Chapter X: The Deserted Mine

As Jerry and Tom left the house the sun came through the clouds for the first time that day and shone wanly while they struck across the road and started up a footpath that led windingly across a hillside field toward the Ridge, a mile away. Not having the comfort of a dog, Jerry cut a stick which, subsequently, he carried over his shoulder most of the time. He confided to Tom that he wished he could take his shoes and stockings off and go barefooted, but he received no encouragement. “Seems like,” he said, “a feller’s feet just sort of hanker to get loose in the spring!”

“Those feet of yours seem to be up to all sorts of stunts to-day,” scoffed Tom. “Awhile back they were itchy, and now they want to get out of your shoes! Did you go barefoot at home, Jerry?”

“When I was a little feller I did,” answered the other, half closing his eyes in retrospection and smiling. “Come warm weather, I’d shed my shoes powerful quick, Tom. It’s a right nice feeling to get your feet into the grass in spring.”

“Maybe, son, but it isn’t a nice feeling to bust a toe against a rock! And I know, for I’ve done it in bathing.”

Jerry chuckled. “Golly, I seen――I’ve saw――seen the time when I had as many as four toes tied up on one foot! After awhile, though, you get so you don’t mind stone bruises. Looks like if we cut across here we’d save us some walking, don’t it?”

Tom look doubtfully at the woods toward which Jerry pointed. The trees, although still leafless, presented to him a fairly impenetrable appearance, and there was a good deal of underbrush between them. But something of Jerry’s pagan longing to be in the forest silenced his objections, and they left the path, jumped a small brook, and broke their way through a bed of briars. Seen in mass, the woods looked already green in their upper branches, while on the ground little tender leaved vines were pushing their way from under the carpet of brown leaves. Jerry stopped and laid a caressing hand on the bole of a big maple and looked upward as though seeking the face of an old friend. Although he said nothing, Tom understood and, smiling, watched the other in affectionate silence. After a moment Jerry tapped the old maple a couple of times with his stick, not hard enough to break the bark but in much the same way as one might pat a friend on the shoulder or a faithful dog on the head. Then he went on, a happy light in his blue eyes.

“Golly, it’s great!” he said half to himself.

Tom, wrestling one trousers’ leg from the clinging embrace of a thorny creeper, grunted. “Isn’t it? I’m crazy about Nature, Jerry.”

Jerry turned and grinned back at him. “You like it about the way the negro liked work,” he said.

Scenting one of Jerry’s stories, Tom asked: “How was that?”

“Well, a white man engaged the town loafer to dig a tater patch for him and after the negro had been at work awhile the Colonel went out to see how he was getting on. ‘Well, Mose,’ he said, ‘do you like your work?’ The negro scratched his wool a minute, and then he said: ‘Colonel, I respecks this yere wuk. Yes, sah, I sholy does respecks hit! But, Colonel, I’s got to remin’ you-all o’ one thing, sah. The’s a pow’ful heap o’ diff’nce twixt respeck an’ likin’!’”

Jerry led the way, showing a remarkable faculty for finding the points of least resistance in the underbrush, and Tom plodded behind. Although the sunlight came and went and was never more than the palest of gold, the afternoon held a deal of warmth there in the forest, and Tom’s brow was soon moist. The way led slantingly uphill and after a quarter of an hour of walking Tom called a halt and sat down on a lichened rock. “Guess I’m no woodsman, Jerry,” he sighed. “This sort of thing doesn’t seem to feaze you much, but it certainly gets me!”

“I told you you were getting fat and lazy,” chuckled Jerry. “There ain’t noth――anything like tramping up a hogback to take the kinks out, Tom.”

“To put them in, you mean,” replied the other, feeling of the muscles of one leg. “I guess, Jerry, I ate too much dinner to be in good shape for mountaineering.”

“Mountaineering!” jeered Jerry. “Golly, this ain’t a mountain. I’d sure like to have you back home, Tom. I’d show you some tramping that is tramping!”

But Tom shook his head gently yet firmly. “I hate to contradict you, Jerry, but you wouldn’t do anything of the kind. After this, the instant you set foot off the campus I quit you! Say, what’s that over there?”

Jerry followed Tom’s pointing finger and looked puzzled for a moment. Then: “Looks to me like it was a cave or something. Let’s go see.”

“You go,” said Tom. “I’ll believe anything you tell me.”

“That’s what it is,” called Jerry a moment later. “Come see.”

Tom arose protestingly and made his way through the woods to where, some sixty feet away, Jerry was peering interestedly into the mouth of an opening in the hillside.

“Ever hear tell of a mine around here?” Jerry inquired as Tom joined him. Tom shook his head. “Well, I reckon that’s what this is, or was. Look there, Tom. See that rail? Bet you there’s another one over here.” He kicked at the deposit of earth and leaves just outside the opening and was rewarded. “It’s a mine tunnel,” he went on somewhat excitedly. “Look here, Tom; see where they dumped the earth? See how the ground spreads here and how steep it is yonder? Wonder how far the tunnel goes. Wonder how they got the ore away. Must have been a road here once, but I don’t see any. Hold on, though! Down there at the foot of the dump―――― Yes, sir, there was a road there once! See where all that second-growth timber’s growed up? It went right down thataway.” Jerry pointed and Tom followed with his gaze, doubtfully.

“I dare say,” he agreed. “Funny no one knows about it, isn’t it?”

