CHAPTER X -- IN A TUNNEL OF THE MAL PAIS
Although Miss Kinney had assured Neill that she was glad to be rid ofhim it occurred to her more than once in the course of the day thathe was taking her a little too literally. On Sunday she did not see aglimpse of him after he left. At lunch he did not appear, nor was hein evidence at dinner. Next morning she learned that he had been tobreakfast and had gone before she got down. She withheld judgment tilllunch, being almost certain that he would be on hand to that meal. Hisabsence roused her resentment and her independence. If he didn't care tosee her she certainly did not want to see him. She was not going to sitaround and wait for him to take her down into the mine he had promisedshe should see. Let him forget his appointment if he liked. He wouldwait a long time before she made any more engagements with him.
About this time Dunke began to flatter himself that he had made animpression. Miss Kinney was all smiles. She was graciously pleased totake a horseback ride over the camp with him, nor did he know thather roving eye was constantly on the lookout for a certain spare,clean-built figure she could recognize at a considerable distance by theeasy, elastic tread. Monday evening the mine-owner called upon her andMrs. Collins, whose brother also was among the missing, and she wasdelighted to accept his invitation to go through the Mal Pais workingswith him.
"That is, if Mrs. Collins will go, too," she added as an afterthought.
That young woman hesitated. Though this man had led his miners againsther brother, she was ready to believe the attack not caused by personalenmity. The best of feeling did not exist between the owners of theJackrabbit and those of the Mal Pais. Dunke was suspected of boldlycrossing into the territory of his neighbor where his veins did notlead. But there had been no open rupture. For the very reason that anundertow of feeling existed Nellie consented to join the party. She didnot want by a refusal to put into words a hostility that he had alwayscarefully veiled. She was in the position of not wanting to go at all,yet wanting still less to decline to do so.
"I shall be glad to go," she said.
"Fine. We'll start about nine, or nine-thirty say. I'll drive up in asurrey."
"And we'll have lunch for the party put up at the hotel here. I'll getsome fruit to take along," said Margaret.
"We'll make a regular picnic of it," added Dunke heartily. "You'll enjoyeating out of a dinner-pail for once just like one of my miners, MissKinney."
After he had gone Margaret mentioned to Mrs. Collins her feelingconcerning him. "I don't really like him. Or rather I don't give him myfull confidence. He seems pleasant enough, too." She laughed a little asshe added: "You know he does me the honor to admire me."
"Yes, I know that. I was wondering how you felt about it."
"How ought one to feel about one of the great mining kings of the West?"
"Has that anything to do with it, my dear? I mean his being a miningking?" asked Mrs. Collins gently.
Margaret went up to her and kissed her. "You're a romantic little thing.That's because you probably married a heaven-sent man. We can't all befortunate."
"We none of us need to marry where we don't love."
"Goodness me! I'm not thinking of marrying Mr. Dunke's millions. Theonly thing is that I don't have a Croesus to exhibit every day at mychariot wheels. It's horrid of course, but I have a natural femininereluctance to surrendering him all at once. I don't object in the leastto trampling on him, but somehow I don't feel ready for his declarationof independence."
"Oh, if that's all!" her friend smiled.
"That's quite all."
"Perhaps you prefer Texans who come from the Panhandle."
Mrs. Collins happened to be looking straight at her out of her big browneyes. Wherefore she could not help observing the pink glow that deepenedin the soft cheeks.
"He hasn't preferred me much lately."
Nellie knitted her brow in perplexity. "I don't understand. Steve's beenaway, too, nearly all the time. Something is going on that we don't knowabout."
"Not that I care. Mr. Neill is welcome to stay away."
Her new friend shot a swift slant look at her. "I don't suppose youtrample on him much."
Margaret flushed. "No, I don't. It's the other way. I never saw anybodyso rude. He does not seem to have any saving sense of the proper thing."
"He's a man, dearie, and a good one. He may be untrammeled byconvention, but he is clean and brave. He has eyes that look throughcowardice and treachery, fine strong eyes that are honest and unafraid."
"Dear me, you must have studied them a good deal to see all that inthem," said Miss Peggy lightly, yet pleased withal.
"My dear," reproached her friend, so seriously that Peggy repented.
