The Regulators - Stephen King [119]
Then the little girl (sorry, can't remember her name, might have been Louise) pointed over across, down by the pit-floor, and said, 'What's that hole with all the yellow tapes around it? It looks like a big black eye.'
'That's our find of the year,' I said. 'Something so big it's still a dead secret. I'll tell you if you can keep it one a while longer. You will, won't you? I might get in trouble with my company otherwise.'
They promised, and I thought telling them was safe enough, them being through-travellers and all. Also, I thought the little boy would like to hear about it, him being so crazy about Bonanza and all. And, as I said, it never crossed my mind until later to think he already knew about it. Why would it, for God's sake?
'That's the old Rattlesnake Number One,' I said. 'At least, that's what we think it is. We uncovered it while we were blasting. The front part of the Rattlesnake caved in back in 1858.'
Jack Garin wanted to know what was inside. I said we didn't know, no one had been in there on account of the MSHA regulations. Mrs Garin (June) wanted to know if the company would be exploring it later, and I said maybe, if we could get the right permits. I didn't tell them any lies, but I did skirt the truth a bit. We'd gotten up the keep-out tapes like MSHA says to do, all right, but that didn't mean MSHA knew about our find. We uncovered it purely by accident — shot off a blast-pattern pretty much like any other and when the spill stopped rolling and the dust settled, there it was — but no one in the company was sure if it was the kind of accident we wanted to publicize.
There would have been some powerful interest if news of it got out, that's for sure. According to the stories, forty or fifty Chinese were sealed up inside when the mine caved in, and if so, they'd still be there, preserved like mummies in an Egyptian pyramid. The history buffs would've had a field day with just their clothing and mining gear, let alone the bodies themselves. Most of us on-site were pretty interested, too, but we couldn't do much exploring without wholehearted approval from the Deep Earth brass in Phoenix, and there wasn't anyone I worked with who thought we'd get it. Deep Earth is not a non-profit organization, as I'm sure anyone reading this will understand, and mining, especially in this day and age, is a high-risk operation. China Pit had only been turning a profit since 1992 or so, and the people who work there never get up in the morning completely sure they'll still have a job when they get to the work-site. Much is dependent on the per-pound price of copper (leachbed mining is not cheap), but even more has to do with the environmental issues. Things are a little better lately, the current crop of pols has at least some sense, but there are still something like a dozen 'injunctive suits' pending in the county or Federal courts, filed by people (mostly the 'greens') who want to shut us down. There were a lot of people — including myself, I might as well say — who didn't think the top execs would want to add to those problems by shouting to the world that we'd found an old mine site, probably of great historical interest. As Yvonne Bateman, an engineer pal of mine, said just after the round of blast-field shots uncovered the hole, 'It would be just like the tree-huggers to try and get the whole pit designated a historical landmark, either by the Feds or by the Nevada Historical Commission. It might be the way to stop us for good that they are always looking for.' You can call that attitude paranoid if you want (plenty do), but when a fellow like me knows there are 90 or 100