CHAPTER XXII

HERCULES AND HIS FIREBRAND

TEN days after Shanty Madge visited Joshua Cole in the hospital he left that highly efficient institution and wended his slow way to Camp One. It was in the morning. He at once inquired for Mr. Demarest, and was told that he was at the Mundys’ Camp. Joshua was obliged to wait until afternoon, when a freighter would be traveling down the line, before continuing his journey to the scene of the slide, for he dared not attempt such a walk in his weakened condition.

He saw Bluenose and the other members of his crew and asked if they would go to the camp of Shanty Madge and work under his instructions, provided Demarest, Spruce and Tillou gave consent. He wanted men whom he knew and could in a measure place confidence in; and, though they laughed at him, all three promised to go if called upon.

At one o’clock in the afternoon the freighter set off, with Joshua perched on the high seat beside him, and shortly after two the passenger alighted and worked his slow way up to the tunnel in search of Demarest or Spruce.

He found both contractors at the tunnel’s mouth, talking with Shanty Madge and the engineers. The forest all about the grade had been laid low by axmen, and the great logs snaked into the tunnel in a vain effort to stem the tide of rotten stone and slush. Thousands upon thousands of dollars had been expended with no result, and in construction centers Shanty Madge’s tunnel had become famous for out-and-out obstinacy throughout the length and breadth of the land.

Madge saw him coming and ran to meet him, her brown hand outstretched. The engineers and the main contractors looked on with wide eyes, for Joshua, since he had been shot, had gained a certain prominence, and the men doubtless wondered what could be the connection between the girl and this construction stiff.

“Oh, but I’m glad to see you out again!” Madge was saying, and she permitted him to hold her hand rather longer than was necessary. But, then, Joshua had been wounded, it will be remembered. “There are your enemies, and they’re eyeing us rather oddly,” she whispered. “Buck right up to ’em, old kid! I think I’ll call you that now and then,” she laughed. “You and I are only kids, after all. And I, for one, have become tired of playing grown up. Go right at Demarest with your proposition. I’ll back you up. I’m still manager of this camp.”

Joshua released her hand reluctantly and turned toward the watching group. At Shanty Madge’s side he walked toward them, and Demarest gave him a brief nod as the pair drew near.

Philip Demarest was a bluff, rough-and-ready old contractor, worth millions, but very human. He had come up from the grade--first a common laborer, then a gypo man, and finally the head of one of the biggest contracting firms in the United States. He was kindly, erratic, outspoken, and a terror when roused to anger. Now his blue eyes looked at Joshua in wonderment, and the blue veins in his ruddy cheeks and about his pudgy nose stood out prominently, as was their way when the man’s interest or curiosity was aroused. He plucked at his stubby, well-trimmed white beard while he waited for Joshua to have his say, for by every token Joshua had a say.

“Mr. Demarest,” said Joshua, “I’d like to talk with you about stopping the slide in this tunnel. I understand you have offered five thousand dollars to the man who can stop it. I’d like to make a try for the money.”

“Humph! Would, eh? And who are you?”

“My name is Cole, and I’m a hammerman at your Camp One.”

“That _so_! Heavens to Betsy!” (The contractor’s favorite expletive.) “Ain’t you the bird that got winged on the grade here about a month ago?”

“Yes, somebody shot me.”

“The hell they did! What for?”

“I’ve never been able to find out.”

“Oh! Just like that, eh? Well, young fella, what d’ye savvy about stoppin’ slides in tunnels?”

“I have an idea which I think will work out.”

“The hell ye do! How long you been railroadin’?”

“Not a year, altogether.”

“Humph! Well, what’ll it cost us to stop the slide, followin’ your grand idea?”

“Not much. Not more than you are spending in three days as matters stand now.”

“Th’ hell! Cheap at half the price. Well, Mr. Cole, I guess we can’t use you on this job. I got two o’ the best known and highest-paid rascally engineers in the country here, and both of ’em are stuck. But say--le’s hear your plan.”

Joshua smiled. “Write me a check for five thousand dollars and I’ll give it to you in five minutes,” he said.

“Just like that, eh? And suppose it don’t work?”

“Well, then--then I’ll give you your five thousand back.”

The engineers, Spruce and Demarest, saw fit to indulge in hearty laughter at this point; and then Shanty Madge stepped forward, a deep resentment in her reddish-brown eyes.

