Underground

He talked over the situation frankly with the two partners in the
little single-roomed cabin perched on the cliff edge, while the
obedient though grumbling Mike, rifle in hand, sat solemnly on the dump
pile without. Little by little the three conspirators worked out a
fairly feasible plan. There were numerous chances for failure in it,
yet the very recklessness of the conception was an advantage. Winston,
his face darkened as a slight disguise, and dressed in the rough
garments of a typical miner, was to hide beside the footpath leading
between the "Independence" bunk-house and the shaft. Should one of the
men chance to loiter behind the others when the working shift changed
at midnight, Brown was to attend to him silently, relying entirely upon
his giant strength to prevent alarm, while Winston was promptly to take
the vacated place among the descending workmen. By some grim fate this
crudely devised scheme worked like a well-oiled piece of machinery. A
sleepy-headed lout, endeavoring to draw on his coat as he ran blindly
after the others, stumbled in the rocky path and fell heavily. Almost
at the instant Stutter Brown had the fellow by the throat, dragging him
back into the security of the cedars, and Winston, lamp and dinner-pail
in hand, was edging his way into the crowded cage, his face turned to
the black wall.

That was five hours before. At the very edge of the black, concealing
chaparral, within easy rifle range of the "Independence" shaft-house,
Hicks and Brown lay flat on their faces, waiting and watching for some
occasion to take a hand. Back behind the little cabin old Mike sat
calmly smoking his black dudheen, apparently utterly oblivious to all
the world save the bound and cursing Swede he was vigilantly guarding,
and whose spirits he occasionally refreshed with some choice bit of
Hibernian philosophy. Beneath the flaring gleam of numerous gasoline
torches, half a dozen men constantly passed and repassed between
shaft-house and dump heap, casting weird shadows along the rough
planking, and occasionally calling to each other, their gruff voices
clear in the still night. Every now and then those two silent watchers
could hear the dismal clank of the windlass chain, and a rattle of ore
on the dump, when the huge buckets were hoisted to the surface and
emptied of their spoil. Once--it must have been after three
o'clock--other men seemed suddenly to mingle among those perspiring
surface workers and the unmistakable neigh of a horse came faintly from
out the blackness of a distant thicket. The two lying in the chaparral
rose to their knees, bending anxiously forward. Brown drew back the
hammer of his rifle, while Hicks swore savagely under his breath. But
those new figures vanished in some mysterious way before either could
decide who they might be--into the shaft-house, or else beyond, where
denser shadows intervened. The two watchers sank back again into their
cover, silently waiting, ever wondering what was happening beyond their
ken, down below in the heart of the hill.