Hard Money

by Short, Luke;

  “But the water’s there,” Bonal said grimly. “Janeece will see that it stays there.”

  Seay said, “Yes,” slowly, looking at Bonal.

  Bonal was looking at him, too. “Bulkhead,” he murmured. “Can you put a bulkhead in the tunnel? With this head of water running?”

  “It’s risky,” Seay said mildly.

  “But can you do it?”

  Seay walked over to Bonal’s desk and stood before it. “Yes, I can do it,” he said gently, his voice carrying an edge to it. “I can risk the necks of men, maybe drown some. Maybe I can do a good job of it. I don’t know. The point is, Bonal, that water doesn’t belong there. It’s got no right there. It’s a matter of principle.”

  “But what can I do?” Bonal said, his voice almost angry now.

  “I know what I’d do,” Seay countered. “I’d shut that water off.”

  “How?”

  “You want me to show you?” Seay asked quietly.

  “I want you to tell me.”

  “I won’t tell you,” Seay said stubbornly, almost jeering. “I asked if you wanted me to show you?”

  The two men looked at each other. Bonal was trying to see, to feel, what was behind Seay’s attitude, and he could not. And he had a sense of foreboding about it. But Bonal was not a quitter. “Yes, show me, then,” he said quietly.

  Seay laughed softly, turned and went out.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Tober sucked on a cold pipe and occasionally parted the brush before him and looked down through it. From where he was squatted, he could get a clear view of the Dry Sierras shaft house. The last workman had filed out the doorway, dinner bucket over shoulder, and turned to say something to the night watchman and stoker, then had gone on.

  Tober’s glance raised to a vent pipe in the roof where a plume of steam reached up and vanished. He turned to Seay then and said, “Just a little longer.”

  “No guards?”

  “Not unless they’re inside.”

  They waited a few minutes more and then left the screening brush. Seay was carrying a coil of rope, two drills and a fat package pressed under his arm.

  At the shaft house they tried the door, and it swung open onto the gloom of the interior. It was a huge building, some three stories high. A third of the way down its huge beams laced across the room, and it was from these that the tackle for the car and skip hoists swung. The shaft head itself was collared off, and the iron shaft car stood empty at floor level, a lantern, still burning, swung from its roof. Beyond, a track ran the length of the building, past huge piles of ore and out an open door in the rear of the dump heap. Here was where the ore was sorted and graded and sacked previous to freighting. To the right, the hoist engines and pumps were looming blackly. The pump, its great rocker arms idle now, was a thing of the past since the tunnel completion.

  Tober turned immediately to his right and headed for the doorway that let onto the furnace room. Inside it, propped against its jamb, a heavy-muscled man in a cotton singlet sat in a chair, his lunch bucket beside him, a sandwich in his fist.

  At the sound of their approach he turned to confront the gun held in Tober’s hand, and his jaw slacked open.

  “Get up and stoke the fires, fella,” Reed said quietly, nodding toward the huge furnaces. “We need steam.”

  It was a moment before the man understood. Then he closed his mouth and swallowed and made a vague gesture with his sandwich, “We—we’ve quit work here, mister.”

  “Not yet,” Tober said. “You’re goin’ to keep steam up for the hoist engine. I’ll sit here and watch you. But first”—his head nodded to Seay behind him—“you’ll put the cage down to gallery G for him.”

  The man stood speechless as Seay took one of the candle lanterns from the wall rack holding dozens of them and lighted it. He disappeared in the gloom of the shed to return a few moments later with a light sledge, which together with the rest of his equipment, he put on the floor of the cage.

  “How many shells you got?” Tober asked.

  “Enough,” was Seay’s grim answer. Rammed in his belt was his cedar-handled Colt revolver. He closed the safety gate of the car and stood there waiting while Tober prodded the stoker over to the hoist engine. There was a slow grinding of gears, and the cage started to sink. Seay’s last sight of Tober was memorable. Gun in one hand, he was lighting his pipe with the other. And then the car started its fall.

