"Because he is a goose," Frieda returned so sententiously that every one else laughed. So plainly was she offended at her own failure to charm their strange guest a night or so before.

It was time for Ralph to say good-by. Arrangements at the pit shaft had been made so that the first elevator could be lowered into it. He then waved his hand in farewell to his friends, as he and the new foreman of the mine and the odd-looking figure of Henry Russell climbed on to the elevator.

"I shall go away before they come up again, so that foolish fellow won't even have to look at me," Frieda remarked scornfully, as without any hitch or delay the car slowly disappeared into the bowels of the earth.

CHAPTER XIV

THE EXPLOSION

THE new crowd of miners were anxiously waiting about the mouth of the pit shaft, which led down into the deepest excavation that had yet been dug in the neighborhood of the Rainbow Creek.

There were other openings, but because this was the largest, Ralph Merrit had desired that his workmen begin their labor here. For by extending and deepening the pa.s.sages in the lower part of this shaft he hoped to make important discoveries of new veins of ore. And once convinced that a quant.i.ty of new gold was actually to be found under this ground the young engineer had no idea of giving up before he had devised some intelligent and not too expensive method of bringing more wealth to the surface of the earth.

Not many feet from the company of men Jack Ralston and Frank Kent were standing together talking of some detail in connection with the work, while Jim Colter was hanging over the pit opening in company with the men who had charge of the lowering and raising of the mine elevator.

Evidently Ralph Merrit and his two companions had made a safe landing below, for shortly after their disappearance there was a signal, and slowly the lift traveled up into the daylight again, now ready to take on another lot of pa.s.sengers.

"Steady, no crowding," Jim Colter called out as the next relay stepped hastily forward. "Merrit will want to start things going in the tunnel before you descend."

One man had already gotten aboard, while another had one foot extended toward the platform, when suddenly from underneath them there came a tearing, splitting noise and then a m.u.f.fled roar like the instantaneous explosion of a thousand guns.

The pa.s.sengers in the elevator fell on their knees and all around the opening of the pit there was powder and blackness and a fall of stones like a swift rain of meteors.

By accident Ruth Colter's back happened to be turned away from the scene at the mine, so that the first sound she remembered hearing was her husband's hoa.r.s.e shout of horror and then as she turned the sight of his great form lying prostrate on the ground with Jack and Frank trying to drag him away from danger.

But when Ruth would have rushed toward him, Olive and Frieda held her fast, and the next instant a wave of weakness and darkness so overwhelmed her that she had no strength to move.

When she opened her eyes she could see Jean's face, white as a sheet, dancing before her and hear her saying:

"Jim isn't hurt, dear; only stunned by his fall. See, he is on his feet again giving orders. And Jack and Frank must be all right, they were not so near. But what could have happened, what caused the explosion? It's the men down inside the mine who must be horribly hurt. Ralph----"

But Jean shook with such nervous terror that Frieda's arm encircled her, and the next moment the four women moved nearer the place of the disaster.

They were just in time, for at the moment of their approach, although Jim Colter's face was so black that you could hardly distinguish him, with his forehead bleeding from an ugly wound and his clothes torn and burnt, he was giving orders like the general of an army and like trained soldiers the miners were obeying him.

"I'll take four of you men who will volunteer to go down inside the mine with me. I don't know what has happened, but we are pretty apt to find things serious. It sounded like a dynamite explosion and there may be another. Fortunately for us the elevator is above ground and we can lower it. Some of you see that stretchers are brought here. Jack, keep your head and get hold of a doctor at once. I hope we may need him," the man added grimly, as he swung his great length aboard the small car, his companions crowding close against him.

Unmindful of the awed silence that had followed the noise of the explosion, unmindful of the two score of rough strange men, Ruth breaking away from the girls now ran forward crying:

"Jim, you can't go down into the mine first. I can't let you. There is the baby and me, you must think of us and of the girls. You may be horribly hurt."

She was near enough now so that she could look straight into her husband's blue eyes and something in Jim's expression calmed her instantly. Then for the time he too seemed conscious of the presence of no one else.

"Don't be frightened, Ruth, I shall be all right, dear, and back again with you in ten minutes perhaps. But in any case, girl, don't you see I have got to go down before the others? This is our mine and two of the men down there are almost boys."

