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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78180 ***
+
+
+                                GOLD
+
+                           By Burt Leslie
+
+
+For more than fifteen years the Elkhorn mine yielded a steady output
+of low grade gold ore sufficient to make “Hard” Sturdivant one of the
+richest operators in the State of Colorado. Then late one afternoon
+the day shift on the fifth level, five hundred feet below the surface
+of the earth, set an unusually heavy blast. It splintered a three-foot
+plate of blue quartz, tore holes in seven feet of talc, and when the
+men came back into the drift they faced the breast of a tunnel that
+gleamed and sparkled with pure gold.
+
+The day shift stared aghast. The foreman swore. Then, suddenly a miner
+laughed.
+
+“That’s hot,” he said. “Look at it--and that gold ain’t on Elkhorn
+property at all. We’ve reached the boundary. That fortune ain’t Hard
+Sturdivant’s, it’s Clark Henderson’s.”
+
+There was a moment of impressive silence. The foreman leaned against the
+drift wall.
+
+“It’s true,” he said in hushed tones, “and old Hard hates them
+Hendersons worse than the devil hates good holy water.”
+
+The foreman strode to the main shaft and yanked the bell rope signaling
+for the mine superintendent. Gaffney came down on the next cage.
+
+“See here,” the superintendent said a bit unsteadily, “we can’t let
+this be known, men. I’ll have to swear you all to secrecy until I
+notify Sturdivant. He’s down at Denver.”
+
+One of the miners spat reflectively. “Gaffney,” he said, “we all know
+Sturdivant’s rock-hard and a mean-bitten devil. He’s been a bully and
+a thief as long as he’s mined these mountains. Clark Henderson’s a
+good kid. He’s decent and he’s hard up. Surest thing you know, old
+Sturdivant’ll try to pull a dirty one on that kid same as he ruined
+the kid’s dad. I say, we ought to tell Clark Henderson.”
+
+Gaffney looked them over. “We’ve got to notify Hard first,” he declared
+at last. “That’s just plain honesty. We work for him and this is still a
+few feet his side of the property line.”
+
+“Maybe,” the foreman muttered. “Maybe, a foot or two.”
+
+Gaffney said: “Clark Henderson’s not in the camp. His mine’s not
+operating. He’s down at Colorado Springs. I want your promise to keep
+this strike a secret until Sturdivant gets up here.”
+
+But news of such a strike is hard to keep. Gold that lies open to men’s
+eyes has its peculiar power. Late in the night a miner from the fourth
+level went down by ladder to the fifth to swap a moment’s gossip with
+his friends. The drift was empty, and the man stood unobserved, staring,
+mouth open, at the millions gleaming yellow and flashing back the light
+of the oil lamp hanging to his hat.
+
+By morning the story was whispered everywhere throughout the mine.
+Men at the boarding house across the hollow heard about the rich gold
+strike, and they waited eagerly to go to work.
+
+Among them was Steve Conley. Steve was engineer on the night shift, and,
+though nobody knew it, he was a close friend of young Clark Henderson’s.
+He phoned to Clark at once. Young Henderson was in the camp three hours
+before Sturdivant. He was a tall, broad-shouldered mountaineer with
+steel-blue eyes and a fighter’s square, strong chin.
+
+Steve Conley met him. Steve was short and stocky with swarthy features
+and black hair. He was also born to fight a good fight.
+
+“You’re rich,” Steve told Clark excitedly--“richer than hell’s soup,
+man.”
+
+Clark eyed the engineer coolly. “Thanks for the fairy story,” he
+drawled. “I own a dud mine that dad left me and I got lots of debts.”
+
+“Yeah?” Steve triumphed. “Well you listen....” And he told the story of
+the strike.
+
+Clark’s eyes took on a keen, clear glow. “Gosh,” he said ineffectually,
+“dad died busted with that damned hole that never paid. And to think
+old Sturdivant found the stuff for me. Say, he’ll be wilder than a
+prospector’s burro.”
+
+“He’s not here yet,” Steve said. “We’d better get things going before he
+shows up. Did you get hold of some cash as I told you to do?”
+
+“I did,” Clark answered grimly. “All I could beg, borrow and steal from
+creditors. At that, it’s a scant two thousand.”
+
+“Holy mackerel,” Steve cried, “and you call yourself poor, buddy!”
+
+Clark looked at his watch. “Sturdivant’ll be coming up from Denver,” he
+reflected. “That means he won’t make the camp for at least three hours.
