Hard Money (24 page)

Bonal's teeth clamped down on his cigar until the end of it sagged. Slowly, he withdrew it from his mouth bitten almost in two, and held it in his hand. Seay saw the veins in his temples standing out.

“Why, you fools,” Bonal said in a low angry voice, “I'll blow that tunnel in before I'll stand for that!”

McCauley spoke up then in a throaty growl. “Don't forget your other obligation, Bonal,” he said. “The rest of your contract calls for your hauling our ore and milling it for a specified amount.” He shrugged his heavy shoulders. “If you can drain our shafts and mill our ore at the price agreed upon and signed for and without the help of the tunnel, then you're at liberty to cave in every foot of it. Otherwise, I wouldn't advise it.”

Bonal looked from McCauley to Freehold. “I see. I'm tied legally. I get paid for draining one mine, when I drain every mine in this field. I'll go bankrupt and be forced to sell. Then you'll buy. Is that it, gentlemen?”

“Roughly,” Freehold nodded. He could not help giving a twist to the knife. “That's so simple even you can understand it, Bonal.”

Bonal did not wince outwardly. He asked in a calm voice, “This is Janeece's scheme, of course.”

“He is one of our associates,” Freehold said. He dropped his cigar in an ash tray and said, “Is that all, Bonal? We understand each other?”

“Perfectly,” Bonal said.

“Then you can always get in touch with us through Janeece. I'm certain he'll give you a reasonably fair figure for the tunnel and for the building site of your mill. Good day, sir.”

They turned to the door. Hugh took a step to join them, when Bonal said, “You stay, Hugh.”

When McCauley and Freehold were gone Bonal said to Hugh, “Sit down.”

Hugh did. Bonal went over to confront him. “Are you still manager of the Dry Sierras Consolidated?”

“In name, I suppose.”

“Then men take your orders?”

Hugh nodded.

“All right,” Bonal said. “Give them orders to stop this diversion of water. If these two blackguards oust you from the management for doing it, that'll be all right. In two months I'll have the biggest milling company in the Tronah field in operation. You'll be its manager, and you'll draw the same salary you're drawing now. Furthermore, you'll have a juicy cut of the stock. All I'm asking in return is that you order them to effectively stop this diversion of water and make it stick! Can you?”

Tiny beads of sweat showed on Hugh's forehead. He looked at Sharon, who watched him, her eyes steady and unblinking and proud.

Hugh said quietly, “What good would that do?”

“I want time,” Bonal said harshly. “I'll think of something! I'll block the tunnel so it can't be used.”

“But you can't!” Hugh said.

Bonal stared at him, his face changing a little. “I made you a proposition. Will you take it?” he asked coldly.

Hugh looked at Sharon one agonizing instant, pleading and fear in his eyes. But Sharon's still face was impassive, waiting. Slowly, then, Hugh rose, and when he was erect he shook his head. “I can't, Bonal. I'd like to. But if I do, I ruin a career I've set my heart on. Besides, I haven't the authority. They'd—”

Bonal cursed him and swung on his heel and walked to the desk. Hugh stood for a brief moment, seeking help in Sharon's face, and when he did not find it, when he found only contempt in those cool eyes, he wheeled and left the room.

Bonal walked over to Sharon and said quietly, “I don't think this'll break your heart, do you, honey?”

Sharon shook her head.

“Then forget it,” Bonal said touching her hand. “I made the same mistake about Hugh that you did. Forget it.”

Sharon rose and left the room. Seay did not look at her, and she did not look at him. As she approached the door to the parlor she ran a little, as if the thought of being here longer was unbearable.

Bonal sank down in his chair and lighted a fresh cigar. Seay walked over to the chair opposite the desk and sat on its arm, facing Bonal.

“Have they got me, Phil?” Bonal asked finally.

Seay did not answer at all. Presently he rose and walked to the window and stood looking down at the street, his face frowning. Finally he asked, “Have you got the Dry Sierras contract here?”

“No. It's at the tunnel office,” Bonal said wearily.

“Maybe,” Seay said slowly. “Maybe they can't.” He half turned to face Bonal. “Isn't there a clause in that contract that says the tunnel must be finished? McCauley and Freehold might be right as to the legality of it, but isn't all that preceded by the clause, ‘Upon completion of said tunnel, such and such must be done?'”

“Of course,” Bonal said idly.

