CHAPTER XIV
THE EXPLOSION
THE new crowd of miners were anxiously waiting about the mouth of thepit shaft, which led down into the deepest excavation that had yet beendug in the neighborhood of the Rainbow Creek.
There were other openings, but because this was the largest, RalphMerrit had desired that his workmen begin their labor here. For byextending and deepening the passages in the lower part of this shaft hehoped to make important discoveries of new veins of ore. And onceconvinced that a quantity of new gold was actually to be found underthis ground the young engineer had no idea of giving up before he haddevised some intelligent and not too expensive method of bringing morewealth to the surface of the earth.
Not many feet from the company of men Jack Ralston and Frank Kent werestanding together talking of some detail in connection with the work,while Jim Colter was hanging over the pit opening in company with themen who had charge of the lowering and raising of the mine elevator.
Evidently Ralph Merrit and his two companions had made a safe landingbelow, for shortly after their disappearance there was a signal, andslowly the lift traveled up into the daylight again, now ready to takeon another lot of passengers.
"Steady, no crowding," Jim Colter called out as the next relay steppedhastily forward. "Merrit will want to start things going in the tunnelbefore you descend."
One man had already gotten aboard, while another had one foot extendedtoward the platform, when suddenly from underneath them there came atearing, splitting noise and then a muffled roar like the instantaneousexplosion of a thousand guns.
The passengers in the elevator fell on their knees and all around theopening of the pit there was powder and blackness and a fall of stoneslike a swift rain of meteors.
By accident Ruth Colter's back happened to be turned away from the sceneat the mine, so that the first sound she remembered hearing was herhusband's hoarse shout of horror and then as she turned the sight ofhis great form lying prostrate on the ground with Jack and Frank tryingto drag him away from danger.
But when Ruth would have rushed toward him, Olive and Frieda held herfast, and the next instant a wave of weakness and darkness sooverwhelmed her that she had no strength to move.
When she opened her eyes she could see Jean's face, white as a sheet,dancing before her and hear her saying:
"Jim isn't hurt, dear; only stunned by his fall. See, he is on his feetagain giving orders. And Jack and Frank must be all right, they were notso near. But what could have happened, what caused the explosion? It'sthe men down inside the mine who must be horribly hurt. Ralph----"
But Jean shook with such nervous terror that Frieda's arm encircled her,and the next moment the four women moved nearer the place of thedisaster.
They were just in time, for at the moment of their approach, althoughJim Colter's face was so black that you could hardly distinguish him,with his forehead bleeding from an ugly wound and his clothes torn andburnt, he was giving orders like the general of an army and like trainedsoldiers the miners were obeying him.
"I'll take four of you men who will volunteer to go down inside the minewith me. I don't know what has happened, but we are pretty apt to findthings serious. It sounded like a dynamite explosion and there may beanother. Fortunately for us the elevator is above ground and we canlower it. Some of you see that stretchers are brought here. Jack, keepyour head and get hold of a doctor at once. I hope we may need him," theman added grimly, as he swung his great length aboard the small car, hiscompanions crowding close against him.
Unmindful of the awed silence that had followed the noise of theexplosion, unmindful of the two score of rough strange men, Ruthbreaking away from the girls now ran forward crying:
"Jim, you can't go down into the mine first. I can't let you. There isthe baby and me, you must think of us and of the girls. You may behorribly hurt."
She was near enough now so that she could look straight into herhusband's blue eyes and something in Jim's expression calmed herinstantly. Then for the time he too seemed conscious of the presence ofno one else.
"Don't be frightened, Ruth, I shall be all right, dear, and back againwith you in ten minutes perhaps. But in any case, girl, don't you see Ihave got to go down before the others? This is our mine and two of themen down there are almost boys."
Some quiet order Jim then gave and slowly for the second time the liftsank down toward the dark abyss under the earth. For Ruth had made noother sound or protest, only keeping tight hold on Frieda's and Jean'shands. Olive had gone with Jack and Frank Kent in the direction of theRainbow Lodge.