“Mr. Demarest, I’m ashamed of you,” she said. “I’ve always considered you open-minded, ready to listen to anybody, and not too big to take off your hat to a man who can show you something you didn’t know.”

The young engineers looked uncomfortable, for there was not one among them who did not long for the favor of this bronze girl of the mountains. Demarest himself looked at her admiringly, then laid a fatherly hand on her shoulder.

“Kinda peeved, ain’t you, Madge?” he asked. “Too much slide here lately, maybe. But you’re right. I do consider myself an open-minded man, and I do consider that I’m willin’ to learn from others. Maybe I was showin’ off a little? What d’ye think about it?”

“I guess that’s right.”

“An’ I guess you’re all wrong, young lady. Heavens to Betsy!--this fella here is gonta get his chance to lay his plan before us, but if he hadn’t stood a little kiddin’ I’d ’a’ come to the conclusion that he hadn’t it in um to evolve a plan that was worth our time. Cole--is that your name?--le’s hear what you have to say. If it sounds good to the engineers and me, we’ll try it out. And if it works you’ll get the five thousand without the blink of an eyelid. That’s the promise of Philip Demarest, for the firm of Demarest, Spruce and Tillou. And here’s witnesses all about. Want any of it?”

“It sounds good to me,” said Joshua. “May I use that table?”

“Hop to it.”

Joshua went slowly toward a collapsible table used by the engineers and seated himself in a camp chair before it. He produced paper and a pencil.

“If you’ll gather around,” he invited, “I’ll lay the whole works before you in two minutes.”

The men and Madge drew close about him and watched while he drew a rough sketch, which is here reproduced:

[Illustration]

He leaned back and pointed with the pencil.

“Consider that you are above the hill in an aeroplane, looking down,” he began, “and that you have the gift of seeing through earth and stone. ‘EE’ represents the hill. ‘A’ is the tunnel. ‘B’ is the point to where the tunnel had progressed when the slide occurred, and also the gap through which the muck is sliding. ‘D’ represents the slide. ‘C’ is the other end of the tunnel. You could abandon the ‘A’ end and complete the tunnel by working the ‘C’ end only, of course, but you are not able to work enough men on one end to complete the job on time and as per contract. You must have two gangs working toward each other. But a slide occurs at ‘B’ which you cannot stop. It strikes me that the rock roof is thinner at ‘B’ than you found it while working toward ‘B,’ or else the slide would have occurred before it did. This being the case, I assume that the rock stratum is heavier on both sides of ‘B,’ all around it, in fact, than it is at ‘B.’ So all that we have to do is to work our way around ‘B’ and approach it from the other end.

“And to do this in the least possible time I suggest a coyote hole--‘F,’ ‘G,’ ‘H’ and ‘I’--a very small tunnel through what in all probability is solid stone, the workmen timbering up ahead of them and shooting very light. Especial care must be taken when they make the turn from ‘H’ to ‘I,’ and all along ‘I’ until the slide is reached. Then when they reach the slide let them timber soundly, and continue timbering through the slide until they reach the other end of it. And when all is timbered, you can go right ahead with your big tunnel with no fear of another slide. Is that all clear?”

For fully a quarter of a minute nobody spoke. All stood studying the diagram. Then came the heavy voice of the first expert engineer who had come from the East.

“Utter rot!” he opined. “Tell me, will you, why we will be able to work through the slide and timber up ahead of us any easier from your small tunnel, ‘I,’ than from where we are now? Your idea is a howling farce.”

“I’m sorry you think so,” said Joshua, very red in the face. “But my plan hinges on the feature that the slide is traveling in a slanting direction toward ‘B.’ And the coyote hole, ‘I,’ runs into the slide from the other direction. You have no roof above you now to hold back the slide. But ‘I’ has been run through solid stone, and has a solid roof above it. And when you timber from ‘I’ into the slide, you haven’t the pressure against you that you have at the other end of the main tunnel. _You’ve worked behind the pressure, can’t you see?_”

Another moment or two of silence, then from Philip Demarest: “Heavens to Betsy, boys! He’s right! It’s simple as the nose on your face, and a ten-year-old kid oughta figgered it out. Do you see it, boys? Do you see it? This bird gets behind the pressure of the slide instead of buckin’ it. God, but we’ve been a pack of fools!”

“Oh, Mr. Demarest!” cried Madge. “Do you mean it? Do you actually mean it?”

