The Blind Brother: A Story of the Pennsylvania Coal Mines

  CHAPTER VI.

  THE FALL.

  It was true. Carolan's quick eye had noticed the opportunity forRennie to escape, and his fertile brain had been swift in planning animmediate rescue. The few members of his order that he could find onthe instant were gathered together; there was a sudden onslaught at adark corner of the Court-House Square; the sheriff and his deputy layprone upon the ground, and their prisoner was slipping away through thedark, foggy streets, with a policeman's bullet whizzing past his ears,and his band of rescuers struggling with the amazed officers.

  But the sheriff of Luzerne County never saw Jack Rennie again, nor wasthe hand of the law ever again laid upon him, in arrest or punishment.

  As Tom walked home from the railroad station that night through thedrizzling rain, his heart was lighter than it had been for many a day.

  True, he was nervous and worn with excitement and fatigue, but therewas with him a sense of duty done, even though tardily, which broughtpeace into his mind and lightness to his footsteps.

  After the first greetings were had, and the little home group of threewas seated together by the fire to question and to talk, Tom opened hiswhole heart. While his mother and Bennie listened silently, often withtears, he told the story of his adventure at the breaker on the nightof the fire, of his temptation and fall at Wilkesbarre, of his mentalperplexity and acute suffering, of the dramatic incidents of the trial,and of his own release from the bondage of bribery.

  When his tale was done, the poor blind brother, for whose sake he hadstepped into the shadow of sin, and paid the penalty, declared, withlaughter and with tears, that he had never before been so proud of Tomand so fond of him as he was at that moment; and the dear, good mothertook the big fellow on her lap, as she used to do when he was a littlechild, and held him up close to her heart, and rocked him till he fellasleep, and into his curly hair dropped now and then a tear, that wasnot the outcome of sorrow, but of deep maternal joy.

  It was well along in December before the strike came to an end. Therehad been rumors for a week of an approaching compromise between theminers and the operators, but one day there came word that all handswere to be at the mines, ready for work, the following morning.

  It was glad news for many a poor family, who saw the holidaysapproaching in company with bitter want; and it brought especialrejoicing to the little household dependent so largely on the labor ofTom and Bennie for subsistence.

  The boys were at the entrance to the mine the next morning before thestars began to pale in the east. They climbed into a car of the firsttrip, and rode down the slope to the music of echoes roaring throughgalleries that had long been silent.

  The mules had been brought in the day before, and Tom ran whistlingto the mine stables to untie his favorite Billy, and set him to hisaccustomed task. There came soon a half-dozen or more of driver-boys,and such a shouting and laughing and chattering ensued as made thebeasts prick up their long ears in amazement.

  "All aboard!" shouted Tom, as he fastened his trace-hook to the firsttrip of cars. "Through train to the West! No stops this side o'Chicorgo!"

  "'Commodation ahead! Parly cars on the nex' train, an' no porters'lowed!" squeaked out a little fellow, backing his mule up to thesecond trip.

  "I'll poke the fire a bit an' git the steam up fur yez," said PatsyDonnelly, the most mischievous lad of them all. Whereupon he proddedTom's mule viciously in the ribs, and that beast began playing such atattoo with his heels against the front of the car as drowned all othernoises in its clatter.

  "Whoa, Billy!" shouted Tom, helping Bennie into the rear car of thetrip. "Whoa, now! Stiddy--there, git-tup!" cracking his long leatherwhip-lash over Billy's ears as he spoke, and climbing into the frontcar. "Git-tup! Go it! Whoop!"

  Away went Tom and Bennie, rattling up the long heading, imitatingalternately the noise of the bell, the whistle, and the labored puffingof a locomotive engine; while the sound-waves, unable to escape fromthe narrow passage which confined them, rolled back into their ears involumes of resounding echoes.