  Now the walls slid by so swiftly that they were a blur. Gallery after gallery was passed, a yawning pitch-black hole that appeared and disappeared swiftly as down, down the car went, the cables above it whispering tautly. It was an interminable ride. The car clanked against the cage’s guide irons, lurched a little but never slowed down. All of the earth seemed to have folded about him, leaving only this sliding panel of rock, now shiny with water, whipping by him.

  Then the car slowed, pressing the floor up against his boot soles. Now it settled gently and came to a full stop, facing and level with the black pit of a gallery. Seay swung open the safety gate and unloaded his gear. Then he stood on the edge of the gallery listening. Below him, he could not tell how far, he heard the swift hissing of pouring water. Far, far below, it thundered into the choked tunnel head.

  Taking his lantern, he set out down the gallery, his eyes roving its partially timbered sides. His pace was slow, as if he were looking for something. At each cross drift, or dead-end tunnel, that forked off from the gallery proper, he turned in and, lantern held high, paced its length. He was looking for a winze, or a shaft sunk from this level that would let him down to the next gallery. For down there, one gallery lower, was H gallery, where this river of turgid water was emptying into the shaft and the tunnel.

  Each time he came upon the dead end of the cross drift he would patiently turn back to the gallery and try the next drift. It was laborious, slow work, maybe fruitless. He did not know.

  At a station, or a cutback, in the gallery where the miners’ gear was stored, he turned in, and this time walked straight to its far corner. There was a square hole there in its floor, the ends of a ladder poking out. Swinging out onto the ladder, he disappeared for a moment, then reappeared and walked back the several hundred yards to the gallery mouth. The car was still there, its lantern glowing in this hot air. This time, he picked up all his gear and brought it back to the winze mouth.

  First, then, he tied the rope about his waist and slung the coil over his shoulder. The sledge handle he rammed through his belt, so that his arms would be free for the lantern and the two long drills nestled in the crook of his arm.

  Swinging onto the top rungs of the ladder, he lowered himself into the winze. As he climbed down, far, far down, the full sound of running water came more and more distinctly to his ears. When finally he had passed the roof of the H gallery he swung his lantern out, looking below him. This was also a station, and the great lake of water coiled in slow, black eddies below him. Holding the lantern higher, he squinted out, and saw in the gallery proper the smooth surface of the millrace that was flowing down its length.

  Satisfied, he regarded the ladder. It was held to the rock of the wall by iron cleats, and its timbers were substantial. He tied the end of his rope to the timber, then, holding the lantern high, lowered himself into the water. It came up above his waist and was warm, almost comfortable. Playing out the rope, he waded across the eddy and was soon approaching the gallery. He could feel the tug of the water around his legs now.

  Steadying himself, he moved on again, this time out into the stream. Its current almost picked up his feet, but he leaned against the rope, holding the lantern and the two drills high. Then he was in the full current, and it whipped him back against the wall, tugging at his legs with its swift, ponderous strength. Foot by foot, he let out the rope, going down the gallery. He was looking at the walls, and now he stopped.

  For a moment, he stood motionless, the water rushing up almost to his chest. Then, holding the lantern bale in his teeth, he reached in his sh
irt pocket and drew out a spike and rammed its head high in a crack of the rock wall and tested. It was solid. This was for the lantern, which he slung there. Now he worked down a few feet and, satisfied, took a full minute to work the long drill down inside his belt. Now his hands were free. Pulling the sledge out of his belt and taking one of the drills, he spread his feet, braced himself against the rope and started to work. Slowly, slowly, the drills were sledged into the rock. When he sunk the length of the short drill, he pulled out the long drill and sunk it deeper. And after each hole was drilled, he moved on downstream and drilled another. His work had a sustained, dogged patience that was backed by a savage will. Not once did he take time to rest, his sledging as regular as the ticking of a watch. It was hours before he had all the holes drilled, and then, throwing the sledge and the short drill into the stream, he pulled himself upstream to the station and climbed the ladder. His lantern was back there in the gallery, but he did not need it. He sat a moment at the head of the ladder, resting, his head hung in weariness, his breathing deep and fast. Presently he fumbled in the dark for the rest of his gear, and then lowered himself again. This time, once in the water, with no lantern to carry, the going was easy. The fat package was held high out of the water, and he played himself down the rope swiftly. He went to the farthest hole first and worked up.

