he asked, his breath coming hard.

  “Cave in!” Lueter cried. “Tober’s already in there!”

  “Are the men trapped?”

  “I dunno. I think so. None of ’em came out!”

  Seay glanced desperately at his lathered horse. He could ride in, but once the horse was inside he would only be a hindrance in that crowded tunnel mouth, and Seay whirled to Lueter.

  “What’s Tober done?”

  “Called out the whole camp.”

  Seay raised his voice: “Kelly! Kelly!”

  Out of the tangle of grim-faced workmen, many trying to light lanterns and still keep a seat on the small cars, Kelly appeared, his face sweating.

  “Take half these men and rig up a dump grade just outside the tunnel mouth here,” Seay said harshly. “Get a track switch made as fast as you can. Send a team over to the Consolidated for their smallest hand pump. Get that timbering crew at work turning out timbers as fast as they can, and tell the—”

  The train of cars started out with a jerk. Kelly bawled to the men on the last five cars to get down, and as the train of cars disappeared into the tunnel Seay ran alongside and caught on. Two cars up ahead Lueter was standing, and Seay picked his way through these silent men to him. The driver flogged the mules into a trot, and the cars were lurching and clanking deeper into the hot, fetid tunnel.

  “Now what happened?” Seay demanded of him above the noise.

  “Explosion,” Leuter said abruptly. “It was so loud I knew it couldn’t be one of the shots in the tunnel ahead. After that, I could hear the stuff slipping. When I got out of the bunkhouse Tober was ahead of me.”

  “What kind of an explosion?” Seay asked quickly.

  “Dynamite.”

  There was a little dust hanging in the tunnel now. Seay’s face held a vast impatience. Much later, in the light from one of the overhead lanterns, Seay saw Tober’s long shape gesticulating wildly, and he jumped off the car and ran ahead of the mules. Tober was yelling something, but when Seay passed him he stood for one second in utter amazement and then turned and raced after Seay int
o the tunnel.

  When he had caught up Seay was standing at the face of the slide. There, from ceiling to roof, the tunnel was blocked by rock and dirt and rubble. A thin fog of dust hung in the still tunnel air, not moving.

  Seay stared at this buttress of rock and earth before him. A kind of mental paralysis took hold of him as he thought of Borg Hulteen and his drillers and muckers beyond that wall. How deep was it? He shook himself slightly and looked up. The water pipe had been wrenched from its cleats in the roof, and was so bent under the weight of the dirt that it had buckled.

  Now the workmen filed up and viewed the slide in silence. Here, before them, was the miner’s chiefest fear—a cave-in. Before it, they stood awed, for here was the old terror, impersonal, savage and final.

  Now Seay pulled off his coat, talking to Tober. “That water pipe’s no good. But the compressor pipe under the track won’t be broken.”

  “It can’t be,” Tober said swiftly, and it was almost a prayer.

  “Send a car down for tools!” Seay rapped out. “I want that compressor pipe cut about a hundred feet down the tunnel here. I want—”

  “It’ll fill with water,” Tober said quickly. “Borg will think of the compressor pipe. He’ll uncouple it from the receiving tank, and it’ll fill with water!”

  “Of course it will!” Seay said savagely. “It’s got to fill with water. If it doesn’t drain, they’ll drown!”

  “But the air!” Tober countered.

  “They’ve got enough for a couple of hours, but what good will it do them if they drown!” Seay said savagely. “Call five good men!”

  Tober circulated among the waiting workmen and returned with five men. Seay said swiftly to them, “Go down the tunnel about a hundred feet, boys. In the right-hand wall, I want you to cut a station. I want it cut big enough to hold a pump, a four-man suction pump. Get all the help you can use. I want the station cut so the pump will be out of the way of the cars clearing out this muck. You understand?”

  Without waiting for their nods of assent, he raised his voice to call, “Who’s a machinist here, men?”

  Three men left their fellows and came to him. “Now get this straight,” Seay said grimly. “How big is the compressor pipe to the receiving tank?”

  “Three inch.”

  “Have you got a three-inch T-joint in the shops?”

  “Sure.”

  Now Seay talked slowly, his voice rasping with impatience, telling them first what he was trying to do, so they might understand the better what was wanted of them. “Those men back of that cave-in will die of two things, lack of air and drowning. I’ve got to get air to them, and I’ve got to pump the water out. You see that?” He pointed down the tunnel. “Down where that station will be put in I’m going to put a suction pump. That pump will connect with the compressor pipe with this three-inch T-joint. You understand?”

  They nodded.

  “All right. But to get the air to them, I’ve got to put a half-inch pipe inside the compressor line. Do you get that? One pipe inside another.”

  Again they nodded.

  “Now here’s your job.” He wanted a plug for one vent of the T-joint. In that plug a hole was to be drilled, a length of half-inch pipe caulked into it. That way, the T-joint could be fitted to the end of the compressor line and to the pump, while the air line would continue straight down the tunnel to the good air outside. The water would be pumped out of the compressor pipe; the air line would be carried inside it. When they nodded that they understood, Seay raised his voice. “You men lift a car to the other track and hitch up some mules. These men have got to get to the machine shops!”

  When that was done Seay’s patience broke. His voice was hard and driving as he organized the rest of the workmen into mucking crews. Out of that bedlam there was soon order. Shovels, block and tackle for the heavy boulders came. The timbers and the timbering crew appeared. Swiftly the work got under way. One crew worked at the slide, shoveling, lifting, loading it into the dump cars, while the other crew trucked down the tunnel with it. Elbow to elbow with the muckers, the timberers worked, timbering the roof and the walls as the men dug. The air was stifling here, but the men worked in a fury of speed.

  Later, the suction pump came and work was stopped for five minutes while the pump was stalled into the station where it would be out of the way of the dump cars.