“But the tunnel isn't done,” Seay pointed out slowly. “We've still got that drain trench to complete.”

“What of it?”

“Then they can't lawfully divert their water to you until you're ready for it.”

“What good would that do?” Bonal asked sharply, some of the fight back in his voice.

“Then make them hold this water back until you're finished. And when you've got their water shut off, build a bulkhead in the tunnel that will stop the flow of water. Then you can take three years to complete the drain trench, if you want to take it. Before that they'll have struck
borrasca
and will be ready to talk business.”

“But the water's there,” Bonal said grimly. “Janeece will see that it stays there.”

Seay said, “Yes,” slowly, looking at Bonal.

Bonal was looking at him, too. “Bulkhead,” he murmured. “Can you put a bulkhead in the tunnel? With this head of water running?”

“It's risky,” Seay said mildly.

“But can you do it?”

Seay walked over to Bonal's desk and stood before it. “Yes, I can do it,” he said gently, his voice carrying an edge to it. “I can risk the necks of men, maybe drown some. Maybe I can do a good job of it. I don't know. The point is, Bonal, that water doesn't belong there. It's got no right there. It's a matter of principle.”

“But what can I do?” Bonal said, his voice almost angry now.

“I know what I'd do,” Seay countered. “I'd shut that water off.”

“How?”

“You want me to show you?” Seay asked quietly.

“I want you to tell me.”

“I won't tell you,” Seay said stubbornly, almost jeering. “I asked if you wanted me to show you?”

The two men looked at each other. Bonal was trying to see, to feel, what was behind Seay's attitude, and he could not. And he had a sense of foreboding about it. But Bonal was not a quitter. “Yes, show me, then,” he said quietly.

Seay laughed softly, turned and went out.

Chapter Seventeen

Tober sucked on a cold pipe and occasionally parted the brush before him and looked down through it. From where he was squatted, he could get a clear view of the Dry Sierras shaft house. The last workman had filed out the doorway, dinner bucket over shoulder, and turned to say something to the night watchman and stoker, then had gone on.

Tober's glance raised to a vent pipe in the roof where a plume of steam reached up and vanished. He turned to Seay then and said, “Just a little longer.”

“No guards?”

“Not unless they're inside.”

They waited a few minutes more and then left the screening brush. Seay was carrying a coil of rope, two drills and a fat package pressed under his arm.

At the shaft house they tried the door, and it swung open onto the gloom of the interior. It was a huge building, some three stories high. A third of the way down its huge beams laced across the room, and it was from these that the tackle for the car and skip hoists swung. The shaft head itself was collared off, and the iron shaft car stood empty at floor level, a lantern, still burning, swung from its roof. Beyond, a track ran the length of the building, past huge piles of ore and out an open door in the rear of the dump heap. Here was where the ore was sorted and graded and sacked previous to freighting. To the right, the hoist engines and pumps were looming blackly. The pump, its great rocker arms idle now, was a thing of the past since the tunnel completion.

Tober turned immediately to his right and headed for the doorway that let onto the furnace room. Inside it, propped against its jamb, a heavy-muscled man in a cotton singlet sat in a chair, his lunch bucket beside him, a sandwich in his fist.

At the sound of their approach he turned to confront the gun held in Tober's hand, and his jaw slacked open.

“Get up and stoke the fires, fella,” Reed said quietly, nodding toward the huge furnaces. “We need steam.”

It was a moment before the man understood. Then he closed his mouth and swallowed and made a vague gesture with his sandwich, “We—we've quit work here, mister.”

“Not yet,” Tober said. “You're goin' to keep steam up for the hoist engine. I'll sit here and watch you. But first”—his head nodded to Seay behind him—“you'll put the cage down to gallery G for him.”

The man stood speechless as Seay took one of the candle lanterns from the wall rack holding dozens of them and lighted it. He disappeared in the gloom of the shed to return a few moments later with a light sledge, which together with the rest of his equipment, he put on the floor of the cage.

“How many shells you got?” Tober asked.

“Enough,” was Seay's grim answer. Rammed in his belt was his cedar-handled Colt revolver. He closed the safety gate of the car and stood there waiting while Tober prodded the stoker over to the hoist engine. There was a slow grinding of gears, and the cage started to sink. Seay's last sight of Tober was memorable. Gun in one hand, he was lighting his pipe with the other. And then the car started its fall.

