“That’s the case in a nutshell,” my father assented; “and, as I said before: What are we going to do about it?”
“Why——” Joe began; and then he suddenly jumped up and coming across the room he whispered something in my ear. I replied with a nod; whereupon Joe returned to his chair, and addressing my father once more, said:
“I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Mr. Crawford. Phil and I made forty dollars last fall cutting timbers—it was Tom who got us our order, too—and we have it still. We’ll put that in—eh, Phil?—if it will be any use.”
“Yes,” said I. “Gladly.”
“Good!” exclaimed my father. “Then that settles it. Now, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. I’ll add sixty dollars to it—that is all I can afford just now—and you two shall ride back to Sulphide this afternoon, give Tom the money, and tell him he shall have fifty more in a couple of months if he needs it. And tell him at the same time that he needn’t go mortgaging his little house. We don’t want security from Tom Connor: we know him too well. I’d rather have his word than some men’s bond. You shall ride up to see him this afternoon, and you needn’t hurry back to-day; for that rain of last night has made the ground too wet to continue plowing; and, if I’m not mistaken, we’re in for another storm to-night, in which case the soil won’t be in condition again for two or three days.”
I need hardly say that Joe and I were delighted to undertake this mission, and about four o’clock we reached Mrs. Appleby’s, where we put up our ponies in her stable. Then, as Tom would not be quitting work for another hour, instead of going direct to his house, we climbed up to the Pelican, intending to catch him there and walk home with him.
Presently arriving at the great white dump of bleached porphyry to which the citizens of Sulphide were accustomed to point with pride as an indication of the immense amount of work it had taken to make the Pelican the important mine it was, we scrambled up to the engine-house, where for some minutes we stood watching the busy engine as it whirled to the surface the buckets of waste. Then, stepping over to the mouth of the shaft, we paused again to watch the top-men as they emptied the big buckets into the car and trundled the car itself to the edge of the dump, upset it, and trundled it back again for more.
As we stood there, a miner came up, and stepping out of the cage, nodded to us in passing.
“Want anybody, boys?” he asked.
“We’re waiting for Tom Connor,” I replied. “He’s down below, isn’t he?”