BY STEWART EDWARD WHITE
Pat McCann came up from the plains into the hills in a bad humor with himself and the world. He had tried to be a cow-puncher and had been promptly bucked off; he had tackled the cooking problem and only escaped mobbing by resigning his job; now he had dragged his little, squab form, with its hanging arms, up into the hills to try mining. He applied to the first camp he came to. King, the foreman, gave him a job.
Early the next morning he and another man walked down the gulch through the sarvis bushes for half a mile, turned abruptly to the right, climbed the uneven length of a zigzag trail, and at last halted near the top of a ridge. The pine trees, slim and tall, grew out of the unevenly carpeted ground, through which cropped irregular slices of a red-brown, crumbling rock. At the very crest was a dark-gray “dike” of quartzite, standing up steep and castellated for a height of thirty feet or more. This was the “hanging wall” of the prospective mine. Down through the trees were glimpses of vast, breathless descents to other ridges and other pines far below. Over the dike was nothing but the blue sky.
The two men had stopped within a hundred feet of the top. The old hand went over to a rough lean-to of small trees covering a rude forge, from beneath which he drew several steel drills of various lengths and a sledge-hammer, which he carried to a scar in the face of a huge outcropping rock. After dumping these he returned and got a can of water and a long T-shaped implement of iron. The two men then set to work.
McCann held firmly while the other struck. After each blow he would half-turn the drill. When a dozen strokes had been given, he poured a little water in the hole, and thrust the drill through a bit of sacking to keep it from splashing. The other man jammed his hat down closely over his forehead and struck fiercely, alternately breathing in and grunting in rhythmical succession. When the hole became clogged with fine, gray mud, McCann carefully spooned it out with the T-shaped instrument, wiping the latter each time on his trousers. While he did this his companion leaned on his sledge or threw chunks of rock, with wonderful accuracy, at the squirrels that ran continually back and forth on the ridge. As the hole grew deeper, longer drills were used, until at last the longest of all left barely enough above the surface of the rock to afford a hand-hold. With that the miner expressed himself satisfied. He then brought three cylindrical packages wrapped in greasy paper.
“What’s them?” McCann inquired.
The miner grunted contemptuously.
“Hercules powder,” he replied. He pronounced the proper name in two syllables.
With a sharp knife he cut these into lengths of about three inches each, and dropped them one by one into the hole in the rock. He then rammed them home with a hickory ramrod, just as all old miners will insist on doing. Because of this a large percentage of old miners have no fore and middle fingers on their right hands. The last piece he split, inserted in the crack a bit of fuse, on the end of which was a copper cap, dropped it in, and then carefully chinked-in with the wet grit which had been spooned out of the hole.
“Mosey for cover, Irish!” he said, and touched it off.
From behind his tree McCann saw the sputtering fuse disappear. The next instant the rock seemed to bulge, splitting in radiation as it did so, and then the smoke belched forth in a canopy, filled with fragments of quartz. Following the miner, he found a jagged opening in the rock. Then they sharpened their drills at the forge and went at it again. By night they had fired two more blasts, and had made a start toward a shaft. After the third, Bob, the miner, said, glancing at the West: “That’ll do, Irish.”
They caçhed the tools, caught up the water-bucket, and swung rapidly down the trail. Bob was ahead, slouching along with the mountaineer’s peculiar gait, which seems so lazy, and yet which gets over the ground so fast. In a very few moments he reached the gulch below, plunging from the bare, rock-strewn hillside under the pines to the lush grasses and cool saplings of the cañon bed, as from a desert to a garden. He looked around to say something. McCann was gone.
“Well, I’m damned!” he ejaculated, and yelled loudly.
After a moment’s pause, from far down the opposite slope came a faint whoop. Bob sat down on a fallen tree, and waited philosophically, shouting at intervals. In a little while the Irishman came charging frantically up the gulch, tearing along through the vines and bushes at full speed, so terrified that he passed within ten feet of Bob without seeing him. The latter watched him surge by with an odd little twinkle in his eye. Then suddenly he shouted again. Pat slowed up, looked about for a moment vacantly, and then his rugged Hibernian face broke into a multitude of jolly wrinkles.