+I’d better tell you how things stand in this here proposition. It about
+looks as though the fortune old Hard blasted out for me would be his
+anyhow in spite of everything.”
+
+“Does it?” Steve wanted to know grimly. “How come that?”
+
+Clark told him.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Henderson mine was called the Summit. Ten years earlier Clark’s
+father had mortgaged it in order to get funds with which to sink the
+mine shaft still deeper. He had believed there was gold there, but
+he had never found it. Sturdivant had been his enemy from the old
+wild days when they had fought each other openly for mine rights.
+The mortgages on the Summit were to run ten years.
+
+“They’ve got a month to go,” Clark finished, “and I learned today that
+Sturdivant just bought them from their original owners. In just a month
+he’ll own the Summit legally.”
+
+“I know. But Jumpin’ Jude,” Steve argued, “one shipment of yellow stuff
+like that we opened down at level five and you can buy the Elkhorn, let
+alone pay mortgages on the old Henderson shaft!”
+
+“The point is,” Clark said, “how to get the shipment?”
+
+The Summit engines, boilers and other machinery had stood idle so long
+that the task of reopening the old Henderson mine was a stupendous one.
+To get it into operation would take days of twenty-four hour driving,
+working three full shifts of men. The knowledge that in one month old
+Hard would foreclose staggered them.
+
+“Anyhow,” Clark said, “if Hard Sturdivant gets that gold, he’ll find it
+the most expensive wealth he ever dug out of Globe Mountain. We start
+our little war today.”
+
+“I’m your army,” Steve declared.
+
+“In half an hour,” Clark said, “the four o’clock shift will go on at
+the Elkhorn. How many of those muckers do you think we could hire to
+walk out this afternoon and open work for me?”
+
+“Steal Sturdivant’s men?” Steve grinned delightedly. “Why say, they
+hate his guts. What’s more, they all saw that gold on the fifth. They
+know you can deliver when you promise double pay. Most of ’em’d be
+glad to see old Hard get walloped.”
+
+“Then you go get ’em,” Clark said. “I’ll meet them at the Summit fast as
+you send ’em up the hill.”
+
+“And, boy, will old Hard roar his powder down?” Steve laughed, and then
+left young Henderson, swinging across the hollow toward the boarding
+house.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Clark Henderson climbed the shoulder of Globe Mountain by the old road
+his father had helped grade so long ago. Up there, the Summit shaft
+house rose bleak and desolate against the sky. Could he win?
+
+The shaft house was unlocked. Clark stood a moment in the door. The
+place was damp and cold. Rust coated the rails on the old tramway
+leading from the shaft out to the waste dump. To his left were the
+steep stairs that led up to the engine room. Would the machinery
+work at all? From the foot of those stairs a door opened at the side
+into the boiler room where stood the boilers, pumps, air compressor
+and where the drills were stored.
+
+Clark went in to look at the boilers. Steam would be the first
+essential. The coal bins stood empty.
+
+He was still pondering the situation when the first of Steve’s recruits
+arrived. They were careless of the consequences in this mad plan which
+they were entering. For them the game lay in sharing the struggle with
+young Henderson, whom they all liked. They had known his father.
+
+“Looks pretty dead here,” Clark greeted them. “Reckon we can snap the
+old hole back to life?”
+
+“Maybe,” one said. “If you’d a-seen that gold, young feller, you’d know
+she was alive all right.”
+
+“First off, we’ll need coal,” Clark observed, “and far as I know, the
+closest supply is down at the Elkhorn. What say?”
+
+“Can we get away with that coal?” The man who spoke was laughing openly.
+“Give me a sack and a drill to use in case that red-faced fireman down
+there needs a wrap.”
+
+Ore sacks were found. Old buckets were discovered. These were mine
+buckets, two feet in diameter and as many deep.
+
+“Work fast,” Clark said. “This is a case where time buys bacon.”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sturdivant reached the Elkhorn mine soon after dark. He found it
+practically deserted. Up where the Summit had stood dark, silent,
+cold, so many years, he saw the gleam of many lights, the red flare
+of boilers under heavy fires, and his ear caught the steady throb of
+pumps, the sharp metallic ring of hammer upon steel where drills were
+being sharpened at the forges.
+
+Sturdivant’s heavy jowls shook with rage. His narrow, mean eyes
+glittered. He drove his horse straight up the mountainside. At the
+Summit’s door he halted.
