The Tributers [pp. 237-238]

TIHE TRIBUTERS
By EDWARD W. PARKER
AND over hand, step after step, we
toiled upward through a raise that
seemed to have no end. My hands
faithfully followed the hob-nailed boots of
Foreman Johns which took toll in loud
rasping out of each iron rung of the narrow ladder. Between two fingers of my
right hand the short-pronged light-stick
pivoted and continually threatened to pry
me from the ladder into nether darkness.
But at last we crawled out of the well and
scrambled thankfully on to the level
gravelly floor of a large labore. Here we
found an easy resting-place against the
sloping side of a low dump of crushed
rock. The air was close and warm and
acted like a steam-bath on our tired bodies,
wringing out the perspiration in streams.
For a time we wiped our faces and smoked,
silently contemplating the canopy of
shadows.
Chancing to look at Foreman Johns I
saw that his eyebrows were lifted reminiscently while he gazed across the dimly
lighted slope at a deep hollow in the opposite side.
"Do you make out the cave in the far
side, sir?" he asked, indicating the place
with his pipe. "I tributed theer some ten
years ago; and't was a rich enough pitch
while it lasted, too.'T was in a pocket
like, but we got a good bit out of it."
When Johns spoke there was in his
speech but the faintest accent of Cornwall.
It was only under stress of excitement that
the thirty years of California were forgotten and he relapsed to his mother
tongue.
"It was my pardner in those days, Pete
Henbyv, who discovered the vein's outcrop
on the wall of the laboor. But when we
had drifted in a ways it opened out beautifully. In some of the tierras we got
from that drift-for the ground was soft
like and needed watching, and we got most
all tierras-in some of that, sir, the native
quicksilver cropped out in flat beads likewell, like drops of dew on a leaf. When
you strike metal like that you can work
yourself to death and never feel it. We
stuck it out early and late, drilling and
blasting and picking and shoveling day in
and day out. There was little talking
done in that drift. Time was too valuable.
It was dig and sweat.
"Pete was a lank and lean man. He
was not a lady's man, by any means,-for
an explosion in a Pennsylvania coal-mine
had put the finishing touches on, by scarring his face and painting it with blue
blotches. His face had made him shy of
women. But he was one of God's true
men underneath, and I believe his heart
was as big as this here laboor.
"One day we were sitting on this dump,
eating our lunch. Just before we had set
off some blasts, and the cracks in the face
and along the top of the drift were, waiting
the pick. Several times as we sat here
eating we heard a little rattling and fall
of pebbles in the drift.
"'She may come down of herself this.
time,' said I,-for it is the same way, sir,
with a cave as it is with a storm on the
surface. Instead of a little gust of wind,
there comes once and a while a little rattle
of stones and a creak now and then of
square-set timbers, and if you listen close
you can tell that there is something on
foot in the earth. You can tell a day
ahead when she is coming-maybe a
wheel-barrow load, maybe thousands of
tons and when she do, look out, for nothing in God's world can stop her.
"But Pete was not thinking about veinmetal. He was staring at the light, and
eating little. I had nearly done when
he straightened back and said,'Jim, could
you have blamed us if we had passed this.
pitch by along of that time when I first
saw the red splotches on the wall?'
"This was a long speech for Pete, and
I said wonderingly,'No, Pete; I can't
say as I would.'
"' Suppose there was no outcropping
at all, would anybody ha' known about
that pitch, pardner?'
i' None that I've ever heard about,'
said I.
"'What do they do when they come.
near such a pitch, Jim?'
"' They pass it by,' I answered.