"I didn't really mean it," she laughed. "I've heard already on goodauthority that you see no man's eyes except the handsome ones in theface of Mr. Tim Collins."
"I do think Tim has fine eyes," blushed the accused.
"No doubt of it. Since you have been admiring my young man I must praiseyours," teased Miss Kinney.
"Am I to wish you joy? I didn't know he was your young man," flashedback the other.
"I understand that you have been trying to put him off on me."
"You'll find he does not need any 'putting off' on anybody."
"At least, he has a good friend in you. I think I'll tell him, so thatwhen he does condescend to become interested in a young woman he mayrefer her to you for a recommendation."
The young wife borrowed for the occasion some of Miss Peggy's audacity."I'm recommending him to that young woman now, my dear," she madeanswer.
Dunke's party left for the mine on schedule time, Water-proof coats andhigh lace-boots had been borrowed for the ladies as a protection againstthe moisture they were sure to meet in the tunnels one thousand feetbelow the ground. The mine-owner had had the hoisting-engine started forthe occasion, and the cage took them down as swiftly and as smoothlyas a metropolitan elevator. Nevertheless Margaret clung tightly toher friend, for if was her first experience of the kind. She had neverbefore dropped nearly a quarter of a mile straight down into the heartof the earth and she felt a smothered sensation, a sense of dangerinduced by her unaccustomed surroundings. It is the unknown that awes,and when she first stepped from the cage and peered down the long, lowtunnel through which a tramway ran she caught her breath rather quickly.She had an active imagination, and she conjured cave-ins, explosions,and all the other mine horrors she had read about.
Their host had spared no expense to make the occasion a gala one.Electric lights were twinkling at intervals down the tunnel, and anelectric ore-car with a man in charge was waiting to run them into theworkings nearly a mile distant. Dunke dealt out candles and assisted hisguests into the car, which presently carried them deep into the mine.Margaret observed that the timbered sides of the tunnel leaned inwardslightly and that the roof was heavily cross-timbered.
"It looks safe," she thought aloud.
"It's safe enough," returned Dunke carelessly. "The place for cave-insis at the head of the workings, before we get drifts timbered."
"Are we going into any of those places?"
"I wouldn't take you into any place that wasn't safe, Miss Margaret."
"Is it always so dreadfully warm down here?" she asked.
"You must remember we're somewhere around a thousand feet in the heartof the earth. Yes, it's always warm."
"I don't see how the men stand it and work."
"Oh, they get used to it."
They left the car and followed a drift which took them into a region ofperpetual darkness, into which the electric lights did not penetrate.Margaret noticed that her host carried his candle with ease, holdingit at an angle that gave the best light and most resistance to theair, while she on her part had much ado to keep hers from going out.Frequently she had to stop and let the tiny flame renew its hold on thebase of supplies. So, without his knowing it, she fell behind gradually,and his explanations of stopes, drifts, air-drills, and pay-streaks fellonly upon the alrea
dy enlightened ears of Mrs. Collins.
The girl had been picking her way through some puddles of water that hadsettled on the floor, and when she looked up the lights of those aheadhad disappeared. She called to them faintly and hurried on, appalledat the thought of possibly losing them in these dreadful undergroundcatacombs where Stygian night forever reigned. But her very hurrydelayed her, for in her haste the gust of her motion swept out theflame. She felt her way forward along the wall, in a darkness such asshe had never conceived before. Nor could she know that by chance shewas following the wrong wall. Had she chosen the other her hand musthave come to a break in it which showed that a passage at that pointdeflected from the drift toward the left. Unconsciously she passed this,already frightened but resolutely repressing her fear.
"I'll not let them know what an idiot I am. I'll not! I'll not!" shetold herself.
Therefore she did not call yet, thinking she must come on them at anymoment, unaware that every step was taking her farther from the galleryinto which they had turned. When at last she cried out it was too late.The walls hemmed in her cry and flung it back tauntingly to her--thedamp walls against which she crouched in terror of the subterraneanvault in which she was buried. She was alone with the powers ofdarkness, with the imprisoned spirits of the underworld that foughtinarticulately against the audacity of the puny humans who dared venturehere. So her vivid imagination conceived it, terrorizing her againstboth will and reason.
