After the arrival of the new gears one day more was needed for their installation; then the smoke plume began to wave again from the top of the stack on lofty Pisgah, and the drill resumed its interrupted jouncings in the sandstone. In due course, and with no added untoward happenings to delay the work—this though the two McNabbs, identified now and closely watched by Tregarvon, were still retained in the gang—the drill reached the first coal seam, penetrated it, plunged again into rock, and, a few hours later, into and through the second and lower coal layer; net result—failure.
With the new-found fighting resolution now fully aroused, Tregarvon did not waste a minute. In the intervals afforded by temporary pauses in the drilling he had found time to select a location farther back on the plateau for the next trial; and while the boiler of the portable engine was still hot from the fire-drawing of failure, the transfer of the plant was begun.
The second trial was a mere repetition of the first, save that the layer of rock separating the two coal seams gained six inches in thickness for the added distance from the original mine opening in the cliff face at the head of the tramway. Wilmerding, the genial young superintendent of the C. C. & I. subsidiaries was on the ground when the sand-pump tests of this second hole were made, and he shook his head doubtfully.
“I suppose I oughtn’t to throw cold water; it doesn’t come with very good grace from the boss in the enemy’s camp,” he said deprecatingly. “But I’m mightily afraid you gentlemen are chasing fireflies. You have two distinct seams, instead of one that has been split by a horizontal wedge of the sand-rock, and I believe a careful analysis of the coal in the two seams will prove it. Going to move still farther back and try again?”
“It’s the surest thing there is,” said Tregarvon, who had already set his men at work striking the derrick. “I may be licked, but I’m too big a fool to know it.”
“Good!” laughed Wilmerding; “I like your courage immensely. But while you are tapping it again, send me some samples and let me analyze the two veins for you. I have a laboratory up at Whitlow, and I’ll be glad to help out to that extent.”
“You are an enemy, right, Mr. Wilmerding!” said Tregarvon heartily. “A fighting friend couldn’t make a fairer offer than that. But you will find that the two seams are one and the same. I made even canny old Captain Duncan admit that he couldn’t detect any difference in the coal taken from the two veins.”
Wilmerding nodded. “The captain is canny, as you say, though you can hardly prove it by me. I don’t know him very well—haven’t been down here long enough. Thaxter knows him from away back, however, and he has told me a good bit about the old Scotchman, who has the reputation, by the way, of being at the top of the heap as an analytical chemist.”
“Thaxter?” put in Carfax interrogatively. He had been an attentive listener; his usual attitude in any three-cornered conference.
“Yes. Don’t you know Thaxter, my bookkeeper? Not to know Thaxter is to argue yourself unknown in the Wehatchee. The rank and file at Whitlow think I’m the boss, and that Connolly comes next. But Thaxter is the real power behind the throne.”