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By Root 313 0

The fever, it came on as the day wore on. It made her crazy. After she come in my shack that night, and I knew she was going to die, I thought I'd wait till that was over, and then come out with it. It was all I had to live for. Why should I keep my mouth shut? Why should I give a hoot how Kady felt? She never cared how I felt. But Belle knew what she could do with me. She got me to come over there, just before she died, after you left and Kady left and they took Danny away, and promise I'd never say anything to Kady about it. So that's what I done. I give up the one thing I wanted in life, to please a woman that was dying, and that I loved. But I made up my mind, if I had to give it up, you'd give it up too. You weren't going to be happy with something that was mine. So I got Ed Blue's gun, and I'd have killed you, Jess. That's the only thing I'm sorry for, that you got me first. But by Jesus Christ, I'm going to take it away from you, that one thing that you want. I never promised not to tell you, and now I'm letting you have it. There's not one drop of Tyler blood in Danny, and you've just been making a fool out of yourself to think there is. Come here, you samsinging bastard, and let me spit on you."

I put his jumper over his chest, crossed the arms over his back, and tied them up tight. Then I used them for a handle and began dragging him.

"Stop it! That hurts!"

"It won't, much longer."

"Where you taking me?"

"You'll see."

I drug him to the shaft, and when he saw what I was going to do he began to scream. I slung him in, and he screamed clear to the bottom, but stopped when he hit. I slung Mort's rifle in after him, and stepped back in case it would go off. When it didn't I picked up my own gun and climbed down. He was at the bottom, all crumpled up, beside the bricked-in fireplace of the still. I tied the jumper on him better, lit the lamp, and began dragging him along the tunnel. But when I came to the first of the old entries I turned off, and began dragging him over the jagged rock that had fallen down, and it was the hardest work I ever did in my life. But it felt good, too, to know he was dead, and I had killed him, and I was going to put him where he never would be found, and nobody would ever remember he had been on this earth. I drug him at least two hundred feet. Then there was a swag, and I threw him in. Then I climbed back to the timbered tunnel, went on back to the shaft, took a bucket, scraped up some dirt and put it in, poured in some water, and mixed up some mud. Then I took my fuse, caps, and dynamite, stuck them in my pocket, and went back to the swag with them. The first blister that was hanging down on the other side, between the swag and the worked-out part of the mine, I cut off half a stick of dynamite, made a mudcap against one of the hanging pieces, stuck the dynamite in with a cap in it and six inches of fuse. The blister between the swag and the timbered drift, I made another mudcap, with a foot of fuse. Then I went in, lit the short fuse, scrambled to the next one and lit it, and stepped around to the angle of the timbered tunnel to wait. Why I had done that, I wanted those shots not to fire at once, and then I could check that they both went off. Sure enough, here came the first one. Then I almost dropped dead, because I had forgot the rifle.

I ran to the shaft mouth, got it, and coming back I ran sidewise like a crab, the way you have to do in a low tunnel. Smoke was pouring out of the tunnel, but I crawled in there and gave the rifle a pitch. Before I got to the timbered drift the second shot went off, and blew me right up against the rib. Then I was glad I had had to make the second trip in, for the rifle. Because by going in there I had seen what I'd always have been worried about. That powder had blown down the top until the tunnel was blocked up solid with rock, both sides of Moke, so it would take a hundred men a month to get in there, even if they could ever guess what they were digging for. Mr. Moke Blue could just as well have been at the bottom of the sea, so far as anybody