Spirit of the Valley (23 page)

“God bless you,” the woman said. The tears fell in a steady stream down her face and her nose ran, and she unceremoniously wiped her face with her sleeve. She placed the cloth inches from her boy's mouth and nose.

Lizzie squatted before her, wishing she could do something more to help. “Is he your son?”

The woman nodded. “My Andrew. Fifteen years old.” She looked up at Lizzie. “Why did this have to happen?”

“I don't know.” Lizzie's eyes filled. “I'm so sorry.”

“Lizzie,” Charity called urgently.

Lizzie saw her pointing to someone else in need and rose to her feet. She had a job to do.

Chapter Thirty-Six

The first two volunteers to go into the hole were miners, one who had not worked that day and who had a brother still unaccounted for, and one who'd left early, feeling ill. It was the smell, he said. They'd drilled into something bad, he reported. “We plugged it and I went to the surface for air and to find Willie or Jim to tell them.”

From his account, the approximate place of the explosion became clear to Willie, who adjusted the sites where they were digging. The second lift wouldn't operate because it kept hitting rock, so their hopes were all riding on the makeshift platform. A dozen men lowered it slowly while listening for the men on the lift to yell when they came to an opening.

“It seems wrong, them wearing flames in their hats,” someone commented. “I mean the place blew. What's to say it won't blow again?”

“Shut it,” someone growled. “That ain't helpin'.”

Lower and lower the platform went. They'd lowered a hundred feet of rope, at least.

“Shouldn't they be there by now?” Sam asked Willie.

“Way might have been blocked,” Willie said with a shake of his head. “That blast, the way everything shook, no telling how many cave-ins there were.”

Lower and lower. They'd gone two hundred feet. Two hundred and fifty. Three hundred.

Howerton walked to the edge and looked down, but the dark had swallowed everything except two faint lights. “You all right in there?” he shouted.

Silence.

“Can you hear me?” he yelled. “Potts, Flagg! Can you hear me?”

Silence.

Howerton stuck up his hand. “Pull them up.”

“And . . . heave, ho,” the lead man chanted. Each
heave
was a pull, each
ho
a hand moving forward to grab the rope, until the platform came back into view with the men lying on it, unconscious. They were quickly pulled off and Charity and Doc Simmons moved in to tend them. The men were white-faced, their breathing shallow, but Charity looked at her husband with a solemn nod, meaning they would revive. “No one can go down there yet,” she said regretfully.

Within minutes, smelling salts revived the men, although they were disoriented. It was now fully dark, the only light coming from a campfire some twenty-five yards away. Even the cloudy sky seemed pitted against them. There was probably no getting to the survivors tonight—if indeed there were any survivors. Still, few people were willing to leave and so a second and then a third campfire were started and people settled in around them. Blankets were passed around and a hearty stew was served by cooks from the Triple H, the Martin-Medlin farm, and others. Even cooks from Wiley's. Men continued digging by torchlight, Tommy among them.

Many of the dead had been taken home in anguished processions. There were sixteen casualties so far, including all but one of the breaker boys on duty, and he was so badly burned, it was only a matter of time. The wooden breaker, the crudely constructed structure the boys toiled in, had been directly above the initial explosion. With only one egress, there had been no chance of escape, and nine boys between the ages of ten and fifteen had burned alive.

The other seven deceased had been on the lift at the time of the explosion. The force of the blast was of such magnitude, four of the men died upon impact. The others had succumbed to blood loss. Five men on the lift had survived, although one was still unconscious.

As it grew late, Charity Howerton settled next to her husband to rest. She was exhausted, but she doubted the night would bring much sleep. It wasn't the sound of the men working; that had become mere background noise. Nor was it being uncomfortable, because she was weary enough to sleep despite it. It was the spirits of the dead still hovering among them. Gregory's presence was a comfort. He was the strongest, most caring man she knew, much more so than people knew. Now, beneath the blanket, he discreetly massaged her back in the places he knew she needed it.

At another fire, April May stroked Lizzie's hair after coaxing her to lie down and get some rest. Lizzie couldn't stop thinking of the boys who'd died. They'd been children. And the pain they'd endured. Tears filled her eyes and she shut them and squeezed the bridge of her nose. There was too much pain and sorrow in the world and too much injustice.

