Foxfire (32 page)

Dart spent no sleepless hours, in his mind there were no panic scurryings. He dismissed Amanda's aberration as a transient symptom but he proposed to act now in the only possible way that might alleviate the rational part of her distress. He would work harder than ever for the success of the mine and he would go to Tyson again in the morning.

The next day was the beginning of a heat wave. Lodestone, hot enough on normal days, awoke to a dry baking heat, and a lurid stillness in the air like the inside of an oven.

Dart got his own breakfast and left a listless and silent Amanda in bed, a prey to racking nausea every time she lifted her head.

“I hate to leave you like this,” he said. “Do you want me to see if Tessie Rubrick'll sit with you a while?”

She shook her head. “It'll pass. It always does.” She spoke coldly, keeping her eyes shut.

Dart hesitated, he kissed her quickly then turned and left for work.

On this morning he went down on shift with the men to the thousand-foot level, the deepest part of the mine. It was as yet almost undeveloped. They had just finished the station, and were about to blast a cross-cut towards the feeble and elusive Plymouth vein. Tiger Burton, the shift boss, went down in the cage with Dart, and as usual answered Dart's questions and listened to Dart's opinions saying, “Yes, sir. Very true, Mr. Dartland,” the paragon of meek acquiescence. To be sure, he never raised his eyes above Dart's shirt but as there was nearly a foot's difference in their height, that was not surprising. Dart had always found the man too negative to provoke any feeling of like or dislike. Burton was simply an efficient little machine, but this morning while they stood jammed into the plunging cage together, Dart was conscious of a faint repulsion. The man had a stink, thought Dart, his nostrils quivering, not ordinary sweat and dirt stink, but an acrid odor—like a den of baby rattlers he had once discovered in the Natanes Mountains on the reservation. Maybe, Dart thought, amused, that was why Cleve had taken such a scunner to the man. The Apache nose was very sensitive to certain odors.

As they stepped out of the cage at the lowest level, Dart waited until the crew had gone on ahead and asked on impulse, “Whatever was the trouble between you and the Apache boys anyway?”

Tiger cocked his head, beneath the shadow of his hard hat his little eyes gleamed and then shifted. “No trouble at all, Mr. Dartland. They just took a notion to quit. You know how they are—slippery as eels—oh, pardon, I forgot.”

“Forgot what?” Dart snapped, annoyed by the soft hissing voice.

Tiger scratched a minute piece of mica from the rock wall beside him with his finger nail. “I shouldn't have mentioned it, sir—I forgot—I better get to the face now, them drillers'll never lift a finger until I make 'em.”

“Wait a minute,” said Dart. “There isn't any secret about my Apache blood, and I'm not in the least ashamed of it. That clear?”

“Yes, sir,” said Tiger—moving away. Something in the obsequious gliding motion provoked Dart's rare anger. “For that matter, I've heard
you
have
Mexican
blood and
do
make a secret of it.” He bent his head so that the light of his carbide lamp shot down full on the meager figure in front of him. The face was averted, but Dart thought he saw a stiffening, an involuntary sideways jerk of the head, and his anger vanished, partly dissipated by the tolerance of a big man for a small one. This cringing gliding little creature was not fair target. “But that's your own business,” he added cheerfully. “Go on to your drillers. I just want to have a look at the timbering we did yesterday.”

He did not see the look that Tiger gave him from under the hooded lids. He could not know that the shift boss's palms were wringing wet, and that in the tortured brain the long-smoldering hatred had burst into a blaze of revenge. “I'll get him for that crack—” The words screamed like whistles through Tiger's head, their clamor so shrill that when he was out of Dart's sight he sank down on a pile of lagging unable to walk on. He had long been awaiting opportunity, but now at last under the impetus of this new fury, a plan sprang forth crystallized. Nor did caution desert him, the devious contrivances which had let him out from the slums of Nogales, a nameless Mexican bastard whose mother had been raped and killed by Geronimo's band. He had slowly forged himself a new personality, as he made himself a new name and nationality. Not again would he let himself be betrayed by the desperate sweetness of blood-lust and outward revenge as he had been in his younger days. This time he would be canny, because this time it would not be a senseless killing, there was a further object to be gained. Ambition. Promotion. And as he perfected details of his plan his chest swelled with a voluptuous pleasure. Smarter than any of them. The little greaser bastard, smarter than any of them with their college degrees and their patronizing contempt. Next week, he thought, when I'll be on night shift, they'll be blasting down here. The hoist.... Take care of the hoist man, Bill Riley—the thermos full of coffee—that was easy. Half an hour would do it, less.