Some quiet order Jim then gave and slowly for the second time the lift sank down toward the dark abyss under the earth. For Ruth had made no other sound or protest, only keeping tight hold on Frieda's and Jean's hands. Olive had gone with Jack and Frank Kent in the direction of the Rainbow Lodge.

To the watchers at the pit opening after the elevator had landed the second time there was a moment when they believed that they could hear voices below. Then the waiting seemed interminable. In point of fact only a few moments more had pa.s.sed before the signal indicated that the car must be drawn up again.

And this time it was Jean Bruce who covered her eyes with her hands.

There was a grinding of the cables and then an unmistakable groan, so it was not only the faces of the women that blanched whiter. Many of these miners were middle-aged men who had been in mining disasters where many hundreds of lives were at stake. Now, since no further disturbance had followed the first brief explosion, they realized that only the three men who had first gone down into the pit had been injured. Yet it was nerve-racking not to be able to foretell whether these three men would be brought up alive or dead.

Jim Colter and one of his helpers were standing upright in the car and Jim held in his arms a limp, crumpled figure, unconscious, his blue overalls charred and blackened, his absurd old hat quite gone. Indeed, the grave and learned professor of ancient languages looked like a broken slip of a boy in the big man's keeping.

There on the floor of the car another figure was resting. The face was upturned to the light and though the eyes were closed the expression of the mouth showed that the man had not fainted but was suffering great pain.

Frieda touched Jean Bruce on the arm.

"It is not Ralph, but the new foreman who seems to be very badly hurt,"

she whispered. "Look, the other men are carrying him off. I can't tell about Ralph's friend, Mr. Russell. But where is Ralph? Why hasn't he come up with the others?"

And this last question of Frieda's was being echoed in the minds of the waiting woman and girl.

Why had Jim brought up two of the wounded men and left the third, their oldest friend, still in the depth of Rainbow Mine? It was impossible not to believe that Jim had done this because these men were not too badly injured to be helped.

For he had now placed his burden on the ground and was examining the young man with the skill and care of a surgeon, while some one else bathed the face. A stretcher had been secured for the foreman who was now being taken to his own quarters to await the coming of a surgeon.

"Jim," Ruth Colter put her hand on her husband's shoulder and her face was almost as white and strained as it had been during her last speech with him, "the elevator is going down again and you are not going with it. Tell us, please, what has happened to Ralph?"

Without waiting to hear her guardian's answer Frieda suddenly burst into tears. Of course she had been dreadfully unnerved by the recent accident and now this uncertainty about their friend, besides the sight of their new acquaintance stretched out there at her feet as though he were dead when the last time she had seen him he had been eating his dinner, was more than she could bear.

"Ralph? Great Scott, I am a brute, Ruth, Jean, Frieda!" Jim Colter exclaimed. "Why didn't I tell you at once? Ralph isn't badly hurt at all; he is bruised and burnt and shaken up, but nothing more, so far as I could tell. So of course he insisted that we bring up the two other fellows first. It's a plain miracle that there's anything left of the three of them. So far as I could understand somebody had fixed a bomb down at the end of the pit shaft, but the thing was clumsily made and only half went off. Ralph said they were blown about a good deal and the atmosphere was pretty thick, but unless the new foreman has been injured internally there was no great harm done. I think this young man has nothing more serious the matter with him than a broken leg. And I expect we shall be able to mend that for him at Rainbow Lodge."

At these words Henry Russell opened his eyes, but whether because of Jim's suggestion or the pain he was enduring, or whether because the sight of the girls, he groaned aloud and then closed his lips again.

"I don't think he wants to be taken to the Lodge," Frieda suggested mournfully. "You see he wants us to think he has gone away."

Then possibly because Ruth's and Jim's nerves had both been strained almost past endurance for the past half hour they laughed aloud at Frieda's speech.

Jean had slipped away and it was her white and yet happy face that Ralph Merrit saw first as he came back into the world of daylight again.

There, though he was staggering and nearly blind and covered with blood and grime from the shock he had just received, he found Jean's hands before any others and held them close for a moment while she murmured:

"I am so glad, so glad; it is because you have some big work to do in the world that you have been saved, I am sure, Ralph."

A moment later Ralph was quietly accepting the congratulations of his workmen, while he tried to explain to them just how the explosion had taken place. That the bomb had been placed down the shaft by one of the former miners there could be no shadow of doubt.

CHAPTER XV

AN UNFORTUNATE DISCUSSION