+
+The great pipe, leading from the mine to a deep ditch outside, belched
+a stream of heavy yellow water. Up in the engine room, Steve Conley and
+a dozen men were overhauling the big double-drum hoist. The cables were
+badly rusted. Afraid to trust them, Steve had dispatched two men across
+Globe Mountain to comb the other mines for extra cable. Opposite the
+door in which Hard Sturdivant stood glaring, men were rigging up the
+cages. Tram cars were being put in shape. The forges glowed, and hammer
+clanged on anvil. Miners who had not sharpened steel for years were
+lustily turned blacksmiths. Clark Henderson met old Hard cheerfully.
+
+“Excuse us, Hard,” he said, “if we don’t stop to serve tea, won’t you?
+Time’s precious just now.”
+
+“You’re an impudent young thief,” Hard roared, and miners near enough
+to hear loitered with covert grins to listen in. “You stole my men. You
+stole my coal. I’ll make you pay for this.”
+
+“I’m willing to pay for the coal,” Clark said. “I expect to pay the
+men.” He took a roll of bills from his pocket. “Coal at the market
+price plus haulage----”
+
+Sturdivant choked and stamped his feet. “Keep your filthy money,” he
+thundered, “I’ll sell you nothing!”
+
+“I think,” Clark murmured, “a debt is cancelled if the creditor refuses
+payment. I have the coal.”
+
+“You’ll wish it was hell’s coal, and you was warmin’ in it before I get
+through with you,” old Hard bellowed.
+
+“You know,” Clark said, “I seem to remember hearing my dad tell how you
+once confiscated coal and tools that belonged to the Hendersons. Thanks
+for the example, Hard.”
+
+Hard Sturdivant turned away, only to whirl and snap, “The boarding
+house’ll be closed tonight.”
+
+“I guess that’ll be just fine,” Clark told him. “I’ll have tents here
+and up by morning and I’ve hired Mrs. Flaven to handle my commissary
+tent. She’ll be out of your cookhouse before daylight.”
+
+Sturdivant went back to his horse, swung to his saddle and, giving the
+animal a vicious cut with his rawhide, galloped away.
+
+The main camp was over the brow of Globe Mountain, more than five miles
+from the mines. He wanted to reach the telegraph office, and he hated
+the distance that hindered him.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two days were required to get the Summit mine cleared for real
+operations. They were days of incessant labor, and the men worked
+with a will that spoke more eloquently than their words, if not of
+their liking for Clark Henderson, certainly of their long dislike for
+old Hard Sturdivant. Those two days ate up money. On the third day,
+Clark found that over fifteen hundred of his nineteen hundred dollars
+was gone. He called the men together.
+
+“I told you at the start that I was hard up,” he said. “It’s taken most
+of my ready cash to get us going. You know the layout underground. If
+we make it, we’re all set. If we don’t,” he paused, “I’ll likely owe
+you wages. I can keep you fed, though, until we have a try. If any of
+you feel that the chances are too great against us, I won’t blame him
+for pulling out; it’s a man’s place to look out for himself.”
+
+The men gave him a cheer. In a way, they were out on a lark and they
+were enjoying it. After all, whatever the niceties of legal justice
+might be in this matter, the men felt that Clark was justified. All
+of them knew the story of how old Hard Sturdivant had fought his
+father, old man Henderson, to the break years earlier. All of them
+knew that Hard would never have let the news of the strike out until
+he owned the Summit. That was good business, maybe, but it wasn’t to
+their liking. They went to work to cut a drift from the bottom of
+the Summit through toward the gold strike.
+
+Meanwhile, Hard Sturdivant was getting his forces moving. Within those
+two days he had gathered from the camp enough men to resume operations
+in the Elkhorn. Most of these were honest miners and Hard set them at
+honest mining.
+
+None of them were asked to work on the fifth level. Three days later,
+however, fifty hard-featured city gunmen reached the camp and were
+conveyed at once to the Elkhorn. Hard quartered them in the boarding
+house. They were to high-grade the fifth level ore and haul it under
+guard to the smelters.
+
+Clark Henderson called a meeting of his men.
+
+“The presence of gangsters means that Sturdivant wants open fighting,
+men,” he said. “Gang warfare has always been Hard’s method of bullying
+his way in these mountains. It was with a gang of cutthroats that he
+finally broke my father. I don’t intend to let him break me that way,
+but if we can avoid it, I don’t want open war. That means hardship and
+bloodshed, and bitter memories. We’ve got some three weeks yet in which
+to win. I’m going to leave the mine to you. I’ll go to Colorado Springs
+and if need be, to Denver. I’ll see the banks and tell them how things
+are up here. If I can raise enough to pay the mortgages before they’re
+due, we’ll settle all this peacefully. It’s the best way; and I believe
+that I can get the money now. I’ve called you because I want your full
+support in everything that’s done. Does this plan suit you all?”
