Chapter 6
The only thing happening at the mine when they got there was that men were mulling around the entrance, not too far from where the office stood. The auxiliary tunnel exit was farther to the east, around the other side of the ridge. The foreman of the crew at the mine – a man name McCreary who had been there for at least 10 years – was the first to come to the Barkleys and Tolman. He knew Jarrod and Nick pretty well, but did not really know Tolman yet.
"Jarrod, Nick," he said in greeting. "Pascal is with the inspector – they went in through the auxiliary tunnel."
Pascal was the manager of the mine operation, a man who had also been there for several years.
"Is anybody in this main shaft right now?" Tolman asked.
"Somebody who came with the inspector," McCreary said.
The Barkleys and Tolman all dismounted and hitched their horses to the hitching rail outside the office. As they were turning toward the mine entrance, a man came out, a young fellow who was now covered with dust and dirt. Pascal waved him over, and he came. "I'd shake hands, but you don't want to get dirty yet," the young man said. "My name is Don Fairweather. I'm Caldwell's assistant."
Caldwell was the inspector, the same one who had examined the mine before the sale. Tolman introduced himself and the Barkleys. Fairweather said Caldwell and Pascal were still in the auxiliary tunnel as far as he knew, but even as he said it, the two men appeared on the road that led around to that tunnel. They too were full of dust and dirt. Pascal led the way over to the group of newcomers as soon as spotted them.
"Jarrod, Nick," Pascal said in greeting. "You know Jack Caldwell."
The men all greeted each other with nods.
"What have you found out so far?" Jarrod asked.
Pascal nodded toward the office building. "Let's talk inside. The coffee's hot."
Seven men went into the building together. Pascal immediately started pouring coffee, but Jarrod, Nick and Tolman all declined. There were not enough chairs for everyone to sit down, so no one did.
Jarrod repeated his question. Caldwell said, "The cave in is about fifty feet in through the main shaft, where one of the braces broke. Now, I inspected every brace in that shaft not two weeks ago, and that one was fine, but now there's a splintered piece of it sticking out of the rock pile."
"Splintered?" Nick asked. "Like it just broke?"
"I think it had help breaking," Caldwell said, and as soon as everyone else looked alarmed, he held his hand up. "I'm not saying it was intentional. I'm not accusing anybody of sabotage or anything else like that. I can't tell until I get a look at the rail that's under the rock, but it could be an ore cart ran into it or something like that. It could be it was hit repeatedly over the years, or it could be it had some defect that wasn't visible."
"How's the rest of the tunnel?" Tolman asked.
"On both sides of the rockpile, it looks good, well supported," Caldwell said.
"But it looked that way when you inspected it before the sale," Nick said.
"It did," Caldwell agreed. "In any event, the cave in appears to have blocked only eight or ten feet of the tunnel, and it looks safe to get men in there to clear it, but we'll have to get more bracing up to support the area on this side of it and the other side, or more could come down."
"We can get right on it, as soon as my engineer arrives," Pascal said.
"Then we need to start talking about money," Tolman said, and looked at the Barkley brothers.
Caldwell said, "I'll have my bill ready by tomorrow. Your engineer will probably want to be paid up front."
"Like I said," Tolman said to the Barkley brothers.
Jarrod said, "Dwight, we certainly made no guarantees when the mine was sold to your group. We hired Mr. Caldwell together, by mutual agreement, and we split the cost, but once we closed the sale, we stopped being responsible for any change in condition at the mine. You know that."
"I know one day between closing and a cave in is awfully odd," Tolman said.
"You gentlemen can sort that all out," Caldwell said. "I don't care who pays me, but I expect to be paid promptly for my work. I'll be available to your engineer and to examine the work on whatever schedule he wants, but I want a commitment as to who's going to pay me."
"Let's take it one step at a time," Jarrod said. "Jack, can you make out a bill for what you've done so far on this inspection today?"
Caldwell nodded. "You'll have it by tomorrow."
"Dwight," Jarrod said, "why don't we agree to this one step so far? We'll split the bill Jack gives us for his work today with your group 50-50 – with no admission of responsibility for anything else by either you or us. We can go back to town and talk about the rest – step two, the engineer's costs, and then anything more we need to discuss."
"Like loss of revenue because of the work stoppage," Tolman said quickly.
"Let's just talk about everything back in town," Jarrod said. "These gentlemen here don't need to be involved in how we settle the costs out. Let's leave them to get the mine open again."
Tolman gave Jarrod a hard look, and Jarrod gave it right back, Nick joining in. Tolman finally said, "All right, we split the cost of Jack's bill for his work today, but nothing more, not yet. I'll need to talk to my partners tonight before we can negotiate on the costs."
"The engineer will be here tomorrow, and he'll probably want upfront money," Pascal said.
"I'll talk to my partners tonight," Tolman said. "Then the Barkleys and I can talk in the morning. The engineer's costs and the rest of Jack's bill for whatever other work he does will be the first thing we talk about."
Jarrod nodded.
Pascal noted that he wasn't going to let any work start on clearing the cave in until the engineer okayed it. Everyone agreed that was appropriate. The partners and the Barkleys also agreed to share payment for the engineer to begin his work the next day, just because they knew it was the only way to get it started.
"One thing is for sure," Jarrod said. "Nobody here wants this mine shut down any longer than it has to be – not even the Barkleys, even though we have no more interest in it." He held his hand out to Tolman. "We'll make a good faith effort to get the mine operating as quickly as possible."
Tolman looked hesitant, which bothered Nick more than it bothered Jarrod. But he shook Jarrod's hand.
Tolman wanted to stay and talk to the men who were now his employees, not the Barkleys. Jarrod and Nick acquiesced and headed back to town without him. They weren't very far out of the camp, riding side by side, before Nick said, "Tolman's gonna want us to pay for everything, you know."
"I know," Jarrod said. "In his shoes, we'd probably want the same thing. To have something like this go wrong one day after settlement is awfully suspicious."
"So you think there might be some sabotage involved?" Nick asked.
Jarrod heaved a sigh. "No. Not until we get a better picture of what happened. But I know darned good and well that once they start clearing that cave in away, they're gonna be looking harder at the reason it happened than they can look at it right now."
They didn't talk much the rest of the way into town, but as they headed toward the livery stable, they passed Red's saloon near the train depot. Jarrod gave it a long look, then stopped his horse in the street. Nick stopped, looked at him, saw him looking, and then saw him dismount.
Jarrod handed Nick the reins to his horse. "Take care of this for me, Nick, will you? I'll see you back at the hotel in about half an hour."
Nick took the reins. Jarrod walked over to Red's saloon without even looking Nick's way – without even taking his eyes off the saloon. Nick could see why. Barbary Red was looking out of the window toward them.