  In each hole he placed his dynamite and rammed it back gently with the drill, careful not to be rough with the fuse caps and the length of fuse. At each hole he did the same; and finished, he threw his drill into the stream and let himself down to the farthermost hole again. This time he held the candle of the lantern in his hand.

  Swiftly, then, as swiftly as this water would let him move, he lighted the fuses, making sure first they were not wet, and arranging them so they would not trail into the water. He moved up, lighting each one.

  When the last was lighted he looked down the gloom of the gallery, the oily race of the water reflecting the many burning fuses.

  Then he put the candle in the lantern and made his way to the winze, his face haggard with weariness. Once up the ladder, clothes dripping, he strapped on his gun and went into the gallery, turning toward the shaft.

  He stopped. The car was not there.

  For one brief instant he stood high and motionless, his face alert, strained. It was not the dynamite gathering to explode below that he was afraid of. It was the fact that Tober had told him the car would remain there. And now it was gone.

  He felt a slow, gathering expectancy flood through him. Then he turned and went down the gallery, his lantern swinging at his knees. He was looking back over his shoulder when the explosion came. It was rumbling, its echo slapping out into the main shaft and up it and into this gallery, so that it was muffled, but the earth rocked beneath him, and rock clattered down from the roof and walls under the slow heaving.

  He stood motionless a moment, his eyes still on the gallery end. Why not go back and down the winze to see if the shots had formed the dam he knew they would? But caution told him to go on, to lose himself some way in this labyrinth of galleries before he was discovered.

  Slowly, then, he started back to the winze. He had gone only a few steps when he saw the car swing down into the shaft. His motion in extinguishing the lantern was as swift as sight, but he knew he was too late, and he cursed. He stood there for one moment, watching the men boil out of the cage, shouting. A shot ripped and hammered echoes through the gallery, and on its heel a man shouted, “Straight down! I saw his light! He’s there!”

  It was the voice of Chris Feldhake. Seay turned into a drift and put his lantern down and drew his gun. There were three lanterns among these ten men, and they bobbed furiously, casting jerking shadows against the gallery walls.

  Seay shot into the floor, and abruptly the men stopped running. One by one their lights went out. Seay lighted his own then and set it in the drift mouth. He could hear the soft footfalls of the approaching ten.

  Suddenly he called out in a loud voice, “No closer, boys. I’ve still got dynamite enough to take care of you.”

  The echo of his voice had already died when Ferd Yates’ voice called, “Seay!”

  “Yes.”

  “Come out of there! You’re caught clean!”

  Seay laughed softly. “Try again, Ferd.”

  There was another long silence. Somebody tried to shoot the lantern out, and the slug nicked the corner of the wall and sang down the gallery. But the lantern was protected by the corner.

  “Seay, I say!” Ferd called again. “We’ve got you! I’ll send the boys up to the next gallery, and they’ll pass you and come down, and you’ll be trapped. Throw out that gun and dynamite!”

  “To Feldhake?” Seay answered. “No, I’ll take my killin’ from the front and with a gun in my hand.”

  “What do you want then?” Yates called.

  “Send that mob of killers up on top, Yates, before I blow us all up!” Seay answered.

  A long pause, and a murmur of voices.

  “You surrender if I do?” Yates asked.

  “To you, yes. To you alone. To the rest, no, and to hell with you!”

  “You can’t beat this job, Seay!” Ferd called angrily. “We’ll get you if we have to cave the whole gallery on top of you!”

  “Send Feldhake up on top,” Seay countered. “If you don’t like that talk, let’s fight.”

  There was an angry murmur of voices down the gallery. “By God, we’ll smoke you out,” someone called angrily, and Seay did not answer. Clearly he calculated his chances of escaping. There weren’t any. These men knew these drifts and galleries, and they could corner him and soon force his bluff as to the dynamite. All that he had between himself and capture was a belt of shells. But to walk out there and give himself up to Feldhake and Yates was to assure himself a shot in the back. No witnesses that wouldn’t lie afterwards, no justice—only death. He would not do it.