+
+Among the miners were a few old heads who could remember when Clark’s
+father failed because of his unwillingness to take the right into his
+hands and settle it with violence. Did Clark imagine that Hard
+Sturdivant would leave a loophole for a peaceful triumph of his enemy?
+Yet, Clark was right. They knew this, and they wished him well. It was
+agreed that they would drive the tunnels, and that he did well to try
+to arrange a loan with the big bankers. Clark Henderson left the camp
+that night.
+
+He was gone for eighteen days. During that trying interval he visited
+the mining bankers in three cities, and from them he learned how
+thoroughly Hard Sturdivant made war.
+
+The Elkhorn was incorporated, and every banker of note held stock in
+it. Hard’s lawyers had been prompt to notify them that early the next
+month this stock would treble and quadruple in value. The Elkhorn, they
+were made to understand, had struck the richest vein discovered in the
+State for years. Its future only waited the fusion with the adjoining
+Summit property, and this would come when the mortgages in Sturdivant’s
+possession fell due.
+
+Clark Henderson was received courteously, listened to with interest--and
+loans were declined him with regret. He returned to the Summit camp
+desperate, to face a struggle that was marked by a long sequence of
+accident and devilish disaster.
+
+Two wagons hauling coal to the Summit mine unaccountably lost a rear
+wheel, and tons of coal were wasted. The Summit powder house, stocked
+with half a ton of dynamite, was blown up in the night.
+
+Steve Conley, the engineer, reported these and other troubles.
+
+“We’ve got a traitor among us, Clark, or a hireling of Sturdivant’s.
+Twice our pumps have been jammed and wasted a day for us each time. The
+air compressor was tampered with and we had to miss a shift before we
+could get it pumping air into the mine again.” His face was set. His
+eyes burned with repressed anger.
+
+“Well, Steve, I failed completely. How about the tunnel? Will we make
+it?”
+
+Steve did not answer him at once. The silence was more powerful than
+words, however. At last he shook his head.
+
+“It’s hard quartz every foot of the way,” he said. “Working like a pack
+of devils, we can’t cut through that fast enough.”
+
+Clark said, “We’ve got to. In just six days I have to get at least one
+shipment of that gold down to the smelter.”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two days later, in spite of careful guards, the Summit shaft house
+burned. The only available water was that pumped from the mine, and
+there was no adequate equipment to make use of it. The big frame
+building had stood for years; dry, it burned like matchwood, and
+Clark Henderson’s men stood helpless watching it.
+
+Clark drew Steve to one side. His face was white and set.
+
+“Steve,” he asked, “will the men follow me, no matter what I do?”
+
+“Most of them will,” Steve said, “the rest don’t count.”
+
+“Then tell them to gather at the mess tent an hour after midnight,”
+Clark commanded. “We’ll get that shipment of gold out tonight. Have
+teamsters, and wagons ready below the Elkhorn tram.”
+
+Promptly at a quarter after one o’clock a group of armed men made their
+way down the hill from the Summit to the coal chutes of Sturdivant’s
+mine, the Elkhorn, and stopped there, waiting for a signal. A similar
+group, under Steve Conley’s guidance, crouched and waited for the same
+signal below the northern windows to the engine room. Still a third
+body of miners moved well around the hill and, creeping up past the
+mine dump, stopped just outside the ore house doors.
+
+Clark Henderson led the largest body directly toward the Elkhorn’s wide
+eastern shaft house doors. Inside, the tram man talked with half a dozen
+gangsters who lounged against a work bench. To all appearances these men
+were idling, but there was tension in their bearing. Hands hovered near
+their guns. From time to time they glanced expectantly into the night
+outside. Under the bluish-yellow light of the big oil lamps swinging
+from the shaft house beams their faces showed taut, concentrated,
+watchful. There were others who waited with the same strained caution in
+the engine room, the boiler room, and down in the ore house. They were
+expecting the attack.
+
+Clark gave a shrill short whistle. Followed by his miners, he dashed
+upon the shaft house.
+
+Simultaneously guns spoke at every point where his men waited. The night
+was shattered with the flash and roar. Down at the ore house three men
+with double sledges battered the doors while others waited close behind,
+guns ready.
