The Copper City - Chris Scott Wilson [8]
“Hope they’re taking on,” Quantro said, counting the number of men before them. He felt awkward, out of place. All the others looked like miners, hard-bitten in their odd assortment of working clothes. Maybe Pete knew something about mining, after all he’d been a prospector, but Quantro had no knowledge about it at all. He had never seen a mine, much less been in one. He had been born and raised on his father’s ranch under a blue sky in Colorado and had done nearly all his work from the back of a horse. Holes in the ground were a completely new prospect, and not exactly one he welcomed.
The office window creaked open and the line shuffled forward, closing ranks. From where he stood he could hear the clerk’s voice rasping out questions and the easy answers that came back. They all seemed to know what they were talking about. Maybe he’d made a mistake. He should have found a ranching job, but there again all he could expect as a ranch-hand was maybe twenty dollars a month and his keep. He would never get rich on that.
While he was still thinking, he arrived at the window. The clerk looked him up and down then stroked his chin.
Quantro’s feet moved uneasily.
“You mined before?”
“No.”
“Handled ore?”
“No.”
“Worked as a teamster?”
“No.”
“Can you use a pick and hammer?”
“Never had to.”
“You look like a cowhand to me.”
“That’s right.”
“Then you can handle horses?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Wait over there.” He pointed.
Quantro stood with a small group of men who looked just as uncomfortable as he felt. Soon, Pete joined him.
“Looks like we didn’t cut it.”
“Maybe,” Pete sniffed.
Shortly, a broad, red-faced man swaggered towards them, chewing on the stub of a cheap cigar. He announced himself as Scheller, the foreman. “All right. None of you guys worked a mine before, right?”
Nobody answered.
“I thought not. Okay, I’m gonna put each of you with a man who knows what he’s doing. You’ll soon pick it up. If you don’t, you won’t last the week.” He studied them as if talking was a waste of time. “Follow me.”
It was murder.
Quantro was issued with a fourteen-pound hammer before being led down to the rock face, stumbling in the dim light over the small-gauge tracks for the ore trucks. His job was to drive a long drill into the rock, then knock it out to leave a hole for his new partner, the dynamite man, so he could place the charge. Each set of charges needed six holes.
Swinging the hammer horizontally tore at his shoulder muscles. He gritted his teeth, determined to do the job. Soon, sweat ran freely down his face, dripping off his nose, and his clothes began to stick fast in every place they touched his body. The dust, battered airborne by the hammer blows, rose up in a murky cloud to clog his nostrils and blind him. By the time he had completed the drilling for the first charges, he was aching from head to foot. He waited in the shadows while his partner carefully set the sticks in place and attached individual fast fuses, then followed him away from the face, running out the long slow fuse. He crouched against the wall of the tunnel while the dynamite man prepared the end so it would catch alight quickly. When everything was set, his partner winked at him, telling him to run. As Quantro moved down the tunnel, his mate struck a match then touched the flame to the fuse.
“Fire in the hole!” he shouted as it began to splutter. Then he was on his feet and sprinting along the tunnel to catch up Quantro. He slapped him on the shoulder, yelling, “Get down and cover your ears!” They both crouched by the wall.
The charges blew.
Nearly deafened, Quantro was almost knocked over on his back by the pressure waves. A wall of dust billowed toward them along the tunnel to envelop them in its choking mist. Coughing, they waited until the dust settled. The miners filed past them with their armory of picks and shovels to break up the rough boulders of copper-bearing rock that the explosion had brought down. Expecting to be allowed time to draw breath, Quantro sank to his haunches