“Tomorrow is another day, you know,” April May said quietly. “We have to have faith.”

Spoken like Cessie, Lizzie thought. Her heart felt wrenched in a dozen different ways. There was too much sorrow, it was true, but there was also love and compassion and kindness. One only had to look at the people who'd come to help rescue the miners. Many of them didn't know anyone below. They just wanted to help and were willing to risk their lives to do it. And Cessie and April May. They had become family, dearer to her than anyone other than her children and Jeremy. “He asked me to marry him,” she said softly.

“He did?” April May said, knowing full well she meant Jeremy. She chuckled. “Well, good for him.”

“I said it was too soon.”

“It was quick. 'Course, that doesn't necessarily mean too soon.”

“I love him.”

“I know, honey. We figured that out a little while back.”

Lizzie sat up. “What if he's—”

“If the worst has happened, we'll have to face it. But not till then. Not until then.”

Lizzie nodded and hugged her blanket closer.

 

 

Tommy stared at the second lift. They'd gotten it to go down ten or twelve yards, but then it got hung up. “You think there's a way to get underneath it?” he asked the men around him.

“If we could get the cage out,” someone said.

“That's a good idea,” Wood seconded.

With agreement and general excitement, the men worked to hoist, maneuver and disengage the cage from the shaft so it would be out of their way. The effort drew the attention of several men working in other places, who came over to assist. Once the car was outside the shaft, men wearing lit miners' hats were lowered into the shaft on rope lariats to see what could be done. The lights from the hats illuminated black walls and tin guide panels for the wire ropes.

The air felt cooler as they went lower and it smelled damp, but not noxious like the other lift shaft. The lifts were at least a quarter mile apart, the second farther from the site of the explosion.

The blockage, when they reached it, was not complete. Some of the rock was moveable. They shouted the news up to the surface and were almost instantly rewarded by the sound of banging, not from above, but from below. They joyfully shouted up the news and banged back with the picks they carried.

 

 

Jeremy's light barely registered. He knew it was because there was less air now. He closed his eyes, aware that death loomed. It wasn't so bad. He'd simply go to sleep and not wake up. It wasn't so bad, except he wouldn't have a life with Lizzie.

Elizabeth
, he mouthed, like a prayer.

It didn't matter that her name had been something different. She was Lizzie now. She was his Lizzie now. She would have been his wife.

He floated in darkness and yet was weighted down by it. His father was there, trying to explain something to him.
A life for a life,
the older man said sadly.
There was never any choice but this.

Jeremy looked away and saw Jenny admiring the gold pocket watch he'd won from Morrison. “It's time,” she said tenderly, looking up at him.

He didn't want it to be time. “I just found her.”

Jenny held up one of the strange-looking keys he'd found in the snuff box. “If you do it right, you can turn back time,” she said as she popped open the watch and found the keyhole.

He frowned in confusion, because he hadn't realized there was a keyhole in the watch. How could there be a keyhole? And turn back time? That wasn't really possible. Was it?

“It is,” she assured him. “That's how I came back.”

He was trying to understand the message in her words, because there was a message, but banging started and it was distracting.

“Maybe you should let them in,” Jenny suggested, as she went back to directing her full attention to the watch and key.

“She's right,” their father said as he stepped into a pool of light. “Go,” he said with a gesture beyond where Jeremy stood. “You say you want to live, so go.”

A confused Jeremy turned to see what they were talking about and jerked awake, blinking into the vast darkness. He struggled to sit up, fighting against dizziness and disorientation. But there
was
banging. And shouting.

“Hey,” men called. “We're here! We're here!”

This was not a dream. Others were alive and had air enough to shout. He began working out the logistics of where he was and where the voices were coming from. With his air supply all but depleted, he had nothing to lose, and so he moved to the curtain, tore it off, and crawled toward the noise. With every movement, he thought
Lizzie.
He thought her name, he thought of her face, he thought of lying next to her again. She was worth the effort, worth the pain.