“Arrah, it’s yerself, darlin,” he said; “Oi thought it’s Pat McCann as is goin’ t’ slape wid th’ mountain lines this night!”
“You stick t’ me,” was Bob’s only comment.
After a short climb the men reached the camp on a knoll overlooking two confluent gulches. There was the superintendent’s office, the cook-house, the bunkhouse, the blacksmith’s shop, the stables, and the corral—all of logs. Supper was served at sundown. The men filed in, took off their coats, and sat down without a word. As each one finished eating, he arose, put on his coat again, and sauntered outside, filling his pipe as he went. Finally the whole gang was gathered at the bunk-house, smoking, telling laconic stories, or playing cribbage—the great American game in the mountains.
As the last comer, Pat was told to water the horses. He went boldly into the corral with a rope, and was kicked flat. The boys straightened him out, and, after he had regained his breath, gave two of the horses’ halters into his hands. Except in the main cañons of the Black Hills there is no surface water, the creeks all running down along the bed-rock. As a consequence, wells are necessary even in the upper hills. Pat first let a horse get loose, then he lost the bucket down the well, then he fell in himself in trying to fish it out. The boys fished him out with some interest. So manifestly inadequate an individual it had not been their fortune to meet before, and they looked on him as a curiosity. On the spot they adopted Pat McCann much as they would have adopted a stray kitten or puppy, and doubtless in somewhat the same amused, tolerant state of mind.
The next morning Bob and Pat cleared away the débris of the three blasts, wrenching off the broken, adhering bits with a pick, and shoveling them out. King came up with an axe-gang and built a rough, square breastwork of logs down the hill, to catch the quartz as in a bin. They also squared a number of timbers, and tongued the ends. These were to timber the shaft.
All this interested the little Irishman. He recovered his spirits, and his Old World blarney came back to him. The clear, fresh air of the hills, the abundant food, the hard work, the sound sleep, the reaction against the taciturnity of the men, and the calm grandeur of the mountains, filled him with animal spirits. He imagined he had found his vocation at last. He wanted to do everything. In time he learned to strike with the sledge, although it was only after long practice on a stake that he could induce any one to “hold” for him; he sharpened drills—after a fashion; he even helped in the timbering-up. The only thing lacking was the “shooting” of the charges. He had an ambition to touch the thing off. This King roughly forbade.
“That fly-away fool to risk his neck that way?” he said; “I guess not! He don’t know enough now to make his head ache. When I want a wild Irishman too dead to skin, I’ll let you know. I don’t want that man to have the first thing to do with the powder. Understand that!”
What King said went in that camp. Besides, the men knew him to be in the right. Pat was the unluckiest man alive, and the most awkward. He was sure to be in any trouble there was about—in fact, as Jack Williams said, he was a sort of lightning-rod for the whole camp in the way of trouble; every one else was sure of exemption, if there was only one man’s share of difficulty dealt out. So McCann pleaded in vain.
This went to his heart. He would have given his black-thorn shillalah from Dublin to have been looked upon as a full-fledged miner. He used to put on all the airs of one in Sweetwater when he went down there once a week, swaggering about in copper-riveted jeans, with his hat on one side, conversing learnedly though vaguely on “blow-outs,” “horses,” “foot-walls,” and other technicalities, hauling out of his pockets yellow-flecked bits of quartz—in short, “putting on dog” to an amazing extent. But as he turned past the stamp-mill of the Great Snake and began to scale the heart-breaking trail that led to the top of the ridge, his crest began to fall. As he followed the narrow, level summit for the three miles of its length, standing as it were in the very blueness of the air, his spirits began to evaporate. When he took the shorter and gentler descent to the camp, the old conviction had returned with sickening force. He was not a miner. He had never “shot.” He used all his persuasive powers in vain. For one thing, the men were afraid to disobey King. For another, they liked Pat, and, having a firm faith in his “hoodoo,” were convinced that his “shooting” and sudden death would be synonymous terms. So Pat abandoned persuasion and tried craft.
