It now behooves me to state that, between the events of the last chapter and this, Nimrod and I heard the hum, the wail, and the shriek that make the song of the Westinghouse brake before we found ourselves deposited at the flourishing mining camp of Red Ridge in the Arizona Rockies, nine thousand feet in the air.

Did ever a tenderfoot escape from the mountains without at least having a try at making his or her fortune in a mine—gold one preferred? We, of course, had the chance of our lives, and who knows what might have happened if only the fat woman and the lean woman had not gotten jealous of each other, and thereby wrecked the company?

The gold is, or is not, in the fastnesses of the earth as before, but where, oh, where, is the lean woman of lineage and the fat woman of money? The lean woman had quality. She was the daughter of somebody who had done something, but, unlike Becky Sharp, she had not been successful in living richly in San Francisco on nothing a year. Nobody knows whose daughter the fat woman was, but in her very comfortable home in Kansas that had not mattered, and, besides, she had saved a few hundreds.

These two women had husbands, who had entered into a mining scheme together. The man from Frisco was a good-looking, well-educated, jovial fellow, with the purses of several rich friends to back him up, and with a great desire to replenish his purse with the yellow metal direct, rather than to acquire it by the sweat of his brow. He was many other things, but, to be brief, he was a promoter. The man from Kansas had the pride of the uneducated, and a little money, and was also not averse to getting rich fast.

Nimrod, the third partner, likewise encumbered with a wife on the spot, desired to make his everlasting fortune, retire from the painting of pictures and the making of books, and grub in the field of science and live happily ever after.

For two weeks we were all together at the only hotel at Cartersville, a hamlet of perhaps thirty souls. It took only two weeks to wreck the company. The mine was a mile and a half away, over a very up-and-down mountain road which on the first day the fat woman and I walked with our husbands, and which Mrs. Frisco and her husband had travelled in Mrs. Kansas' phaeton—the result of a little way Mrs. Frisco had of getting the best.

Three days of this calm appropriation of her carriage while she walked ruffled Mrs. Kansas' temper. When she heard a rumour that Mrs. Frisco had stated disdainfully to the landlady that there could be no thought of recognising Mrs. Kansas socially, but that she must be tolerated because of her money in the enterprise, her politeness grew frigid and the trouble began to brew.

While perfectly willing to watch the logomachy when it should arrive, I had no wish to take part. I was willing to make money, but not to make enemies, so Nimrod and I removed ourselves as much as possible from the Cartersville Hotel, took long walks and rides over the glorious Chihuahua Mountains, poked around the abandoned mines, spied out the deer and mountain lion and the ubiquitous coyote and all the indigenous beasts and birds of the air thereof. We usually managed to arrive at the mine when the partners and their wives were elsewhere.

The mine, our mine, was a long horizontal hole in the mountain, with a tiny leaf-choked stream trickling past the entrance, heavy timbers propping up the inert mass of dirt and stone just above our heads, piles of uninteresting rock dumped to one side, the "pay dirt." I had seen such things before, and they had said nothing to me. But this was our mine, our stream, our dump.

McCaffrey, the foreman, put rubber boots on me in the little smithy which formed a part of the entrance of the tunnel, and thus equipped I entered the tunnel. The day shift, represented by two dancing lights far off in the blackness, was preparing to blast.

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I advanced uncertainly, my own candle blinding me. Water trickled from the roof and walls of this rock-bound passage seven feet high and four feet wide. A stream of it flowed by the tiny tram track. The hollow sound of the mallet on the crowbar forcing its way into the stubborn wall grew louder as we approached, until we stood with the miners in a foot or so of water which showed yellow and shining in the flickering light of four candles. Then we went back to the smithy to wait the result of the blast.

There was a horrid jarring booming sound. The miners listened intently. McCaffrey said, "One." Another explosion in the tunnel followed—"Two." Another—"Three." Then a silence. "That's bad," said McCaffrey, shaking his head. "An unexploded cap."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"There were four charges and should have been four explosions. It's liable to go off when we go in there."

"Oh!" I said.