+
+Into the boiler room, through the coal chutes, poured the men from
+the Summit mine. They were received by Hard Sturdivant’s gunmen.
+Steve Conley and his followers hurled themselves through the north
+windows into the engine room. There was a fury of lead to greet them
+from gangsters hidden back of the big hoists.
+
+Clark Henderson and his group were in the shaft house. A rain of bullets
+poured from their six-guns as they charged. Sturdivant’s gangsters
+answered with terrific fire.
+
+And next instant the area around the yawning shaft was dense with
+smoke and full of fighting men. Ahead of him, across the open mine,
+Clark Henderson saw two gunmen. His revolver spoke. One of the two
+plunged forward. His body toppled and went down the shaft.
+
+Bullets tore at Clark’s coat. His hat was riddled. He fired point-blank
+at the man opposite. The heavy lead took the gangster full in the
+stomach. He crumpled, coughing, by the shaft. From the left flank, where
+the tram doors were open, other Sturdivant gunmen poured a volley upon
+the attacking miners. Clark whirled to face their fire. A bullet ripped
+his sleeve and burned into his arm.
+
+Around young Henderson men surged, fighting hand to hand now. A burly
+gangster rushed him. Braced for the shock, Clark hurled his empty gun
+in the man’s face. They met and locked. The gangster tried to lift
+him from his feet. They surged toward the open shaft. Men shouted and
+a mass of heaving striking bodies crashed into them.
+
+Clark gripped the gangster’s throat, drove a knee upward, into the man’s
+stomach. They fell together.
+
+Bullets tore the floor around them. The din was deafening. Smoke
+thickened the damp air. Someone yelled. Clark Henderson struck his
+man a short, straight blow that crashed the gangster’s head against
+the steel tram track. The body under Clark grew limp. He tore free
+and sprang to his feet.
+
+From the windows separating shaft and engine room came Steve Conley’s
+exultant shout. “We’ve got the engines, Clark! I’m pulling up the cages.
+Get ready with your men to go below!”
+
+Clark leaped to the shaft and waved his hat. Twenty of his picked crew
+gathered with him.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Around them there was still mass fighting. In the boiler room and down
+in the ore house the battle raged without pause, but the Summit men
+were everywhere in the majority and Clark Henderson had no misgivings
+as to the outcome. Meanwhile, down on the fifth level, Hard Sturdivant
+waited grimly with a picked group of gangsters. The cages whirled to
+the mine mouth and stopped. Clark and his followers leaped aboard. A
+signal flashed to Steve. The cages plunged abruptly downward.
+
+The speed of that descent into the earth was like the fall of a plummet.
+The lamps on the men’s hats flared upward, the flames wavering,
+sputtering and all but dying. Then suddenly, the cages stopped. The men
+stepped into the drift and halted.
+
+“Lights out,” Clark ordered. There was a faint sound as the miners’
+lamps were snuffed out. Pitch darkness swooped upon them.
+
+“Wait here,” Clark said. Then feeling with his foot for the narrow tram
+track, he followed it back through the drift.
+
+Three quarters of the way along the drift there was a sump. This deep
+pit reached from wall to wall and was crossed by a tram bridge. It was
+designed to catch the water perpetually draining from the tunnel.
+
+Clark Henderson moved ahead until he felt himself upon the bridge.
+There, he stood still to listen. There was no sound. No lights gleamed
+in the drift ahead.
+
+“Listen, Sturdivant,” Clark called, “we’ve got you like rats in a trap.
+Will you surrender or must we blast you out?”
+
+The roar of twenty guns tore the thick silence. The air was filled with
+smoke. Out of the darkness came a rain of lead. Bullets spattered around
+Clark Henderson, tore splinters from the supporting beams to right and
+left, chipped bits of rock from the drift overhead. A single volley set
+the mine alive with heavy echoes. Clark waited till the silence came.
+
+Still no lights showed. Again, no sound was audible. Were the men there
+with Sturdivant waiting? Were they advancing?
+
+In spite of the air pumps the tunnel was stifling hot and thick with
+foul air.
+
+Clark moved a few steps forward, his hands out in the Stygian black.
+Lungs ached. Eyes burned. Ears strained.
+
+Halfway across the bridge he halted. His fingers touched some object.
+Hands seized him. He gripped the unseen enemy. The two men stood,
+locked, motionless, upon a bridge not more than two feet wide. Then,
+swiftly, with simultaneous release of pent-up energy both men strained.
