Adventures in Many Lands | Page 5

of Saints' days. But it didn't at all
follow that because Don Ferdinando pocketed his shooter he was likely
to be called upon to use it.
The three were separating after this when a lad in a blue cotton jacket
rose lazily from behind a heap of calamine just to the rear of them, and
swung off towards the machinery on the edge of the precipice.
"Pedro!" called the foreman, and, returning, the lad was asked if he had
been listening.
He vowed that such a thought had not entered his head. He had been
asleep; that was all.
"Very good!" said the foreman. "You may go, and it's fifty cents off
your wage list that your sleep out of season has cost you."
Discipline at the mine had to be of the strictest. Any laxity, and the
laziest man was bound to start an epidemic of laziness.
Don Ferdinando set off for the Vega, eight hundred feet sheer below
the mine. It was a ticklish zigzag, just to the left of the transporting
machinery, with twenty places in which a slip would mean death.
Domecq was working down below, lading the stuff into bullock-carts.
Alfred Cayley disappeared into one of the upper galleries, to see how
they were panning out.
The snow mountains and the afternoon sun looked down upon a very
pleasing scene of industry--blue-jacketed workers and heaps of ore; and
upon Jim Cayley also, who had enjoyed his dinner so thoroughly that
he didn't think so much as before about his rejected information.
But now again the Cuban kiddy drifted towards him, making for the
zigzag.
Jim hailed him.

"Can't stop, Don Jimmy!" said Toro. But when he was some yards
down, he beckoned to Jim, who quickly joined him.
They conferred on the edge of a ghastly precipice.
"I'm off down to tell Domecq that it's going to be done at two-thirty
prompt," said Toro.
"What's going to be d--done?" asked Jimmy.
"What I told you about. They've cut the 'phone down to the 'llano' as a
start. But that's nothing. You just go and squat by the engine and see
what happens. Guess they'll not mind you."
To tell the truth, Jim was a trifle dazed. He didn't grapple the ins and
outs of a conspiracy of Spanish miners just for the sake of a holiday.
And as Toro couldn't wait (it was close on half-past two), Jim thought
he might as well act on his advice. He liked to see the big buckets of
ore swinging off into space from the mine level and making their
fearful journey at a thrilling angle, down, down until, as mere specks,
they reached the transport and washing department of the mine in the
Vega. Two empty buckets came up as two full ones went down,
travelling with a certain sublimity along the double rope of woven wire.
Jim sat down at a distance. He saw one cargo get right off--no more.
Then he noticed that the men engaged at the engine were confabulating.
He saw a gleam of instruments. Also he saw another full bucket hitched
on and sent down at the run. And then he saw the men furtively at work
at something.
Suddenly the cable snapped, flew out, yards high!
Jim saw this--and something more. Looking instantly towards the Vega
he saw the return bucket, hundreds of feet above the level, toss a
somersault as it was freed of its tension and--this was horrible!--pitch a
man head-foremost into the air.

He cried out at the sight, and so did the rascals who had done their
rattening for a comparatively innocent purpose.
But when he and a dozen others had made the desperate descent of the
zigzag, they found that the dead man was Domecq. Even the miners
had no love for this arch-troubler, and, in trying to avoid Don
Ferdinando, the sight of whom, coming down the track, had warned
him of danger, Domecq had done the mine the best turn possible.
Toro's own warning was of course much too late.
The tragedy had a great effect. Saint Gavino was neglected after all,
and it was in very humble spirits that the ringleaders of the plot
confessed their sins and agreed to suffer the consequences.
Jim by-and-by tried to tell his brother and Don Ferdinando that if only
they had listened to him at dinner the "accident" might not have
happened. But he stammered so much again (Don Ferdinando was as
stern as a headmaster) that he shut up.
"It's--it's--nothing particu--ticu--ticular, Mr. Summerfield!" he
explained.
Don Ferdinando was anything but depressed about Domecq's death;
and Jim didn't want to damp his spirits. Of course, if Domecq had
really killed another fellow only a few weeks ago, as was rumoured, he
deserved the fate that had overtaken him.