  Then the machinists appeared, and they cut the compressor line. Immediately, the water gushed out, and Seay felt a vast relief. This meant that Borg had sensed what they would try to do and had uncoupled the pipe from the receiving tank. And now the whole crew watched while the machinists fed the half-inch pipe through the big compressor pipe. There was not a man here who did not understand that if this failed those trapped men would die.

  Foot after foot of the slim pipe was fed into the fatter one.

  “How much?” Seay demanded of the machinist.

  “A third enough.”

  He waited, his breath coming slow and even as he tried to fight the intolerable strain that was riding him and these men. The pipe went on and on, slowly, slowly.

  Suddenly, after long minutes, the pipe suddenly jerked in the machinist’s hands. It was the signal that Borg had the other end of it.

  The workmen accepted it in different ways. Some of them swore, some of them cheered faintly, and on the faces of the rest was a vast and indescribable relief.

  The rest was swift. The T-joint was fitted and joined to the pump. Now the four men swinging the double handles of the pump had a steady stream of water gushing out the pump vent. It was a pathetically small stream to fight the steady sweeping of water in at the tunnel head. Now it was a fight with time, and with water, with no way of telling who was winning until it would be too late to help.

  Tober, looking at the stream, said, “Is it enough?”

  Seay only shook his head. “If we’re lucky and reach them in time.”

  Work now reached a fever pitch. Men labored in that fogged lantern light until they had to be hauled off, exhausted, by the men on the next shift. His white shirt torn and smeared now, Seay watched the slide recede. The hot stinking air here was almost strangling, and the billows of dust that rolled round the workmen made it worse. Nothing that was uncovered escaped his notice, nor did his gaze once stray from the face of that implacable wall.

  When a workman uncovered a shattered timber Seay was beside him. Next to the timber was the twisted scrap of what had been a dump car. But it was the timber he examined. It had been chewed into slivers by the explosion.

  Slowly Seay turned the timber over, his face reflective, and then told one of the mucking crew, “Haul all the timbers and scrap out and put it under lock and key.”

  Tober, whose expression was alert, angry, glanced at him. “Dynamite did that,” he said quietly.

  Seay nodded.

  “Kelly found Ahearn, the mule driver, up on the mountain. He’d been slugged in the head,” Tober went on.

  “What happened to him?”

  “He doesn’t know. He had a string of empties ready out by the dump, and he was putting in a link pin when something landed on his head.”

  “Ah,” Seay said gently, watching Tober. “Could it happen that way?”

  “He hitched his empties at the bottom of the dump, three or four hundred yards from the men on the dump.”

  “In the dark?”

  “With only the mule’s lantern. A lantern is too unhandy to carry.”

  Seay said almost gently. “So they slugged him, threw the dynamite in the cars, drove the mules in, planted the stuff and walked out.” He turned away, but Tober grabbed his arm and yanked him round. For a moment they faced each other, not speaking, and then Tober said desperately,

  “My God, Phil, can’t you see it?”

  “Can’t I see what?” Seay asked levelly.

  “Why, that somebody sold us out again! When you use dynamite in rock like this, you’ve got to have time! Time to drill your holes! There’s only one pla
ce they could have put dynamite without drilling so Hulteen wouldn’t hear them, and that’s where they did!”

  “In this timbering we put up the other day?”

  “Hell yes!” Tober cried. He paused, and unblinkingly he watched every slight change of expression on Seay’s face.

  “Yes,” Seay said quietly.

  “Then how did they know there was a spot they wouldn’t have to drill in unless somebody told them—unless one of us sold out!”

  Seay didn’t answer.

  “They didn’t come this close to the tunnel head looking for a place to drill!” Tober said vehemently. “Hulteen would have heard them. Don’t you see, they knew about this shoring, knew they wouldn’t have to drill! Who told them?”

  Seay shrugged wearily.

  “Somebody—and this time it could be anyone in camp,” Tober said. He turned away, his voice choked with a wild cursing, and walked down the tunnel, and Seay watched him go, understanding him.

  Bonal came in once that morning and the next midnight, and he ordered Seay out of the tunnel to sleep, and Seay didn’t even bother to laugh at him. The crew were working with a wordless fury, and they protested violently when Seay shortened the shifts to ease their weariness. It seemed to him that he had always been here, or that time had stood still for days now. Or was it days? He didn’t know and couldn’t remember when it was he walked into this dust-fogged tunnel with the knowledge that nine men, walled away from him by part of a mountain, were dependent on him for their lives.

  He gnawed at bread and threw it away and drank gallons of coffee laced with whisky. Men left their shifts and slept and came back, and he was still cursing the timberers for being in the way of the mucking crew and cursing the mucking crew for delaying the timbering.

  He paced the growing space between the pump and the slide until men damned him for a wild man, and still, to him, the work did not go fast enough. Seared in his brain was that picture of nine men in the tunnel, their lamps long since extinguished to save air, feeling, only feeling, the water rise. Maybe they were lying on the slope of rock, huddled around the bent-up slim pipe where the air was less hot. The heat would be hell there, and they would all be wondering how it felt to drown in hot water. Hulteen would keep them sane with that brutal humor of his, but time, in which there was no day or night, would sap even that. Hunger would have long since been forgotten, and the precious plugs of tobacco which had been hoarded at first would lie soggy and forgotten in their pockets. Only the dim flame of hope would still burn, and it would die soon now. Or maybe, behind that slope of rock and dirt, there were nine bodies stirring only with a slow current that would bump them up against the roof of a sightless cavern. He still had strength enough to forbid this thought any room in mind, but when it appeared, it was with the slow horror of a corpse rising to the surface. Then he would stride down to the air pipe, placed far down the tunnel in the cooler air, and when he saw it was not running water he would brace himself again and go back.