Now the walls slid by so swiftly that they were a blur. Gallery after gallery was passed, a yawning pitch-black hole that appeared and disappeared swiftly as down, down the car went, the cables above it whispering tautly. It was an interminable ride. The car clanked against the cage's guide irons, lurched a little but never slowed down. All of the earth seemed to have folded about him, leaving only this sliding panel of rock, now shiny with water, whipping by him.

Then the car slowed, pressing the floor up against his boot soles. Now it settled gently and came to a full stop, facing and level with the black pit of a gallery. Seay swung open the safety gate and unloaded his gear. Then he stood on the edge of the gallery listening. Below him, he could not tell how far, he heard the swift hissing of pouring water. Far, far below, it thundered into the choked tunnel head.

Taking his lantern, he set out down the gallery, his eyes roving its partially timbered sides. His pace was slow, as if he were looking for something. At each cross drift, or dead-end tunnel, that forked off from the gallery proper, he turned in and, lantern held high, paced its length. He was looking for a winze, or a shaft sunk from this level that would let him down to the next gallery. For down there, one gallery lower, was H gallery, where this river of turgid water was emptying into the shaft and the tunnel.

Each time he came upon the dead end of the cross drift he would patiently turn back to the gallery and try the next drift. It was laborious, slow work, maybe fruitless. He did not know.

At a station, or a cutback, in the gallery where the miners' gear was stored, he turned in, and this time walked straight to its far corner. There was a square hole there in its floor, the ends of a ladder poking out. Swinging out onto the ladder, he disappeared for a moment, then reappeared and walked back the several hundred yards to the gallery mouth. The car was still there, its lantern glowing in this hot air. This time, he picked up all his gear and brought it back to the winze mouth.

First, then, he tied the rope about his waist and slung the coil over his shoulder. The sledge handle he rammed through his belt, so that his arms would be free for the lantern and the two long drills nestled in the crook of his arm.

Swinging onto the top rungs of the ladder, he lowered himself into the winze. As he climbed down, far, far down, the full sound of running water came more and more distinctly to his ears. When finally he had passed the roof of the H gallery he swung his lantern out, looking below him. This was also a station, and the great lake of water coiled in slow, black eddies below him. Holding the lantern higher, he squinted out, and saw in the gallery proper the smooth surface of the millrace that was flowing down its length.

Satisfied, he regarded the ladder. It was held to the rock of the wall by iron cleats, and its timbers were substantial. He tied the end of his rope to the timber, then, holding the lantern high, lowered himself into the water. It came up above his waist and was warm, almost comfortable. Playing out the rope, he waded across the eddy and was soon approaching the gallery. He could feel the tug of the water around his legs now.

Steadying himself, he moved on again, this time out into the stream. Its current almost picked up his feet, but he leaned against the rope, holding the lantern and the two drills high. Then he was in the full current, and it whipped him back against the wall, tugging at his legs with its swift, ponderous strength. Foot by foot, he let out the rope, going down the gallery. He was looking at the walls, and now he stopped.

For a moment, he stood motionless, the water rushing up almost to his chest. Then, holding the lantern bale in his teeth, he reached in his shirt pocket and drew out a spike and rammed its head high in a crack of the rock wall and tested. It was solid. This was for the lantern, which he slung there. Now he worked down a few feet and, satisfied, took a full minute to work the long drill down inside his belt. Now his hands were free. Pulling the sledge out of his belt and taking one of the drills, he spread his feet, braced himself against the rope and started to work. Slowly, slowly, the drills were sledged into the rock. When he sunk the length of the short drill, he pulled out the long drill and sunk it deeper. And after each hole was drilled, he moved on downstream and drilled another. His work had a sustained, dogged patience that was backed by a savage will. Not once did he take time to rest, his sledging as regular as the ticking of a watch. It was hours before he had all the holes drilled, and then, throwing the sledge and the short drill into the stream, he pulled himself upstream to the station and climbed the ladder. His lantern was back there in the gallery, but he did not need it. He sat a moment at the head of the ladder, resting, his head hung in weariness, his breathing deep and fast. Presently he fumbled in the dark for the rest of his gear, and then lowered himself again. This time, once in the water, with no lantern to carry, the going was easy. The fat package was held high out of the water, and he played himself down the rope swiftly. He went to the farthest hole first and worked up.