Heaven,Hell or Beatty, Nevada

 

Five hundred feet, and 16 levels below ground, Jack Diamond ran for his life. He ran until his thirst for oxygen overcame his fear. Behind him in the main mining drift, he could hear explosions. Against his ear drums he felt hammer blows of displaced air pressure, as sections of the vertical shaft collapsed. Looking behind him with fear rimmed eyes, Jack could see a Stygian blackness rolling like the death fog of Egypt. Once again his animal instincts gained control over his waking mind and his trembling, fatigued body ran.
 Three more drifts on the left and two more on the right-Jack thought. Faster you sluggard!-Was replaced in his head by a continuous chant of: Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod! Risking a glance back, Jack could see the dust cloud killing one by one all of the mining lamps behind him.
Skidding to a stop, Jack almost ran past the entrance to the North #165 Drift. Ducking into its dusty mouth he hoped like hell to find his salvation. There in growing sepia colored tones lay the entrance to Ventilation Stope #3.
 Grabbing a maintenance pry bar from an open locker of tools, Jack began tearing at the steel gate covering the sloping air shafts entrance. Goddamnittohell!-Jack shouted as the hinges gave way with a screech of metal. Jack crouched down to crawl into the shaft, black dust engulfed him. Like all miners, Jack shared an almost atavistic fear of darkness.
 Seeing the last lamp in the drift begin to fail, Jack told himself- I don't care a good God damned! If, I have to crawl on my belly using just my fingernails, I am not going to be buried in this bitch. Jack began the literal crawl for his life. He crawled for light. He crawled for air. Most of all he crawled to find the SOB that sent him down that shaft in the first place...Death was a certainty, Hell was most assured, for those men of the Syndicate, that consigned Jack Diamond to a living entombment inside of the Mohican Mine Works.
      Each foot gained, further cemented his determination. It became the waking stupor of repetitive motion that let his mind wander back to when he first arrived in town.
Riding the train from Las Vegas, Jack remembered passing through Beatty, Nevada. Crawling across a one dead valley floor to another then the mountain looming up from the desert floor, full of men crawling across its face. Steam shovels and explosions from the ore body, sent clouds of dust floating over the rails. The train rolled into the cloud of expanding rock dust. It coated the train like a fine coat of paint. Soon all the passengers started coughing.
 An Irish rail conductor exclaimed with a sad voice, “Tis bad luck to be sure, to be caught on the rails with a devil’s own cloud rolling along against us.”
 As the conductor made his way forward through the Pullman Cars, he gave a soft sad smile to his passengers.
  Jack peered through the dust cloud. To the left of the train tracks the squat cliff face of the Bull Frog mine loomed. Not used to working in an open pit or even a one sided mine, Jack thought-To be sure, that looks like something the bible talked about. Wonder if, that’s what the pyramids looked like when Moses was running his gang?
      Shortly the train pulled into a tight little compact valley. The small valley had a narrow entrance between two spurs coming off of mountains made of volcanic tuft. At the base of the ones to the right of the train sat the turgid Armagosa river.
 The valley was populated by Mormon farmers and Cottonwoods strung out along the river. Heat came off the fields and river in waves. The only relief a body would get, was to be laying in the river up to your nose. Anything else exposed would be burned by the mid-summer sun.
 God must have hated this region of the world.-Jack mused. If it can bite, scratch, claw, poison or eat you, it lives here. Not to mention it feels like the Devil’s own furnace outside during the daylight hours. Then there is the cold…
 Jack remembered Joseph Visjnic stumbling into the Johnny mine site back in ‘99. His horse had slipped on a rock coming over Wheeler pass. It broke a front cannon bone. Sending the miner tumbling. The old Croatian woke up the next day with a bloody gash on his forehead, half buried in a snow drift. He hiked 40 miles in a driving snow storm to get back to the mine.
 Jack could still see in his mind’s eye, the scene at the post office. Old Joseph’s two outside fingers on his left hand had become frost bitten. Joseph was drunk.
 Lord that man could drink. I wonder where he got that bottle of plum brandy pop skull?…Roaring like a smelter! Yelling at me the whole time.-Gallows humor grabbed Jack.
  “Jackey lad, Got damned it, cut em off me before they kill me. Hell they are only fingers.” Joseph shouted.
     Jack remembered the old man’s hand. The fingers were swollen and black as two plump blood sausages. Within a day or two the rot would settle in. High fever a few days after that. Death to follow a day or so later. Jack and his asst mine foreman Thomas Parchone  an Italian miner from the Piedmont, carried the old Croatian over to the blacksmith’s work shop. They had the blacksmith heat up a piece of flat stock till it glowed white. They dragged a stool next to the anvil and sat Joseph down in it. They placed his black, swollen fingers on the anvil.
 Jack remembered calling the smith over to his side. He said, “Horace, grab a number #8 swedge wedge. I want it sharp enough to shave with. When you get it sharp, Thomas is going to hit it with that maul you have next to the anvil. While I hold it over Joseph’s fingers. When it is done, I want you to bring that piece of stock over here and we are going to burn the wound close.”
 Jack’s stomach gave a lurch with the thought-Cold steel, sitting on top of Joseph’s hot fevered fingers, then the quick snap of green twigs breaking, and the iron smell of spurting blood. Then that cat retching sound of hot metal burning flesh. His body lurched again. Jack realized it was not his memory that was jangling his body so…they had arrived at Beatty   -DS Baker