He rose from the pile of lagging, and walked to the rock face where the drillers had finally started the holes for the morning's blast. They'd just be starting the cross-cut next Monday. He looked back toward the shaft station—not more than a dozen feet away. Good.

Dart waited until eleven o'clock, inspecting work in various parts of the mine, then from the 700 level he signaled the hoistman and returned to daylight. He knew from experience that this would be the best time to find Mr. Tyson. The manager, however, had not come to the mine office that morning. A clerk said that he'd heard the old man was sick again.

Dart sighed, hung up his hard hat and washed his hands in the change house, then swung down the path which led into the canyon by the mill and up the other side to the six-room frame bungalow where Tyson lived.

The house sat in a neat desert garden; chollas and bisnagas, and hedgehog cacti all planted in symmetrical formations and outlined with brilliant rock specimens. There was an anemic orange tree and window pots of geraniums. All these were the special charge of Manuel, the Filipino houseboy.

Manuel appeared in answer to Dart's ring, and his greeting was uncordial. “Mr. Tyson not see nobody. He resting. Go 'way pliss.”

“Is he really sick?” demurred Dart. “I don't want to bother him, but I would like to see him a minute.”

“Go 'way pliss.” The houseboy guarded his master with an obstinate tyranny, and Dart would have been defeated by this except that a voice was raised from the bedroom. “Who is it, Manuel?”

Dart pushed past the Filipino and walked to the open door. “It's me, Mr. Tyson. I'm sorry you're sick again. I just wanted a word.”

The old man sat in his wheel chair by a table on which were spread out a quantity of broken sherds, pottery fragments dug from the prehistoric Indian village down the canyon. He fondled a piece of glazed, red on buff, Hohokam painted ware in his thin veined hand. He looked up slowly, and Dart saw the effort he made to pull himself back from this hobby which usurped most of his waning energy.

“Hello, Dartland,” he said in a faraway voice; then in a brisker tone with a shade of embarrassment, “nothing wrong on the hill, I hope?”

“No, sir. Nothing special.” Dart hesitated, checked by respect and the old man's obvious frailty. “But I did hope you might feel up to going underground soon, down in the Shamrock, you remember we talked about it some months ago.”

Tyson nodded, he put the sherd down reluctantly. He turned on Dart the friendly smile that had kindled the loyalty of manv a man. “Of course. You've got some sort of hunch about the old vein, you want to jam through a cross-cut.”

“It's more than a hunch, really, sir. If you could get down there you'd see too. Look, I made a map.” He pulled it from his pocket, pointing with his pencil—slickensides, the direction of the drift, the fault here not there as the old engineers had said, a hidden outcrop aboveground beneath a thicket of cactus.

Tyson listened, but his eyes strayed to his specimens. The exhaustion which plagued him became intensified by all this youth and energy. Eager young men with ideas—yes, that was fine. I used to test them all out unless they were too crackpot, but now it doesn't seem worth-while. We're getting by somehow—why doesn't he leave me alone.

“You better tell Mablett about it,” he said vaguely. “See what he thinks. That's the proper thing to do.”

“But Mr. Tyson—” Dart burst out in dismay, then he lowered his voice. “You
know
Mablett won't listen to me. He doesn't have any knowledge of geology, either, but if he did, he wouldn't see what I asked him to. You know that, sir. Don't you remember we talked about it before? You asked me not to cross Mablett in any way for a while, and I haven't, though I've seen a lot of things that could be bettered. Don't you'remember?”

Tyson frowned, his bluish lips tightened. “Of course I remember! I'm not doddering yet. And that's why we've had some peace at the mine lately. You're learning to co-operate.”

Dart reddened and swallowed. “You've been good to me,” he said. “I don't need to tell you how I appreciated that loan...”