“I reckon it’s been a long while since it was worked,” said Jerry, “if ever it was. Maybe it didn’t amount to noth――anything after they’d dug the tunnel. Want to go in and see?”

“Sure! What do you suppose they were after, Jerry? Gold?”

“Gold? No, iron, I reckon. Wait a minute.” Jerry began to scratch about with his stick under the leaves and black humus at the edge of the bank. Presently he stooped and picked up a small piece of stone and nodded his satisfaction. “Iron,” he said, handing his find to Tom.

The lump was slaty-brown, even reddish-brown in spots, and looked to be a portion of a much larger nodule. It was very heavy for its size. “Clay iron, I reckon,” said Jerry. “I seen some of it before. Only it don’t seem like there’d be clay around here; it’s too high.” He dropped the stone in a pocket and went back to the mouth of the opening. Bushes had grown about it and a young maple had planted itself directly in the center as though to proclaim that Nature had again taken possession of its own. Perhaps had the boys heeded that warning against trespass it would have been better. But they didn’t. Jerry pushed aside the greening branches and made his way into the opening. Inside, whither Tom followed, the ancient shoring was still in place, and a dozen feet from the entrance the rusted, flaked rails emerged from the litter of years and ran straight ahead at a gentle descent into the darkness. Jerry stopped and began to rummage his pockets.

“Reckon I ain’t got a match,” he muttered. “You got any?”

Tom searched and found a couple, rather to his surprise. “But two matches won’t last very long, Jerry,” he objected.

“That’s so. Reckon we’d better have a torch.” Jerry made his way outside again and, after a minute, returned with a long splinter of pine which, once afire, blazed merrily. “Reckon that’ll do us,” Jerry said, and went on again. The earth was fairly firm underfoot, between the two rails, and the shoring, in spite of evidently having been there many years, appeared sound. Jerry held the torch beside one of the posts that supported the roof girders. “Oak,” he said. “Reckon they’re good for another fifty years, Tom. Timbers are pine, though.” A little further he stooped and picked up a pickhead, rusted and blunt at both points. “Hand-forged,” he said, and pointed out the hammer marks to Tom. “Reckon the feller that made that’s been dead a right smart while.”

“Maybe they worked this during the Civil War,” said Tom, “to get iron for guns and shot. Think that’s as much as fifty years old, Jerry?”

“Reckon it is. Reckon you hit the truth, Tom. Don’t know whether the Rebs or the Yanks held the country around here during the war, but it’s likely enough both of ’em needed iron. And look at those rails. You don’t see any rails like those nowadays. Want to keep on?”

“Yes, if that torch will hold out. Why didn’t you bring another?”

“Didn’t think to. Thought this tunnel would be only twenty or thirty feet deep. How far do you reckon we’ve come?”

“All of a hundred, I guess,” Tom said. They looked back, but only darkness rewarded them until Jerry, raising his eyes, caught a faint glimmer of light. “There’s the opening,” he said. “We been going downhill more’n I thought we had. We’ll go a little further. This splinter’ll last a good while yet.”

Although their eyes searched the tunnel as they proceeded, no more relics rewarded them. A roughly-rounded lump of the ore, larger than their two heads, dropped probably from an ore car, lay against one wall of the tunnel and Jerry stopped to examine it, turning it over not without difficulty. “There’s clay on it yet,” he asserted. “Must be a what-you-call-it――stratum?――of clay under the Ridge, Tom, and these fellers, whoever they were, found it down below somewhere and then driv――drove this tunnel in here to get it. Reckon maybe we’d better go back now and finish some day when we’ve got a light. We might bring a couple of lanterns with us, Tom.”

“Hold your torch up a minute,” said the other. And, when Jerry had complied with his request: “Isn’t that the end of it there?” he asked.

“Looks like it was,” Jerry assented. “Let’s see.”

Some forty feet further along the tunnel ended in an enlarged space about four paces square. Jerry, in the lead, shouted a caution as he came to a sudden stop. “Look out, Tom, here’s a shaft!” he cried. “Better not get too nigh it!”

Tom paused at Jerry’s side, ten feet away from a square black gulf in the tunnel floor. The remains of a windlass stood above it, though the drum was missing, and over the edge two timbers projected, doubtless the end of a ladder. The rails stopped some six feet from the mouth of the shaft.

“Reckon,” mused Jerry, after a moment, “they missed their calculations, Tom, when they ran this tunnel in. Maybe the clay stratum dipped or something. So they set to and dug this hole. Wonder how deep it is.”

“So do I,” said Tom. “Let’s have a look. It’s safe enough, I guess.”

“Reckon so,” said Jerry. “It’s timbered, anyway.” He held his torch higher. “Looks all right, Tom, but I reckon we’d better not get too close. There ain’t any telling.”

Tom experimentally moved forward a yard. The earth was sound and solid underfoot, and he took another step. “It’s all right,” he said. “Coming?” Jerry shook his head. “Reckon I’ll stay here, Tom,” he answered. “If I was you I’d be mighty careful.” Tom laughed as he went on.

“It’s as hard as rock,” he said. “Wait! Hand me your torch. I want to see how deep it is.” Jerry gave it to him and Tom went forward again holding the torch above his head. Had he held it lower he might have seen the small nodule of ore that lay on the ground there, close to the edge of the yawning chasm. But he didn’t, and a yard from the opening he set one foot on it. He stumbled, cried aloud involuntarily and plunged forward. The torch shot from his hand and, in a trail of sparks, followed Tom from the horror-stricken gaze of Jerry.