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The dusty team of mules passed down the street, dragging their double-trees reluctantly, and took their cursing meekly as they made the turn at the tracks. A switch engine bumped along the sidings, snaking ore-cars down to the bins and bunting them up to the chutes, but except for its bangings and clamor the town was still.
"I'd kill Flemister on sight, if I had the sand; you know that, Gridley. Some day it may come to that. But in the meantime " "In the meantime you have been snapping at his heels like a fice-dog, Hallock; holding out ore-cars on him, delaying his coal supplies, stirring up trouble with his miners. That was all right, up to yesterday. But now it has got to stop."
But he began to realize that he was exhausting the learning opportunities of this particular place and kind of work, and so one night deep down in the mine, when for sudden lack of ore-cars or power or some other essential, work was held up for the last half hour of his shift, he went off into a warm corner, curled himself up in a nice clean wheelbarrow and slept away the last half hour of his pick and shovel experience.
Self-important little dummy-engines, dragging long trains of ore-cars, rolled and rocked on the uneven surface of the ground, and swung around corners with warning screeches of their whistles.
It was a long gallery winding away through the mountain, and connecting a mile beyond with another shaft opening on another hill, so that the heavy air was tempered by a constant mild breeze. Side shafts, just large enough for the ore-cars to pass, pierced far back into the mountain at frequent intervals. Back in these it was furnace hot.
"Where I grunt, you'd lie down, Poney: but, as I was saying, I don't blow much. Notwithstandin', if you want to see freight that is freight moved lively, you should see me warbling through the Alleghanies with thirty-seven ore-cars behind me, and my brakemen fightin' tramps so's they can't attend to my tooter.
Thus the sweat-dripping days passed, without a hint of what might be going on in the world far above, amid the roar and pounding of air and hand-drills, the noisy falling of masses of rock as these broke it loose, the constant ringing of shovels, the rumble of iron ore-cars on their thread-like rails, cries of "'sta pegado!" quickly followed by the stunning, ear-splitting dynamite blast, screams of "No vas echar!" as some one passed beneath an opening above, of "Ahora si!" when he was out of danger; the shrill warning whistling of the peons echoing back and forth through the galleries and labyrinthian side tunnels, as the crunch of shoes along the track announced the approach of some boss; the shouting of the peons "throwing" a loaded car along the track through the heavy smoke-laden air, so thick with the smell of powder and thin with oxygen that even experienced bosses developed raging headaches, and the Beau Brummel secretary of the company fell down once with dizziness and went to bed after the weekly inspection.
If one will take the trouble to climb the almost perpendicular ridge that rises two thousand feet behind the old tumble-down buildings, long, low cook-houses and superintendent's vine-covered cottage, along that narrow, half-destroyed trail that follows the rusty tracks and cogs and cable of an old railroad, up to the first and then on further to the second tunnel, where a few deserted ore-cars stand waiting the trains that never come, on still higher to the narrow ridge that separates the south fork from the north fork of the Merced River, he is rewarded with a view worth a long trip to see.
Along the wooden rails laid for the ore-cars he felt his way, till he began to grow confused. He must have a light; surely no one could see it. Then he thought he again heard voices. He stood still. He could hear his heart beat. It was only the drip of water from the roof. He lit the candle and hurried on. The air was close and hot, but he never stopped.
The sailors spread out up the road that led to the Capital to give warning in case the enemy approached, but they were recalled before they had reason to give an alarm, and in a half hour Burke's entire shipment of arms was on the ore-cars, the men who were to have guarded them were prisoners in the cab of the engine, and both trains were rushing at full speed toward the mines.
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