No search was made for the exact spot indicated on the map, so long as the teamsters who had brought up the mining’ stores remained. These believed that it was a mere exploring party, and although they wondered at the quantity of mining materials brought up, they had put this down to the folly of the “Britisher” who had organised the party!
When the mining party alone remained, a diligent search was at once begun for the shaft which had been sunk. This they knew was near the river.
Three days were spent and no signs of the shaft were discovered, when Seth came across a short stump of charred wood at the edge of the river bed.
He led Mr. Rawlings and Noah Webster to the spot, and they agreed that this was probably the site upon which the dwelling-house had stood.
“The river, you see, has changed its course a bit,” Noah said. “These streams come down in big floods in winter, and carry all before them, often changing their beds. If it came across the mouth of the shaft it would fill it up with boulders and gravel in five minutes. Waal, what we’ve got to look for is a filled-up hole hereabouts. Mostly, the rock lies just under the surface gravel, so if we get crowbars and thrust down we shall find it sure enough.”
A few hours’ search, now that the clue was obtained, led to the discovery of the lost shaft. The lode was now traced extending either way, and as it was at once agreed that it would not do to commence another so near the river, a place was fixed upon a hundred yards back from the old shaft, and the whole of the stores and tools were removed to this spot.
Then the whole force set to to get up a large hut of galvanised iron, which they had brought, with its framework, from Chicago.
Timber is sometimes scarce in these regions, and it would not have done to have relied upon it. The hut contained a large general room where all would take their meals together, a store-room, a bed-room for the men, and a smaller one for Mr. Rawlings, Seth, Noah, and Sailor Bill. A small “lean-to” as a kitchen was erected against the hut, and layers of coarse turf, eighteen inches thick, were built up against the outer wall all round for additional protection, as the winter would be bitterly cold, and a great thickness of material would be required to resist its inclemency.
There was an equal partition of labour. The black cook took possession of his kitchen, Jasper was to act as general attendant, and Seth assumed the position of manager of the works, with Noah Webster under him as deputy, while the men were divided into three gangs, each of which would work eight hours a day at the work of sinking the shaft.
Story 1—Chapter VII.
Fighting the Elements.
The miners at Minturne Creek had a hard time of it, and their life was monotonous enough after they had settled down to work in earnest.
Winter came—the stern hard winter that can only be experienced to the full in the northern regions of the Far West, backed up seemingly by all the powers of nature—to try and cramp the energies of the party, and arrest their labours; but, neither the severity of the weather, nor the languor which the excessive frigidity of the atmosphere produced—although it sent them to sleep of a night after their day’s toil, without the necessity of an opiate—were sufficient to deter them from their purpose.
Winter passed by, and still they worked on steadily, notwithstanding that as yet they had met with no substantial success to encourage them, hoping, however, that they had surmounted the gravest part of their undertaking. Spring arrived, and their hopes of an easy season of it were demolished in an instant; for the snow melted on the hills, and the ice melted in the valley, and the iron bands of the river were broken, causing a foaming torrent to dash through the gulch—a torrent that swelled each hour with the fresh accretions of water from the higher rocks, and, spreading wide in the valley, threatened to annihilate the whole party, as well as the results of their handiwork during the past months of bitter toil.
The very elements warred against them; but, under the noble example of their indomitable leader, whom nothing appeared to dishearten, they braved the elements, and were not discouraged.
The torrent grew into a flood, tossing huge rocks about as if they were corks, and swelled and foamed around the dam they laboriously raised when the floods began, to protect the shaft; but they fought the newly created flood with its own weapons, hurling buttresses at it to support their artificial embankment, in return for its rocks, and pointing the very weapons of the enemy against itself.
They had not to contend with water alone.
The winds, let loose apparently by the thawing of the huge glaciers by which they were confined in the cavernous recesses of the mountain peaks, stormed down into the valley, there meeting other and antagonistic currents of air coming up the canon—and met and fought, relentless giants that they were, on the neutral ground of the miners’ camp, tearing off the iron sheets of their house, and sending them flying away on the wings of the storm to goodness knows where. Still, the hardy adventurers would not be beaten; but fought the wind, as they had fought the water.
Spreading buffalo skins over their unroofed cabin to keep out the wet, they piled on them rocks and timber that they had kept in reserve for service in the mine, weighing their ends down with some of the ponderous rocks with which the flood had assailed them—so making a temporary provision against the weather until they should be able to build their log shanty afresh.
By these means the winds were conquered, stopping their onslaught presently and making a truce, which in time was lengthened into a treaty. But it was a mighty battle while it lasted; a fight of the Titans with the gods; man opposed to nature; the material to the immaterial—self-reliant, well-husbanded, carefully-applied strength matched against purposeless force.
Man does not generally win in such contests, but did in this instance. The powers of the water and air were powerless against a systematic resistance, and were compelled to succumb. The miners suffered, certainly—who comes out of a fray scathless? But they were victorious; and being such, could at last laugh at their losses. Beyond, also, the consciousness of having fought a successful fight, they were encouraged by the certainty that they had met and encountered with success the extremity of peril to which they would be subjected; and that thenceforth Nature could only be a passive enemy to them, with no terrors now to daunt them with, albeit she struggled against them still in the bowels of the earth, that refused as yet to give up those hidden riches which they were confident were there. Refuse? Ay, but only for a time; they would, in the end, conquer that refusal, as they had met and overcome nature’s more active opposition!
Their house was in ruins; their provisions mostly spoilt by the elements they had battled—fire had only been wanting to complete the sum of their calamities; whilst the staging around their mine-shaft was broken down and tons of water upon tons poured down the embouchure.
They reviewed their position, and grasped its salient points, not a single faint heart among them:—hope, trust, energy, made them think and act as one man.
There was the iron hut and shanty to rebuild, the mine-shaft and its supports to repair, the dam to mend and remake in its weaker places, the mine to pump out.
Thus they thought; and, what is more, they acted upon the thought. Some men think, and others work. They did both; and, through their strenuous efforts, ere the early buds of spring had given a palpable green tinge to the shrubs and trees that clothed the slopes of the hills and dotted the valley of Minturne Creek here and there, or the snow had quite vanished from the topmost mountain peaks, and the river that ran through the gulch subsided down into its proper proportions, all traces of the storm ravages had been cleared away, and the snug little camp of the Boston exploring party looked itself again, “as neat and trim as a new pin, I reckon!”