+They bent and swayed together.
+
+Clark Henderson knew that he was fighting for his life, intuition told
+him the man he was struggling with was Hard Sturdivant. One slip, one
+false step, now, and he would plunge into that rock hole beneath, a
+well of heavy yellow water from which no living man could ever climb.
+
+Clark could see nothing. His arms were locked about the body of his
+antagonist. Arms were locked about his waist. The two men strained and
+swayed. Their breathing was the only sound. This side, then that, they
+bent at the waist, feet gripping the narrow bridge beneath.
+
+Clark threw his full weight forward. His right hand felt its steel-like
+way toward the unseen enemy’s throat, tense against his shoulder.
+
+The other man drove a fist into Clark’s stomach. They parted slightly,
+then gripped again. This time, Clark bent low. His arms caught the thick
+limbs of Hard Sturdivant above the knees. He heaved up sharply. The man
+doubled, but his arms were fast around Clark. Together they crashed full
+length on the bridge.
+
+In the swift twist of straining bodies there in the pitch black, each
+man felt for a sure hold. Together they writhed sideways.
+
+Their heads were over the bridge now. With one hand Clark gripped the
+rail. With his knee he pushed against his enemy. But Sturdivant’s
+grip held. Then both men slipped, swung over the bridge side and hung
+there.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Clark was suspending himself by one hand. Hard Sturdivant was hanging
+to him. As Clark reached with the other hand to grip the rail, Hard
+made a heaving effort to pull himself up by Clark’s body. The strain
+was terrible. They swung and thrashed the thick air.
+
+Above them, at either end of the sump, men gathered, listening. But the
+fighters had no breath to shout.
+
+Using Clark’s body, Hard Sturdivant was pulling himself up to safety.
+
+Clark felt beneath the bridge with his feet, searching for a crossbeam
+of the supporting truss. He found it. His foot lodged in the angle made
+by two beams. With this to help sustain his weight he let go of the
+rail with one hand, struck fiercely at Hard’s face, seized the throat
+of the Elkhorn’s owner and tore downward with all the strength he could
+command.
+
+Hard Sturdivant choked and his hands gave. He uttered a shrill gasp;
+then swung out, and down into the yawning black pit below.
+
+Men of both sides heard the yell; they swore with the tension of
+uncertainty.
+
+Clark Henderson drew himself to the bridge. He was gasping for air and
+his arms ached, but he could not stop now. If either side made the
+mistake of flashing a single torch, there would be a hell of gunfire.
+
+“Hard Sturdivant is dead,” Clark choked, still prostrate on the bridge.
+“For God’s sake, don’t you men go on murdering each other.”
+
+There was a moment of awed silence. Clark raised himself and faced the
+gunmen.
+
+“Listen, my men have dynamite,” he added. “One stick thrown into this
+drift will bury you all under tons of rock. Hard’s dead. What have you
+to gain now?”
+
+There was a pause. The silence lay like lead upon them all. The heat was
+burning their fevered skins.
+
+“All right,” a thick voice spoke from the drift head, “we won’t fire.
+Give us light.”
+
+“Light!” Clark ordered, and a score of matches flickered. A score of
+lamps were lit. The groups at either end of the sump blinked like men
+suddenly shocked awake. They stared at Clark, then drew to the sump
+and looked down.
+
+The yellow surface of that mud-thick water was like a hideous fester.
+
+“Well,” one of Hard Sturdivant’s gunmen spoke, “I guess you win, young
+fella. We told old Hard not to tackle you that way, but he’d settled
+other scores like that over a sump. He ’lowed he could again. Here’s to
+you!”
+
+“All right, men,” Clark said slowly, “we’ll get above ground now. We
+need fresh air.”
+
+They moved to the two cages silently. Clark signaled. And as the cages
+started upward he spoke to himself.
+
+“Well, dad--I guess we’ll mine Globe Mountain after all. Too bad we
+can’t be doing it together.”
+
+The cages broke into the open air. Men stared to see who would step
+out of them and who be carried. The story was told swiftly. A silence
+followed, then Steve Conley spoke.
+
+“Well, Clark,” he said, “you done a good job. Let’s get to minin’ gold.”
+
+The miners burst into a cheer.
+
+“We have to,” Clark said grinning; “I got a lot of bills to pay. Let’s
+dig!”
+
+
+[Transcriber’s note: This story appeared in the September 10, 1930
+issue of _Short Stories_ magazine.]
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78180 ***