"What is it that you have observed?" questioned the superintendent.
"The men are loaded for trouble. Practically we are standing in a drift ready to be fired, and when the powder goes off the roof of the drift is likely to fall down on our heads and finish us."
"You are right, Rush. I have found your advice good. What would you do to cope with the situation, were you the superintendent?"
The superintendent's eyes twinkled.
"What would I do? Why, I'd take the situation by the nape of the neck and shake all the fight out of it. In the first place, if I did not have enough men to give the strikers all the fight they wanted, I would ask the authorities for protection. I believe our property will be destroyed if you don't place guards about the mines."
"I am glad to hear you say what you have said," nodded Mr. Penton. "I have urged the sheriff to wire the governor to rush a company of militia here, and the mining company has backed me up in the request. I dislike to do it, but I must protect our property. I presume it will excite the men to violence, and——"
"The men cannot be much more excited than they already are, sir. Cavard has worked them up to the exploding point. With an honest man at its head, a miner's union might be made of real benefit to the men. It's too bad that they have fallen into the hands of Cavard."
The boys went on up the street to their boarding house to dinner. There was little conversation at the meal, for every man felt that the calm before the storm was upon them.
Shortly after one o'clock the men began strolling toward the "ore bridge." This was a structure of steel and concrete that the company had erected across a mountain gorge, and over which the ore was carried by train to the lakes. The ore bridge was the key to the situation. Without it no ore could be shipped from either the Cousin Jack or the Red Rock Mines.
By two o'clock there were more than a thousand men gathered in the vicinity of the bridge. They seemed impervious to the biting cold of the winter's day. It was not apparent that the men had any particular purpose in gathering about the bridge, but there was little doubt that their leader had put the thought in their minds at the noonday meeting, whether or not they realized that fact.