  Ah, they were happy boys that morning! happy even though one wassmitten with the desolation of blindness, and both were compelled tolabor, from daylight to dark, in the grimy recesses of the mine, forthe pittance that brought their daily bread; happy, because they wereyoung and free-hearted and innocent, and contented with their lot.

  And Tom was thrice happy, in that he had rolled away the burden of anaccusing conscience, and felt the high pleasure that nothing elseon earth can so fully bring as the sense of duty done, against thefrowning face and in the threatening teeth of danger.

  Sometimes, indeed, there came upon him a sudden fear of the vengeancehe might meet at Rennie's hands; but as the days passed by this feardisturbed him less and less, and the buoyancy of youth preserved himfrom depressing thoughts of danger.

  Billy, too, was in good spirits that morning, and drew the cars rapidlyalong the heading, swinging around the sharp curves so swiftly thatthe yellow flame from the little tin lamp was blown down to the merestspark of blue; and stopping at last by the door in the entrance, whereBennie was to dismount and sit all day at his lonely task.

  Three times Tom went down to the slope that morning, through Bennie'sdoor, with his trip of loads, and three times he came back, with histrip of lights; and the third time he stopped to sit with his brotheron the bench and to eat, from the one pail which served them both, theplain but satisfying dinner which Mommie had prepared for them.

  Tom was still light-hearted and jovial, but upon Bennie there seemed tohave fallen since morning a shadow of soberness. To sit for hours withonly one's thoughts for company, and with the oppressive silence brokenonly at long intervals by the passing trips, this alone is enough tocast gloom upon the spirits of the most cheerful.

  But something more than this was weighing upon Bennie's mind, for hetold Tom, when they had done eating, that every time it grew stillaround him, and there were no cars in the heading or airway, and nonoises to break the silence, he could hear, somewhere down below him,the "working" of the mine. He had heard it all the morning he said,when every thing was quiet, and, being alone so, it made him nervousand afraid.

  "I could stan' most any thing," he said, "but to get caught in a'fall.'"

  "Le's listen an' see if we can hear it now," said Tom.

  Then both boys kept very quiet for a little while, and sure enough,over in the darkness, they heard an occasional snapping, like thebreaking of dry twigs beneath the feet.

  The process which the miners call "working" was going on. The pressureof the overlying mass of rock upon the pillars of coal left to supportit was becoming so great that it could not be sustained, and thegradual yielding of the pillars to this enormous weight was beingmanifested by the crackling noises that proceeded from them, and thecrumbling of tiny bits of coal from their bulging surfaces.

  The sound of working pillars is familiar to frequenters of the mines,and is the well-known warning which precedes a fall. The remedy isto place wooden props beneath the roof for additional support, and,if this is not done, there comes a time, sooner or later, when thestrained pillars suddenly give way, and the whole mass comes crashingdown, to fill the gangways and chambers over an area as great as thatthrough which the working extended, and to block the progress ofmining for an indefinite time.

  Tom had been too long about the mines to be ignorant of all this, andso had Bennie; but they knew, too, that the working often continuedweeks, and sometimes months, before the fall would take place, thoughit might, indeed, come at any moment.

  That afternoon Tom told the slope boss about the working, and he cameand made an examination, and said he thought there was no immediatedanger, but that he would give orders to have the extra propping of theplace begun on the following day.

  "Jimmie Travis said he seen rats goin' out o' the slope, though, whenhe come in," said Tom, after relating to Bennie the opinion of the mineboss.

  "Then 'twon't be long," replied Bennie, "'fore the fall comes."

/>   He was simply echoing the belief of all miners, that rats will leavea mine in which a fall is about to take place. Sailors have the samebelief concerning a ship about to sink.

  "An' when the rats begin to go out," added Bennie, "it's time for menan' boys to think about goin' out too."

  Somehow, the child seemed to have a premonition of disaster.

  The afternoon wore on very slowly, and Bennie gave a long sigh ofrelief when he heard Tom's last trip come rumbling down the airway.