 

 

It was an awkward operation—the platform they'd built for the main lift had been moved to the secondary one, and men went back and forth, loading all the rock they could onto the lift, which was then hoisted to the surface to be unloaded. Each trip was powered by a line of men, until horses were brought to speed up the process. Even so, the rock had to be unloaded in a bucket brigade formation, but hearing the voices of men below had lent the rescuers stamina and resolve. Those who weren't working had drawn close, to watch and step in when needed.

Below, trapped miners were also working to remove the blockage. Six men, fortunate to have been far enough from the explosion to survive, had congregated and worked their way to the back lift, only to find it blocked by a cave-in. Al Trachenburg, Zach Rogers, Benjamin Daly, Clifton Worrell, John Dix, and Davey Hounshel wasted no time in getting to work on the rock. Being sealed off at both ends as they were, they knew there was a limit to the air supply, not to mention their meager water supply. They knew their only hope was to get the shaft cleared.

It was after midnight when a wide enough opening had been created that the miners could scramble through, one at a time. With the appearance of each freed man, there were tears of joy, relief, sorrow, and cries of gratitude.

“Did you see anyone else down there?” someone asked the first man up when he'd caught his breath. “Or hear anything? Besides your group?”

Zach shook his head. “We were cut off,” he replied. “Cave-ins on both sides. Knew the lift was our only hope.”

As the doctors tended each man, Lizzie stood nearby, hugging herself for warmth. She was cold through and through, mostly from fear. She felt each and every second ticking by like a small eternity.

“It's still the best place to dig in and make a new start,” Hawk said. “They squeezed out, we can squeeze in and tunnel from there.”

There were nods of agreement before new volunteers started down, but no more survivors were found. By the early hours of morning, the operation stopped in order for everyone to get much-needed rest.

 

 

Jeremy's light was gone. The lamp had run out of fuel, either oil or oxygen or both. He'd come to a massive obstruction caused by a cave-in, but he lacked the strength to search for an opening. He'd reached a wall, figuratively and literally. There had been sound from the far side, but it had gone silent. Men had been there but must have moved on, leaving him to die.

He collapsed against the seemingly impenetrable blockage and felt a tickle of air on his cheek. Frantically, he twisted around and put his mouth and nose near the soft flow, cupping his hand around it.
Air.
He drew it in to his starved lungs as best he could. It was difficult not to let panic take over, but he wanted to live. That meant staying calm and hoping against hope that someone was looking for him.
Please, please God
, let someone be looking.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

The sky grayed as dawn approached and people stirred to life. Cooking and tasks began. A volunteer went down the main shaft and came back up fully conscious, although nauseated by the odor. With renewed enthusiasm, rescue efforts began anew.

Victory and defeat came one after another. Men were found—but all were dead, having suffocated. Shortly afterward a survivor was found, although he was unconscious. Slowly, tunnels were made and men were pulled out with cuts, bruises, and broken bones. Some had been crushed. More men were dead than alive, but the hope of survivors drove the effort.

At ground level, corpses were laid out one next to another in a long row. Among them was a thin boy of fourteen named Timmy Wayne.

“Lizzie,” April May called with great urgency.

Lizzie stood from cleaning a man's open sores and looked around to see where April May was motioning. Charity and Doc Simmons hovered over a man they'd just pulled from the second lift. Lizzie's heart gave a painful lurch and she started forward, breaking into a run midway. She couldn't yet see the man because so many people surrounded him, but she knew they'd found Jeremy. She felt it.
Please, God, let him be alive.

She pushed through the group and dropped to her knees at his side. Her jaw went lax and she uttered a terrible sound because, after all the waiting and worrying and praying, he was dead. He was deathly pale, covered in gray ash and soot, his eyes slightly open. Then his eyes moved—his gaze fastened on hers. She gasped, blinked tears away, and saw his chest move. She cried out and threw herself over him. “You're alive, you're alive, you're alive.” She couldn't stop saying it.

Jeremy felt hot tears slide from his eyes and trail down the sides of his face. His fingers circled her waist.

Lizzie pulled back to look at him more closely. He was conscious, breathing, no broken bones or head injury that she could see. She took his face in her hands. “Thank God. Oh, thank God.”

He looked around at the many faces around him, most of whom had tears in their eyes, and knew it was a good day to be alive.