To the watchers at the pit opening after the elevator had landed thesecond time there was a moment when they believed that they could hearvoices below. Then the waiting seemed interminable. In point of factonly a few moments more had passed before the signal indicated that thecar must be drawn up again.
And this time it was Jean Bruce who covered her eyes with her hands.
There was a grinding of the cables and then an unmistakable groan, soit was not only the faces of the women that blanched whiter. Many ofthese miners were middle-aged men who had been in mining disasters wheremany hundreds of lives were at stake. Now, since no further disturbancehad followed the first brief explosion, they realized that only thethree men who had first gone down into the pit had been injured. Yet itwas nerve-racking not to be able to foretell whether these three menwould be brought up alive or dead.
Jim Colter and one of his helpers were standing upright in the car andJim held in his arms a limp, crumpled figure, unconscious, his blueoveralls charred and blackened, his absurd old hat quite gone. Indeed,the grave and learned professor of ancient languages looked like abroken slip of a boy in the big man's keeping.
There on the floor of the car another figure was resting. The face wasupturned to the light and though the eyes were closed the expression ofthe mouth showed that the man had not fainted but was suffering greatpain.
Frieda touched Jean Bruce on the arm.
"It is not Ralph, but the new foreman who seems to be very badly hurt,"she whispered. "Look, the other men are carrying him off. I can't tellabout Ralph's friend, Mr. Russell. But where is Ralph? Why hasn't hecome up with the others?"
And this last question of Frieda's was being echoed in the minds of thewaiting woman and girl.
Why had Jim brought up two of the wounded men and left the third, theiroldest friend, still in the depth of Rainbow Mine? It was impossible notto believe that Jim had done this because these men were not too badlyinjured to be helped.
For he had now placed his burden on the ground and was examining theyoung man with the skill and care of a surgeon, while some one elsebathed the face. A stretcher had been secured for the foreman who wasnow being taken to his own quarters to await the coming of a surgeon.
"Jim," Ruth Colter put her hand on her husband's shoulder and her facewas almost as white and strained as it had been during her last speechwith him, "the elevator is going down again and you are not going withit. Tell us, please, what has happened to Ralph?"
Without waiting to hear her guardian's answer Frieda suddenly burstinto tears. Of course she had been dreadfully unnerved by the recentaccident and now this uncertainty about their friend, besides the sightof their new acquaintance stretched out there at her feet as though hewere dead when the last time she had seen him he had been eating hisdinner, was more than she could bear.
"Ralph? Great Scott, I am a brute, Ruth, Jean, Frieda!" Jim Colterexclaimed. "Why didn't I tell you at once? Ralph isn't badly hurt atall; he is bruised and burnt and shaken up, but nothing more, so far asI could tell. So of course he insisted that we bring up the two otherfellows first. It's a plain miracle that there's anything left of thethree of them. So far as I could understand somebody had fixed a bombdown at the end of the pit shaft, but the thing was clumsily made andonly half went off. Ralph said they were blown about a good deal and theatmosphere was pretty thick, but unless the new foreman has been injuredinternally there
was no great harm done. I think this young man hasnothing more serious the matter with him than a broken leg. And I expectwe shall be able to mend that for him at Rainbow Lodge."
At these words Henry Russell opened his eyes, but whether because ofJim's suggestion or the pain he was enduring, or whether because thesight of the girls, he groaned aloud and then closed his lips again.
"I don't think he wants to be taken to the Lodge," Frieda suggestedmournfully. "You see he wants us to think he has gone away."
Then possibly because Ruth's and Jim's nerves had both been strainedalmost past endurance for the past half hour they laughed aloud atFrieda's speech.
Jean had slipped away and it was her white and yet happy face that RalphMerrit saw first as he came back into the world of daylight again.There, though he was staggering and nearly blind and covered with bloodand grime from the shock he had just received, he found Jean's handsbefore any others and held them close for a moment while she murmured:
"I am so glad, so glad; it is because you have some big work to do inthe world that you have been saved, I am sure, Ralph."
A moment later Ralph was quietly accepting the congratulations of hisworkmen, while he tried to explain to them just how the explosion hadtaken place. That the bomb had been placed down the shaft by one of theformer miners there could be no shadow of doubt.