  He struck a match. They could see that flare and maybe guess what it meant. They did. There was a swift pounding of feet, and he let the match die, laughing softly.

  This time Yates’s voice came from farther down the gallery. “Seay, you got a chance if you give up. You ain’t got a sign of a one if you stay!”

  “Who’s with you?” Seay asked.

  Yates named them over. One was Sales, the Dry Sierras super, another Tim Prince, an honest gambler in Tronah. As for the rest, they were saloon riffraff, corralled by Feldhake. Prince, Sales and Yates were honest men in their way, certainly not murderers.

  “Leave Sales and Prince here and send the rest back to town, Yates,” Seay said finally. “I’ll surrender to you then. But I’ll keep my gun.”

  This led to a hot argument, the details of which he could not distinguish. Finally, Yates called, “All right. They’re goin’.”

  “Wait, Ferd,” Seay said levelly. “I haven’t finished. Get Bonal down here. When I can hear him, I’ll come out. I’ll give myself up to you then.”

  This started another furious argument. Somebody shot down the gallery, trying for the lamp again. A cold fury boiled up in Seay, and he sent back a shot in reply. He heard a man curse him in low, vicious tones, and then the argument started again.

  It was a full ten minutes before Yates called, “All right. I’ve sent ’em up. Bonal will be down when we find him.”

  “Good,” Seay said. He heard the men tramp down to the car and heard it start its ascent. His hearing strained wire taut now, he listened for the others. There was a murmuring down the way. It could be a trap, he knew. Feldhake could go up one gallery, and come down on his other side, trying to surprise him. What had happened to Tober? Reed would fight. Now the silent was absolute, a warning, drawn-out silence that rang in his ears with every movement of his blood.

  Slowly, he backed into the drift, beyond the light of the lantern, and waited. His eyes searched out that flat expanse of gallery wall for any telltale movement. There was none. And time did not pass, stood still, and he waited, the silence ridin
g him with its threat.

  It seemed hours until he heard the car return, and the lone footsteps of a man approach. There was some low talk, and then Bonal said “Phil!”

  Seay’s breath soughed out in a great gust, and he relaxed. He rammed the gun in his belt and picked up the lantern and walked up to Bonal, Yates, Prince and Sales.

  Bonal’s face held a mixture of anger and relief.

  Seay stopped in front of him. “You said to show you,” he said quietly. “I did. That water’s shut off. Get Borg to slap a bulkhead in the tunnel now.”

  Bonal’s jaw slacked open a little. He said, “You—this was what you meant?”

  Seay said harshly, “Bonal, maybe I’m not like you. But a man can ride me just so long. Janeece, Feldhake, Mathias rode me just long enough.”

  Yates said in a vicious gloating, “Not quite enough, Seay. Not after this.”

  Neither Bonal nor Seay paid him any attention. Bonal said quietly, “Tober’s up there. Dead. Shot in the back.”

  Seay stared at him one brief moment, and then his wicked glance swung full on Yates.

  Yates nosed up his gun and backed off. “He fought, you fool!” Yates cried. “Feldhake shot him! It was the only way we could get down!”

  “Ah,” Seay said quietly. He stood motionless, his fists clenched so that the knuckles showed a blue white, and then he looked away from Yates.

  “All right, let’s go,” he said in a voice that was quiet, dead, beaten.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Bonal demanded the preliminary hearing in the morning and got it. It was a halfhearted hearing, motivated by a revenge that could not be adequate, for Borg and his crew had worked the night through to make the bulkhead. It was finished, blocking every drop of water from entering the Bonal Tunnel. Hugh Mathias, and the men back of him, had not even pulled out a crew to clear the gallery after the explosion. The water had been dammed by the shot, and it would take days for it to back up through all the dozen mines to flood a higher gallery. The very act of Seay’s violence with its savage daring had beaten them. Bonal had only to wait now for borrasca to touch them.