“Troublemakers,” Johnny said. “The underground ver-sion of gremlins.”
“Three things,” Audrey said from her place at stage—right. She was nibbling a pretzel.
“First, you call that sort of mine-work a drift, not a shaft. Second, you drive a driftway,
you don’t sink it. Third, it was a cave-in, pure and simple. No tommyknockers, no earth—spirits.”
“Rationalism speaks,” Johnny said. “The spirit of the century. Hurrah!”
“I wouldn’t go ten feet into that kind of ground,” Audrey said, “no sane person would, and there they were, a hundred and fifty feet deep, forty miners, a couple of bossmen, at least five ponies, all of them chipping and tromping and yelling, doing everything but setting off dynamite. What’s amazing is how long the tommy—knockers protected them from their own idiocy!”
“When the cave-in finally did happen, it happened in what should have been a good place,” Billingsley re-sumed. “The roof fell in about sixty feet from the adit.” He glanced at David. “That’s what you call the entrance to a mine, son. The miners got up that far from below, and there they were stopped by twenty feet of fallen hornfeLs skarn, and Devonian shale. The whistle went off, and the folks from town came up the hill to see what had hap pened.
Even the whores and the gamblers came up. They could hear the Chinamen inside screaming, begging to be dug out before the rest of it came down. Some said they sounded like they were fighting with each other. But no one wanted to go in and start digging. That squealing sound hornfels makes when the ground’s uneasy was louder than ever, and the roof was bowed down in a couple of places between the adit and the first rockfall.”
“Could those places have been shored up.” Steve asked.
“Sure, but nobody wanted to take the responsibility for doing it. Two days later, the president and vice president of Diablo Mines showed up with a couple of mining engi neers from Reno. They had a picnic lunch outside the adit while they talked over what to do, my dad told me. Ate it spread Out Ofl linen while inside that shaft-pardon me the drift-not ninety feet from where they were, forty human souls were screaming in the dark.
“There had been cave-ins deeper in, folks said they sounded like something was farting or burping deep down in the earth, but the Chinese were still okay-still alive, anyway—behind the first rockfall, begging to be dug out. They were eating the mine-ponies by then, I imagine, and they’d had no water or light for two days The mining engineers went in-poked their heads in, anyway-and said it was too dangerous for any sort of rescue operation.”
“So what did they do.” Mary asked.
Billingsley shrugged. “Set dynamite charges at the front of the mine and brought that down, too. Shut her up.”
“Are you saying they deliberately buried forty people alive.” Cynthia asked.
“Forty-two counting the line-boss and the foreman,” Billingsley said. “The line-boss was white, but a drunk and a man known to speak foul language to decent women. No one spoke up for him. The foreman either, far as that goes.”
“How could they do it.”
“Most were Chinese, ma’am,” Billingsley said, “so it was easy.
The wind gusted. The building trembled beneath its rough caress like something alive.
They could hear the faint sound of the window in the ladies’ room banging back and forth. Johnny kept waiting for it to yawn wide enough to knock over Billingsley’s bottle booby-trap.
“But that’s not quite the end of the story,” Billingsley said. “You know how stuff like this grows in folks’ minds over the years.” He put his hands together and wiggled the gnarled fingers. On the movie screen a gigantic bird, a legendary death-kite, seemed to soar. “It grows like shadows.”
“Well, what’s the end of it.” Johnny asked. Even after all these years he was a sucker for a good story when he heard one, and this one wasn’t bad.
“Three days later, two young Chinese fellows showed up at the Lady Day, a saloon which stood about where The Broken Drum is now. Shot seven men before they were subdued. Killed two. One of the ones they killed was the mining engineer from Reno who recommended that the shaft be brought down.”
“Drift,” Audrey said.
“Quiet,” Johnny said, and motioned for Billingsley to go on.
“One of the ‘coolie-boys’-that’s what they were called-was killed himself in the fracas. A knife in the back, most likely, although the story most people like is that a professional gambler named Harold Brophy flicked a playing-card from where he was sitting and cut the man’s throat with it.
“The one still alive was shot in five or six places. That didn’t stop em from taking him out and hanging him the next day, though, after a little sawhorse trial in front of a kangaroo court. I bet he was a disappointment to them; according to the story, he was too crazy to have any idea what was happening. They had chains on his legs and cuffs on his wrists and still he fought them like a cata-mount, raving in his own language all the while.”
Billingsley leaned forward a little, seeming to stare at David in particular. The boy looked back at him, eyes wide and fascinated.
“All of what he said was in the heathen Chinee, but one idea everyone got was that he and his friend had gotten out of the mine and come to take revenge on those who first put them there and then left them there.”
Billingsley shrugged.
“Most likely they were just two young men from the so—called Chinese Encampment south of Ely, men not quite so passive or resigned as the others. By then the story of the cave-in had travelled, and folks in the Encampment would have known about it. Some probably had relatives in Desperation. And you have to remember that the one who actually survived the shootout didn’t have any En glish other than cuss-words. Most of what they got from him must have come from his gestures. And you know how people love that last twist of the knife in a tall tale Why, it wasn’t a year before folks were saying the Chi nese miners were still alive in there, that they could hear em talking and laughing and pleading to be let out moaning and promising revenge.”
“Would it have been possible for a couple of men to have gotten out.” Steve asked.
“No,” Audrey said from the doorway.
Billingsley glanced her way, then turned his puffy, red rimmed eyes on Steve. “I reckon,”
he said. “The two of them might’ve started back down the shaft together, while the rest clustered behind the rockfall. One of em might have remembered a vent or a chimney-”
“Bullshit,” Audrey said.
“It ain’t,” Billingsley said, “and you know it. This is an old volcano-field. There’s even extrusive porphyry east of town-looks like black glass with chips of ruby in it: garnets, they are. And wherever there’s volcanic rock there’s shafts and chimneys.”
“The chances of two men ever-”
“It’s just a hypothetical case,” Mary said soothingly “A way of passing the time, that’s all.”
“Hypothetical bullshit,” Audrey grumbled, and ate another dubious pretzel.
“Anyway, that’s the story,” Billingsley said, “miners buried alive, two get out, both insane by then, and they try to take their revenge. Later on, ghosts in the ground. If that ain’t a tale for a stormy night, I don’t know what is.” He looked across at Audrey, and on his face was a sly drunk’s smile. “You been diggin up there, miss. You new folks. Haven’t come across any short bones, have you.”
“You’re drunk, Mr. Billingsley,” she said coldly.
“No,” he said. “I wish I was, but I ain’t. Excuse me, ladies and gents. I get yarning and I get the whizzies. It never damn fails.”
He crossed the stage, head down, shoulders slumped, weaving slightly. The shadow which followed him was ironic both in its size and its heroic aspect. His hootheels clumped. They watched him go.
There was a sudden flat smacking sound that made them all jump. Cynthia smiled guiltily and raised her sneaker. “Sorry,” she said. “A spider. I think it was one of those fiddleheads.”