“My dear boy”—the manager raised his hand—“I like to help my young men—plenty helped me. Now I'll get down to look at your precious cross-cut one of these days, but I'm very tired now and——”

“I know, sir. I'm sorry. Never mind the cross-cut, but there is one thing I've
got
to say”—he spoke desperately against the coldness on the transparent face—“it's a matter of mine safety, or I wouldn't bother you...”

“Well...?”

“There's no telephone connected down to the new 1000-foot level. Mablett won't okay the order for more cable.”

Tyson made a brushing-away motion with his outstretched hand. “He's doubtless and very properly cutting costs this month. You don't need the phone immediately, the signals are enough. Now listen, Dart, I backed you up on that timbering job you were worried about, but if you're going to come running to me with every little thing...”

“I don't, sir.” Dart drew himself up and gazed stonily out of the window, “but the generator failed last week, and the signals didn't get through. The men are blasting right near the shaft, it's close timing.”

Tyson checked a sharp rejoinder. Irritation born of guilt jabbed down to the bedrock of fairness which still lay beneath. His hand dropped to his lap. “I'll speak to Mablett,” he said after a moment, and then he smiled the warm smile. “Cheer up, young 'un, the troubles of the world aren't
all
on your shoulders!”

Dart plodded back up the canyon to the mine. He was unused to moods of discouragement or depression, and while he breathed deep of the hot shimmering air, drawing from it the comfort that any contact with nature always gave him, he tried to detach his emotions from the situation and appraise it. Tyson was largely ineffectual, but he was still the boss, and despite his ill health and semi-withdrawal from the mine he still commanded respect. There was nothing to do at present but wait for the inevitable change of one sort or another which life always provided. Once identified with a course which seemed right to him, patience and endurance were as instinctive with Dart as the necessity for determined action when his sense of justice was outraged.

He could accept the defeat of his own plan this morning and be content with victory in the matter of the telephone cable, which, no matter how trivial it appeared to Mr. Tyson who had lost contact with the underground world, or to Mablett whose bullheaded economies and lack of imagination made him take the wrong chances, Dart knew to be of immediate importance. In mine management as in other enterprises, it was the little things that counted, and eternal vigilance was the price of success in an operation so constantly exposed to dangers.

Dart reached the collar at the shaft and waited for the cage in a renewed mood of acceptance. Why then should there be an element of foreboding which no amount of common sense quite dissipated? Somewhere impounded in the deepest recess of his mind there was a fluttering of unease, a quiver of warning. During the rest of that day he inspected every foot of the active mine with doubled concentration, but the compressors and ventilators, the drills, the pumps, the ore trains, the electric power—all the complicated machinery for extracting ore from the reluctant earth were functioning with exemplary smoothness. In the afternoon on the swing shift he even mentioned his disquiet to his friend Tom Rubrick, who laughed at him.

“Gor-blimey, Mr. Dartland, that I should see the day you'd be getting sendings and queasies! Why me Cousin Jacks ain't even 'eard the Tommyknockers of late. Ye work too 'ard, that's wot it is. There ain't nothing wronger with this mine than normal. Ye shouldna fret.”

Dart laughed too. He and the shift boss went off to do a little sampling near the No. 74 stope.

 

All that morning Amanda lay on her bed, wilted by the heat, and the state of her stomach. By noon the nausea had passed and she dragged herself up, washed her face and dressed in a loose, brown cotton smock bought at the General Store. Her figure had not thickened much yet, and she might still have squeezed into one of her other dresses, but the smock was cooler. She combed her hair which clung lankly to her head and powdered her nose, giving an indifferent glance in the mirror. She killed a scorpion and two stinkbugs with the same stony indifference. There was no keeping them out of the house in summertime. One got used to things, she thought, even bugs, even heat. But underneath her indifference there lay purpose. She was going to see Hugh.

She extracted the envelope with the material on the lost mine from her dressing case where it had lain so long undisturbed and walked outside. A hot dry little wind blew in fitful puffs raising dust-devils on the road. The desert which had been so brilliant three months ago had now flattened to a duncolored monochrome. The giant saguaro on the corner had shrunk into sharp folds, patiently enduring until the rains should fatten it again. Amanda choked on the dust and walked as fast as she could to the Company hospital, praying that Hugh was sober and in a reasonably good mood. She found that he was both, but that it was office hours and the dingy, stifling waiting room was full of patients.