A great crowd filled the street in front of the hotel. Tesno tied Madrid's horse and elbowed his way to the entrance. Ben Vickers touched his elbow.
"Jay shot himself," Ben said. "Seems they didn't think to search his room. He had a gun in there. You overtake Madrid?"
"In the tunnel, Ben. Not a pretty sight."
Sam Lester came out of the lobby. He turned his thick lenses up at Tesno and said, "No reason for Persia and me to stay in the county now. I'm taking her away." He moved on.
"Seems like those two will get off easy," Ben said. "Then again maybe they won't. They have each other."
[XXIV]
The big boiler finally reached the east portal. A compressor was set up. An air line was run over the mountain so that automatic drills could be used in the west bore, too. Ben Vickers paid a bonus to everybody who worked for him when progress exceeded the necessary daily footage. The work spurted ahead.
There were unforseeable problems and delays, of course. Snow fell to a depth of twenty feet. Snow sheds had to be hurriedly built over the dump trucks. A landslide carried away part of the approach to the east portal. Supply wagons bogged down on the way up from Ellensburg, first in snow, then in mud. Much of the road had to be paved with logs and planks. When enough track was laid so that supplies could be brought in by train, a bridge washed out and freight wagons had to be pressed into service again.
There were more accidents in the tunnel, mostly caused by premature or delayed blasts. A dozen more men lost their lives. Rock was loosened above the line of the cut, and days were lost. Fumes from blasting became unbearable, and there was more delay while the ventilating system was altered. Cloudbursts flooded first the east portal, then the west. A dump train engine jumped the tracks, and its boiler burst. The strata of the basaltic trap rock was unpredictable; in spite of every precaution, there were frequent cave-ins.