“I mean we’re gonta try it as quick as we can get to work!” he yelled excitedly. “It may not work at all, but it’s the only sensible thing that’s been advanced since the timbers and baled hay failed to hold her. And if she does work--this bird’s not only made his five thousand bucks, but he’s got a job that he won’t be ashamed to tell his folks about.”

Ten minutes after Demarest’s violent decision to give Joshua’s plan a trial a gang was at work on the preliminaries of the coyote hole. Joshua was disappointed in not being permitted to boss the job himself, and had no chance to bring Bluenose and his other fellow-workers into the limelight. But he was not yet well enough to have stood the strain of a day in the coyote hole, and there would be no room in there, anyway, for a man who was merely boss. He remained at the camp, the guest of Shanty Madge and her mother, and every day he crawled to the tunnel and spent his time there until sheer weariness forced him down.

A night gang and a day gang worked intermittently, and the coyote hole was growing fast. All efforts to remove the hilltop through the mouth of the main tunnel had ceased, and men awaited with eagerness the outcome of the new experiment.

In less than two weeks the night gang turned the last corner and were “coyoteing” toward the slide. Every care was taken now; the timbering was careful and heavy, the shots extremely light. So far there had been no suggestion of a cave-in in the roof, but the real test of Joshua’s theory would come when they reached the slide and attempted to timber through it, and remove the muck through the coyote hole.

The engineers, Demarest, Tillou, and Joshua spent much of their time at the mouth of the coyote hole now, waiting for word from within. And at last, about ten o’clock one morning, one of the powdermen came out and reported:

“We’ve struck de slide, bossman.”

“Yes, yes, yes!” cried Demarest. “And is she holdin’, ol’-timer?”

The dyno raked a stream of perspiration from his forehead with his forefinger. “She’s holdin’ so far,” he answered, and dived back into his hole on hands and knees.

And hold it did until, five days later, the men had worked their way entirely through the slide, which the great timbers now served to keep in place. Then came a moment when the anxious men in the main tunnel heard them at work beyond the partition of slush that separated them. And an hour after this a timber came poking through, then another, and another, and in fifteen minutes the coyote hole was joined to the main tunnel, with solid roofing overhead.

“Now,” said Joshua Cole to Demarest, “begin working to right and left and widen your coyote hole until it is of the same dimension as the tunnel, and go ahead as if nothing had occurred. I guess I win, Mr. Demarest.”

There was a choke in his voice, and there were tears on the bronze cheeks of Shanty Madge. Demarest’s voice, too, was husky as he said:

“Yes, you win, Cole. You win five thousand at one rattle outa the box, and anything you want in the way of a job with Demarest, Spruce and Tillou.”

But Joshua shook his head. “Thanks,” he said in a low tone. “You’re mighty kind and appreciative, but I’ll take only the five thousand. I have no desire to become a railroad builder--I have other plans.”

“But, man, you’re made!” cried Demarest. “You’ll be known all over the country in no time as Cole, the man who stopped the famous Mundy slide, when two of the biggest engineers in the U. S. failed. Don’t throw away such a chance as that! Take your five thousand and study engineering--your job’ll be waiting for you when you’re through.”

“Thanks, no,” Joshua returned, embarrassed; “I have no brain for engineering. What I did was just the result of common sense, and I couldn’t probably do anything like it again in a thousand years. No, I have other plans.”

“Joshua,” cried Madge, “do you realize what you’re doing? You have nothing--this is the chance of a lifetime!”

“I realize that,” he told her, “but I can’t accept. Here it is September. You perhaps don’t know that on the eighteenth of next June the planet Mars will occupy the best position for observation since Nineteen-nine. And there will not be another chance so good until August, Nineteen twenty-four. So I must get well, build a cabin on my homestead and in general prepare for the hard winter that is predicted in these mountains. Then I must build a trail to the summit of Spyglass Mountain, put up my observatory, and install the eight-inch telescope that I have now decided to buy. The snows will hamper my work next winter, so that it will keep me rustling to have everything in readiness for the eighteenth of next June.”

“What’s all this? What in thunder ye talkin’ about?” barked Philip Demarest.

“Madge will tell you,” said Joshua. “I’m going down to camp now for a little rest, if you’ll excuse me. I find that I’m pretty much all in from the strain and excitement of the last few hours. And that big engineer, Branscomb, nearly pumped the arm off me, on the side where I got shot. You explain for me, Madge. Good-by and--thanks!”