  "Give me the dinner-pail, Bennie!" shouted Tom, as the door closedbehind the last car, "an' you catch on behind--Whoa, Billy!" as themule trotted on around the corner into the heading.

  "Come, Bennie, quick! Give me your hand; we'll have to run to catch himnow."

  But even as the last word trembled on the boy's lips, there came ablast of air, like a mighty wind, and in the next instant a noise as ofbursting thunder, and a crash that shook the foundations of the mines,and the two boys were hurled helplessly against Bennie's closed doorbehind them.

  The fall had come.

  The terrible roar died away in a series of rumbling echoes, and, atlast, stillness reigned.

  "Bennie!"

  It was Tom who spoke.

  "Bennie!"

  He called the name somewhat feebly.

  "Bennie!"

  It was a shout at last, and there was terror in his voice.

  He raised himself to his feet, and stood leaning against the shatteredframe-work of the door. He felt weak and dizzy. He was bruised andbleeding, too, but he did not know it; he was not thinking of himself,but of Bennie, who had not answered to his call, and who might be dead.

  He was in total darkness, but he had matches in his pocket. He drew oneout and stood, for a moment, in trembling hesitancy, dreading what itslight might disclose. Then he struck it, and there, almost at his feet,lay his cap, with his lamp still attached to it.

  He lighted the lamp and looked farther.

  At the other side of the entrance, half-hidden by the wreck of thedoor, he saw Bennie, lying on his side, quite still. He bent down andflashed the light into Bennie's face. As he did so the blind boy openedhis eyelids, sighed, moved his hands, and tried to rise.

  "Tom!"

  The word came in a whisper from his lips.

  "Yes, Bennie, I'm here; are you hurt?"

  "No--yes--I don't know; what was it, Tom?"

  "The fall, I guess. Can you get up? Here, I'll help you."

  Bennie gained his feet. He was not much hurt. The door had given wayreadily when the boys were forced against it, and so had broken theseverity of the shock. But both lads had met with some cuts and somesevere bruises.

  "Have you got a lamp, Tom?"

  "Yes; I just found it; come on, let's go home."

  Tom took Bennie's hand and turned to go out, but the first step aroundthe pillar, into the heading, brought him face to face with a wall ofsolid rock which filled every inch of the passage. It had dropped,like a curtain, blotting out, in one instant, the mule and the cars,and forming an impassable barrier to the further progress of the boysin that direction.

  "We can't get out this way," said Tom; "we'll have to go up through theairway."

  They went back into the airway, and were met by a similar impenetrablemass.

  Then they went up into the short chambers beyond the airway, and Tomflashed the light of his lamp into every entrance, only to find itblocked and barred by the roof-rock from the fall.

  "We'll have to go back up the headin'," said Tom, at last, "an' downthrough the old chambers, an' out to the slope that way."

  But his voice was weak and cheerless, for the fear of a terriblepossibility had grown up in his mind. He knew that, if the fallextended across the old chambers to the west wall of the mine, as wasmore than likely, they were shut in beyond hope of escape, perhapsbeyond hope of rescue; and if such were to be their fate, then itwould have been far better if they were lying dead under the fallenrock, with Billy and the cars.

  Hand in hand the two boys went up the heading, to the first openingin the lower wall, and creeping over the pile of "gob" that partiallyblocked the entrance, they passed down into a series of chambers thathad been worked out years before, from a heading driven on a lowerlevel.

  Striking across through the entrances, in the direction of the slope,they came, at last, as Tom had expected and feared, to the line of thefall: a mass of crushed coal and broken rock stretching diagonallyacross the range of chambers towards the heading below.

  But perhaps it did not reach to that heading; perhaps the headingitself was still free from obstruction!

  This was the only hope now left; and Tom grasped Bennie's hand moretightly in his, and hurried, almost ran, down the long, wide chamber,across the airway and into the heading.

  They had gone scarce twenty rods along the heading, when that cruel,jagged wall of rock rose up before them, marking the confines of themost cheerless prison that ever held a hopeless human being.