The miners waited a while for the fumes of the dynamite to be dissipated and kept me away from the tunnel mouth, saying:

"If you ever get a dynamite headache you will never want to come near the mine again. And, besides, that unexploded cap may do damage yet."

I went back to the smithy to wait, for it was the last of October, and snow in the mountains at ten thousand feet is cold. I attempted to sit down on a keg behind the little sheet-iron stove, which was nearly red hot.

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"You better not sit down on that kaig," said one of the men calmly, without pausing in his work.

"Why?"

"Well, it's dirty, and, besides, it's nitro-glycerine."

"Nitro-glycerine! Why is it in here, and so close to the stove? Won't it explode?" and I checked a desire to retreat in disorder.

"No, 't'ain't no danger, if it don't get too hot and ain't jarred. You see, it won't go off if it's too cold, so we keep a little in here and kind o' watch it."

The keg was within two feet of the stove. Suppose that a dog or something were to knock it over! But miners do not suppose.

Just then a tremendous explosion in the tunnel seemed to make the whole earth vibrate. It was followed by a rattling and crashing of rocks, which told us that the last cap had gone off and had done good work.

Half an hour later, when it was safe from dynamite fumes, I went back to our hole in the ground. Nimrod had left me, lured away by some fox tracks trailing up the mountain. The weird scene was too interesting for me to leave until the arrival of the fat and lean women (Mrs. Frisco had persuaded Mrs. Kansas to drive her over) caused me to remember that the parlour fire at the Cartersville Hotel must be very comfortable, and that it was a mile and a half of tiresome snow away.

Evidently the wives of my husband's partners had disagreed on the way, for the air was electric as they greeted me, and to avoid another tÊte-À-tÊte they at once turned to accompany me out of the tunnel. I was the last.

The scene was now properly set for a mining accident, so there was nothing for a self respecting tunnel to do but to accordingly, which it did. Just as the fat woman and the lean woman passed into the open air, and I was nearly at the mouth of the tunnel, it caused its roof to cave in so close behind me that, had I not instinctively rushed out, some of the flying stones, timbers, and dirt must have knocked me to the ground.

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As it was, I landed sprawling in the snow outside, sweeping the lean woman down with me. It was very like a dime novel. Three lone women who, for purposes of intensification, may be called enemies, staring with white faces at a wall of dirt, and trying to realise that a minute before it had been a black hole. And at the other end of that hole now were two men horribly imprisoned in a rock-walled tomb without air or food, perhaps dead. We could not tell how much of a cave-in it was.

The lean woman rushed for Mrs. Kansas' horse and wagon and went to alarm the hamlet. I dashed up the hill a quarter of a mile to awaken the night shift, who were in their cabin sleeping. And the fat woman at a safe distance wrung her hands and uttered exclamations of horror and ill judged advice to our departing forms.

Between the fright, the altitude, and the hill I had no breath left to speak with as I pounded on the door of the miner's hut. Mountaineers sleep lightly and do not make toilets, so it was barely ten minutes from the time of the cave-in when three men were working at the tunnel's mouth with pickaxes and shovels.

The tunnel had not meant to be malicious, but merely to do the proper thing (it had not even disturbed the nitro-glycerine in the smithy). Not much earth had fallen, and in less than an hour we heard the shouts of the imprisoned men; in two hours they crawled into the air unhurt, and soon were helping the others to shore up the treacherous entrance, so that such a stirring thing could not happen again.

There is not much more to tell. I believe that the tunnel is still there, boring its way into the heart of the mountain, where, perhaps, the lovely yellow gold is; but we no longer refer to it as ours, and Nimrod still has to work for our daily jam. For the insolence of Mrs. Frisco in leaving Mrs. Kansas stranded in the snow and obliging her to walk home on the cave-in day developed the brewing storm into such proportions that the next day their husbands did not speak as we gathered round the morning coffee. And the Kansases moved away into one of the other five houses in Cartersville. Mr. Kansas was not "going to see his wife insulted by an upstart—not he: he'd soon show them," and he did so effectively that the Red Ridge Mining Company was soon no more. We docketed our golden dreams 'unusable,' stowed them away, and returned with tranquil minds, if lighter purse, to milder and slower ways of getting rich.

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