on most
anything for a day or two."

The storekeeper looked at him gratefully and then lowered his eyes
again. He turned away from them with a long sigh.

"Nope," he said. "Much obliged. I'll send my man up to-morrow.
Business keeps a-goin' on just the same, no matter who passes out. If
you or me died to-night, the whole world would just keep joggin'
along. I'll send up."

They turned and walked out, feeling that anything they could say would
be useless, and sound hollow, and they did not speak until they were
some distance farther up the street.

"He's hard hit, poor cuss!" Bill said. "Wonder what the rest of it
was. Lets go on up toward the High Light. Seems as if it must have
been pretty bad. What's the commotion down there?"

Ahead of them they saw men clustering toward a central point, and
others who had been in the street hurrying forward to be absorbed into
the group. They quickened their steps a trifle, speculating as to
whether it could mean a brawl, or something relating to the disaster
of which they had just learned. It proved the latter. A man was
standing in the center of the gathering crowd with the reins of a
tired horse hanging loosely over his arm. He was talking to the
doctor, who was asking him questions.

"No," Bill and Dick heard him say as they crowded into the group,
"there ain't nothin' you can do, Doc. It's all over with 'em. I was
there until quite late. God! It's awful!"

"Anybody get out at all?" someone asked.

"No. That's a cinch. You see they were driving back in and feeling for
the ledge. Blocking out, I think. Pretty lean ore, over there, you
know. So there was just one drift away from the shaft, and it was in
that she caved."

There was a moment's silence and then a half-dozen questions asked
almost in the same moment. The man turned first to one and then to
another as if striving to decide which query should be answered first,
and shook his head hopelessly.

"They didn't have a chance," he asserted. "It happened three days ago,
as you all know. They sent over to Arrapahoe and all the boys over
there went and volunteered. They worked just as many men as could get
into the drift at a time, and they spelled each other in half-hour
shifts, so's every man could do his best. They hadn't got in twenty
feet before they saw that she was bad. Seemed as if the whole drift
had been wiped out. It was as solid as rock in place--just as if the
whole mountain had slipped!"

"Did you g