"I'll bet there is some scrambled egg in the bottom of the pail," said Steve, with a short laugh.

Once more he took up his journey through the dark tunnels, feeling cautiously with feet and hands before he took a step forward. He had gone along in this way for some time when he halted abruptly, leaning forward in a listening att.i.tude.

"What's that?" he muttered. "I know! I know what it is; it's a drill. I would recognize that 'bang, bang, bang' anywhere. That means I am close to some operations. The next thing is to find where the sound comes from. It must be ahead of me somewhere, for I can just hear it, whereas a few moments ago I could not."

Again he began cautiously working forward. After a while the sounds came to him more clearly. Steve had swerved to the right and entered a new drift, though he was not aware of the fact and whereas he had been proceeding directly east, he was now headed south.

The bang, bang of the compressed air drill was getting louder and louder as the moments pa.s.sed. After a time the boy halted again. The sounds seemed to come from directly beneath him.

"I believe that is on the level below this," he decided. "How am I to find the way down to it? If I go back I shall be lost. I'll call and see if I can attract attention from any of them."

The lad shouted at the top of his voice, but only his own echoes came back to him in hollow tones.

Suddenly a twinkling light appeared far down the level. The lad recognized it at once as being a candle on a miner's hat.

"h.e.l.lo, there!" he called.

"What do you want?" came the answer.

"I am lost."

"Go find yourself, then. Don't bother me."

Steve did not propose to let it go at that. He ran forward to where the miner was about to descend a ladder to the lower level.

"Won't you please help me, sir. I am in a fix."

"Well, what do you want?" demanded the miner in a surly tone, pausing a few rungs down the ladder.

"I am looking for the Spooner contract. Will you please direct me to it?"

"Follow this level around to the left until you come to three drifts.

Take the middle one to the end, and then go down the ladder you will find there."

"Thank you. Can you spare me a candle?"

"No; I can't."

The man grasped the side pieces of the ladder, letting himself down in a rapid slide. Steve Rush found himself once more left in darkness. At least he had his directions now, and he thought he could find his way to the contract for which he was looking.

So the lad pressed on with more confidence than before. After proceeding some distance he found by groping about that he had reached the place indicated. He took the middle drift, as directed, and hurried along this. He had no idea what time it was, but Steve imagined that it must be near noon. It seemed as though a long time must have pa.s.sed since he entered the mine with the day shift, whereas, in truth, not quite two hours had elapsed.

The lad was thinking over his misfortunes, smiling grimly to himself--for Steve Rush was not a boy to whine, no matter how great his adversity--when all at once the ground seemed to drop from under his feet.

On all levels there are "rises," small chutes which extend from one level to another. These are in addition to the regular ore chutes and considerably smaller. They are used for filling cars below, when necessary, as ore is always dumped downward into a lower level, from which it is hoisted to the surface, thus saving the labor of loading. It was one of these rises into which Steve had stepped. To do so he had swerved from the tunnel through which he was pa.s.sing, stepping into an open pocket in the rocks, believing that he was following the wall, on which he had kept one hand constantly.

The lad uttered no cry, but he threw out both arms with quick instinct, hoping thereby to catch and hold himself. The force was too great, however, and Steve Rush shot down through the narrow opening, bound for the lower level. He did not know this; he did not know where he was going to land, but he fully expected that this last disaster would be the end of him and he shut his teeth tightly together, bracing himself to meet the shock that he knew must come within the next few seconds.

CHAPTER V

THE "MISSED HOLE"

On the seventeenth sub-level of the Cousin Jack Mine the Spooner contract gang was working at high pressure. Two diamond drills were banging away like a battery of Gatling guns; men were rushing here and there, some were pushing small cars of red ore out through the drift to the level, where the electric trams would pick up the cars and rush them to the ore chutes. The pick men were breaking off the loosened pieces of ore dislodged by the last blast, while others were shoveling the ore into cars as if their very existence depended upon keeping up the pace.

Spooner himself, clad in a suit of oilskins, was shouting at his men, nagging, urging, threatening and directing in a perfect volley of explosive words.

A car had just been pushed out from the end of the drift where the drillers were working. It had reached a point directly underneath the rise and there it stuck, held fast by a piece of rock that had dropped to the track.

Spooner leaped forward with an angry roar.

"Out with it! I'll fire you both, you lazy, good for nothings!" he bellowed. "You ain't fit even to be swampers behind a pair of lazy mules. Push, I tell you! Push! Something will be doing here in a jiffy if you don't get that car out of the way!"

His words were prophetic in a measure, for something did happen a few seconds later, though Spooner was not the author of it. Rather was he the victim.

With a crash the trap door at the bottom of the rise burst open with a sound like a dynamite explosion in a new drift. A dark object was hurled out into the level, landing squirming on the soft ore in the car.

"What--what----"

Spooner did not finish what he was about to say. The dark object bounded from the ore car, landing with great force against the angry contractor.

Spooner toppled over backwards, the breath pretty well knocked out of him, collapsing in the gutter at the side of the track.

Steve Rush had found the Spooner contract at last. The lad was not much the worse for his exciting slide, though he had been somewhat bruised when he burst through the wooden trap door at the lower end of the rise.

Steve was up in a twinkling. He looked about him and in a half laughing voice demanded:

"Where am I?"

"I reckon you're on seventeen," answered one of the miners.

"Where's the boss?"

"He's down there under you somewhere. I guess you knocked the daylight out of him. I hope you did. If it wasn't for my wife and family I'd a done it long time ago."

"Yes; I'd give a year's wages for the privilege of turning the diamond drill on him," added the head driller.

"Did I hit a man?" asked Steve anxiously.

"No; you hit an apology for a man," was the quick reply.

By this time young Rush was bending over, looking down into the shadows that hung over the gutter along the side of the track. He made out the figure of a man lying there.

"Help me get him up, men," he cried. "Don't you see that he is hurt?"

"Serve him right if he is," growled the trammer, the workman who pushed the cars of ore out into the main level.