  When Tom saw it he stopped, and Bennie said, "Have we come to it, Tom?"

  Tom answered: "It's there, Bennie," and sank down upon a jutting rock,with a sudden weakness upon him, and drew the blind boy to a seatbeside him.

  "We're shut in, Bennie," he said. "We'll never get out till they breaka way into us, and, maybe, by the time they do that, it'll be--'twon'tbe worth while."

  Bennie clung tremblingly to Tom; but, even in his fright, it came intohis mind to say something reassuring, and, thinking of his lonesomeadventure on the day of the strike, he whispered, "Well, 'taint so badas it might be, Tom; they might 'a' been one of us shut up here alone,an' that'd 'a' been awful."

  "I wish it had 'a' been one of us alone," answered Tom, "for Mommie'ssake. I wish it'd 'a' been only me. Mommie couldn't ever stan' it tolose--both of us--like--this."

  For their own misfortune, these boys had not shed a tear; but, atthe mention of Mommie's name, they both began to weep, and, for manyminutes, the noise of their sobbing and crying was the only sound heardin the desolate heading.

  Tom was the first to recover.

  A sense of the responsibility of the situation had come to him. Heknew that strength was wasted in tears. And he knew that the greaterthe effort towards physical endurance, towards courage and manhood,the greater the hope that they might live until a rescuing party couldreach them. Besides this, it was his place, as the older and strongerof the two, to be very brave and cheerful for Bennie's sake. So hedried his tears, and fought back his terror, and spoke soothing wordsto Bennie, and even as he did so, his own heart grew stronger, and hefelt better able to endure until the end, whatever the end might be.

  "God can see us, down in the mine, just as well as He could up therein the sunlight," he said to Bennie, "an' whatever He'd do for us upthere He'll do for us down here. An' there's them 'at won't let us diehere, either, w'ile they've got hands to dig us out; an' I shouldn'twonder--I shouldn't wonder a bit--if they were a-diggin' for us now."

  After a time, Tom concluded that he would pass up along the line of thefall, through the old chambers, and see if there was not some openingleft through which escape would be possible.

  So he took Bennie's hand again, and led him slowly up through theabandoned workings, in and out, to the face of the fall at every pointwhere it was exposed, only to find, always, the masses of broken andtumbled rock, reaching from floor to roof.

  Yet not always! Once, as Tom flashed the lamp-light up into a blockedentrance, he discovered a narrow space between the top of the fallenrock and the roof, and, releasing Bennie's hand, and climbing up to it,with much difficulty, he found that he was able to crawl through intoa little open place in the next chamber.

  From here he passed readily through an unblocked entrance into thesecond chamber, and, at some little distance down it, he found anotheropen entrance. The light of hope flamed up in his breast as he creptalong over the smooth, sloping surfaces of fallen rock, across onechamber after another, nearer and nearer to the slope, nearer andnearer
to freedom, and the blessed certainty of life. Then, suddenly,in the midst of his reviving hope, he came to a place where theclosest scrutiny failed to reveal an opening large enough for even hissmall body to force its way through. Sick at heart, in spite of hisself-determined courage, he crawled back through the fall, up the freepassages and across the slippery rocks, to where Bennie stood waiting.

  "I didn't find any thing," he said, in as strong a voice as he couldcommand. "Come, le's go on up."

  He took Bennie's hand and moved on. But, as he turned through anentrance into the next chamber, he was startled to see, in thedistance, the light of another lamp. The sharp ears of the blind boycaught the sound of footsteps.

  "Somebody's comin', Tom," he said.

  "I see the lamp," Tom answered, "but I don't know who it can be. Therewasn't anybody in the new chambers w'en I started down with the load.All the men went out quite a bit ahead o' me."

  The two boys stood still; the strange light approached, and, with thelight, appeared, to Tom's astonished eyes, the huge form and beardedface of Jack Rennie.