The old shaft on which he and Bob had first begun work had been carried down fifty feet. Appropriate cross-cuts and drifts had been made to exploit the lead. It was now abandoned. Bob and Pat were put to work at another spot in the same lead a little farther along the ridge. The place marked out for the first blast was between two huge bowlders, or rather between the two rounded cheeks of one bowlder. The passage between them was perhaps five or six feet wide. One end led out in a gradual descent to the broad, open park of the ridge top, the other dropped off abruptly three or four feet to another level place. Around the corner of the first the miners kept their tools and forge; down the second they planned to drop when the blast was fired; and there they had built a little fire, it being, on that particular day, in the lee of the rock.
The hole had been all drilled before Bob discovered that he had forgotten to bring any powder; so, cursing, he started down the passage to get some from the sheet-iron powder-house in the draw. Hardly was he out of sight before McCann, chuckling softly to himself, pulled from under a shelving bit of rock the missing powder. With this he loaded the hole; he arranged the fuse, and then dropped down the ledge to get a brand from the fire. It was nearly out, so it took a few moments to start a torch. However, he was in no hurry, as it was some little distance to the powder-house, and Bob could not possibly return inside of half an hour. At last he coaxed a bit of pine into a glow, and turned to climb back. A startling sight met his eyes.
When Bob went to get the powder he stopped at the forge for the water-pail. As he stooped to pick it up, something struck him a sudden blow in the thigh that knocked him over and set the blood flowing—he said afterward he thought the bone was broken. When he could see, he looked about to find what had hit him, and discovered not ten feet away the long, tawny body of a puma.
The great cat lay watching him through half-shut eyes, lazily switching its tail back and forth. From the depths of its throat came a deep rumbling purr. He tried to rise, but could not. Then he turned over on his left side and started to crawl painfully through the passageway of the rocks. The beast opened its eyes and followed stealthily, step after step, still switching its tail, and still purring. It was in a sportive mood, and played with its prey, as a cat plays with a mouse. Inch by inch the man pulled himself along, leaving a trail of blood. At last, within a few feet of the ledge, he stopped; he could go no further. The puma, too, paused.
At this moment Pat McCann, a blazing pine-brand in his hand, looked over the ledge. Bob saw him and faintly warned him back. The puma saw him too. The purring ceased, and the lithe muscles tightened under the skin. The game was over. The animal was preparing to make its spring.
It did not occur to the little Irishman’s fighting soul to retreat. His comical features stiffened; his little blue eyes fairly snapped. Slowly he drew himself up on the ledge, keeping his eye fixed on the puma, until he stood erect, then he shifted his brand mechanically into his left hand, and drew his sheath-knife. He did not know that the fire was his best weapon, and Bob was too weak to tell him. The brand, held point downward, began to blaze. The puma’s great eyes shifted uneasily at this, and its muscles relaxed. It was evidently discomposed. Pat did not await the attack, but stepped forward, holding his knife firmly.
When within a few feet of the animal, Pat hesitated and stopped. His nerve was still unshaken, but he did not know how to begin. The puma still sniffed uneasily at the blaze, but had recovered from its first fear, and was again gathering its powers for a spring. For a moment there was absolute silence, and Pat heard through the still air the sharp chatter of a squirrel and the clank of the ore-team’s whiffle-trees from the ore road far below. While he stood thus uncertain, the fire from the pine, having run up along the torch, began to burn Pat’s fingers. Without moving his head or shifting his eyes, he dropped it gently—plumb upon the fuse he had so carefully arranged a few moments before. Then he took a step backward to avoid the smoke. There was a splutter and a flash, then a sudden roar. The man and the beast were hurled violently in opposite directions, and a volcano of rock shot high in the air and showered down again.
The axe-gang found the puma very dead and Pat very hard to revive. The whisky-and-water method brought him around at last. He looked hazily about him in evident bewilderment until his eye caught sight of the dead animal, and then his face lighted up with eager joy.
“Glory to God, Oi’m a miner!” he shouted. “Oi’ve ‘shot’ at last!”