How long she wandered, a prey to terror, calling helplessly in theblackness, she did not know. It seemed to her that she must alwayswander so, a perpetual prisoner condemned to this living grave. So thatit was with a distinct shock of glad surprise she heard a voice answerfaintly her calls. Calling and listening alternately, she groped her wayin the direction of the sounds, and so at last came plump against thefigure of the approaching rescuer.
"Who is it?" a hoarse voice demanded.
But before she could answer a match flared and was held close to herface. The same light that revealed her to him told the girl who this manwas that had met her alone a million miles from human aid. The haggard,drawn countenance with the lifted upper lip and the sunken eyes thatglared into hers belonged to the convict Nick Struve.
The match went out before either of them spoke.
"You--you here!" she exclaimed, and was oddly conscious that her reliefat meeting even him had wiped out for the present her fear of the man.
"For God's sake, have you got anything to eat?" he breathed thickly.
It had been part of the play that each member of their little partyshould carry a dinner-pail just like an ordinary miner. Wherefore shehad hers still in her hand.
"Yes, and I have a candle here. Have you another match?"
He lit the candle with a shaking hand.
"Gimme that bucket," he ordered gruffly, and began to devour ravenouslythe food he found in it, tearing at sandwiches and gulping them downlike a hungry dog.
"What day is this?" he stopped to ask after he had stayed the firstpangs.
She told him Tuesday.
"I ain't eaten since Saturday," he told her. "I figured it was a week.There ain't any days in this place--nothin' but night. Can't tell onefrom another."
"It's terrible," she agreed.
His appetite was wolfish. She could see that he was spent, so weakwith hunger that he had reeled against the wall as she handed himthe dinner-pail. Pallor was on the sunken face, and exhaustion in thetrembling hands and unsteady gait.
"I'm about all in, what with hunger and all I been through. I thought Iwas out of my head when I heard you holler." He snatched up the candlefrom the place where he had set it and searched her face by its flame."How come you down here? You didn't come alone. What you doin' here?" hedemanded suspiciously.
"I came down with Mr. Dunke and a friend to look over his mine. I hadnever been in one before."
"Dunke!" A spasm of rage swept the man's face. "You're a friend of his,are you? Where is he? If you came with him how come you to be roamingaround alone?"
"I got lost. Then my light went out."
"So you're a friend of Dunke, that damned double-crosser! He's amillionaire, you think, a big man in this Western country. That's whathe claims, eh?" Struve shook a fist into the air in a mad burst ofpassion. "Just watch me blow him higher'n a kite. I know what he is, andI got proof. The Judas! I keep my mug shut and do time while he gets offscot-free and makes his pile. But you listen to me, ma'am. Your friendain't nothin' but an outlaw. If he got his like I got mine he'd be atYuma to-day. Your brother could a-told you. Dunke was at the head of thegang that held up that train. We got nabbed, me and Jim. Burch gotshot in the Catalinas by one of the rangers, and Smith died of fever inSonora. But Dunke, curse him, he sneaks out and buys the officers offwith our plunder. That's what he done--let his partners get railroadedthrough while he sails out slick and easy. But he made one mistake, Mr.Dunke did. He wrote me a letter and told me to keep mum and he wouldfix it for me to get out in a few months. I believed him, kept my mouthpadlocked, and served seven years without him lifting a hand for me.Then, when I make my getaway he tries first off to shut my mouth byputting me out of business. That's what your friend done, ma'am."
"Is this true?" asked the girl whitely.
"So help me God, every word of it."
"He let my brother go to prison without trying to help him?"
"Worse than that. He sent him to prison. Jim was all right when he firstmet up with Dunke. It was Dunke that got him into his wild ways andled him into trouble. It was Dunke took him into the hold-up business.Hadn't been for him Jim never would have gone wrong."
She made no answer. Her mind was busy piecing out the facts of herbrother's misspent life. As a little girl she remembered her big brotherbefore he went away, good-natured, friendly, always ready to play withher. She was sure he had not been bad, only fatally weak. Even this manwho had slain him was ready to testify to that.
She came back from her absorption to find Struve outlining what he meantto do.
"We'll go back this passage along the way you came. I want to findMr. Dunke. I allow I've got something to tell him he will be rightinterested in hearing."
He picked up the candle and led the way along the tunnel. Margaretfollowed him in silence.