e his
stirrups brushed against those in the front ranks, and then the
gathering began to twist backward and forward, to disintegrate, to
spread itself outward and up the street of the camp. It talked in a
subdued way as it went. There were but few in it who did not know and
picture the meaning of all that had been imparted by the courier--the
desperate alarm, the haggard, sobbing women in front of a hoist, the
relays of men who were ready to descend and beat hammer on steel and
tear madly at slow-yielding rock, the calls for a rest while
carpenters hastily propped up tottering roofs and walls, the
occasional warning shouts when men fell back to watch other huge
masses of rock fall into the black drift, and the instants when some
rescuer, overwrought, thought he heard sounds of "rock telegraphing"
and bade the others pause and listen. There were those among the men
on the street who had seen the desperate, melancholy conclusions, when
hope, flaming ever more feebly, guttered out as a burned candle and
died. There were those among them who had been in those black holes of
despair and been rescued, to carry scars of the body for life, but
recklessly forget the scars of the mind, the horrors of despair.
Comparative strangers to the camp as were the two men of the Cross,
they appreciated the full meaning of the blow; for doubtless there was
scarcely a man around them who had not known some of those who
perished in that terrible, lingering agony. Besides they were miners
all.

"Pretty tough luck, isn't it?"

They found themselves confronted by the doctor, who had turned at the
sound of their voices as they resumed conversation.

"We just learned of it," Dick answered, "and know scarcely anything
whatever of it, save what we just heard."

The doctor shook his head.

"It has been almost the sole topic here for the last two days," he
said. "We heard of it after it was too late for any of us to be of
use. I started over, but got word from a confrere of mine from a camp
farther east, that there were already four doctors on the spot and
that I need not come unless they called for me. Even then they were
hopeless. Most of the men of the Blackbird were good men, too. The
kind that have families, and are steady; but I suppose from what I
hear they were nearly all fellows who have been idle for some time, or
have just moved into the district, so probably they had nothing much
to leave in the way of support--for those left behind