“Then, A guess you’re afraid of what’s goin’ t’ happen!  We’re not goin’ down, without you, m’ boy.”

Bat winked at the Sheriff and clambered in.  It was then something on the edge of the Brule arrested MacDonald’s glance; Calamity coming through the cottonwoods mad and dishevelled, O’Finnigan reeling up from the Smelter City trail mad with whiskey, waving a bottle and shouting—­“What’s th’ use o’ anything?  Nothing!  I’m Uncle Sam!  Hoorah!”

“Go on,” ordered MacDonald curtly.  “I’ll keep the notes safe up here, in my pocket, Wayland!  I’ll stay and give Sheriff Flood a hand at the hoist!”

The Sheriff looked for directions to Brydges.

“Let her go,” ordered Brydges with a glance back over his shoulder towards the trail from Smelter City; and the winch creaked and groaned; and the bucket fell with a bump; then a steady drop to the first vein.  When Matthews looked up, the slant of the shaft had cut off the sky.  Brydges didn’t bother clambering out of the bucket.  He was silent and kept hold of the dependent cable.  Suddenly, there was a rumble as of the hoist flying backward, then the whip lash of a taut rope snapping, and the cable whirled down in a coil round Brydges’ head.

“Gee whiz!  This is a pretty mess!  The cable’s broke; and we can’t get up!”

“What’s that?” called Mathews.  Wayland and the others were examining the black wall of the shaft.

Matthews flashed his hand lantern in Brydges’ face.  It was ashen doughy, with sagged lips.  “Wayland, have y’ on y’r mountaineerin’ boots, the boots pegged wi’ handspikes?” cried the old frontiersman.  “The cable’s broken; and A like t’ see y’ shin for th’ top soon as possible!”

Something in the voice must have caught the ear of the news editor; for he turned back and flooded his lantern, first on Matthews’ face, then on Brydges’.

“You’ll climb easier if you pull off y’r overalls and fasten y’r lantern in y’r hat, Wayland,” he said in the same cutting voice he used in the hurry and rush of the composing room.

If Mr. Bat Brydges had been after a feature story, he had it then and there; the tenebrous thick coal darkness; the drip-drip-drip of the water-soak through the rock walls; Matthews’ eyes blazing like coals of fire in the dark, his lantern shining full on Brydges; the news editor hatchet-faced, white of skin, with pistol point eyes, his lantern full on Brydges; the downy-lipped youth white, terrified, chattering of jaws, unable to speak a word, clutching to the edge of the bucket to hide his trembling, his hat had fallen off, his lantern had fallen out of his hand, and a great blob of black coal drip trickled from his yellow hair down his cheek in front of his ear; and the handy man still standing in the barrel, his face chalky and soggy like dough, with a show of bluff, but unable to look a man in the face, gazing at his feet in the bottom of the barrel: