by P J Skinner
‘Wow,’ said Sam. ‘I didn’t know these stamp mills still existed.’
‘All the mines around here have a stamp mill. They are cheap and easy to make and run,’ said Javier.
‘What happens to the crushed material?’
‘They pan it down and then add mercury to adsorb the free gold.’
‘There must be a lot of gold.’
‘There is. Look.’ Javier bent down and picked up a random piece of quartz which he handed to Sam. Assuming he was joking, she gave it a cursory glance and then fumbled for her hand lens in the pocket of her khaki trousers. A fine ribbon of gold ran in the border between the quartz vein and the wall rock.
‘Is all the material like this?’ she asked.
‘They say it runs at one thousand grammes a tonne in some places,’ said Javier.
‘A kilo of gold per tonne. Holy shit! How do they extract it from the mercury?’
Napoleon smiled. ‘We burn the mercury off with a blow torch. That was my job for two years.’
Sam smiled back but her real reaction was profound shock. No wonder they called him Zombie. The poor boy was walking dead. The mercury fumes were pure poison and his lungs would eventually give out. That’s why he was skeletal.
‘We’re lucky to have you with us now,’ she said, and he lowered his eyes, shuffling his feet.
‘Do you want to go into the mine?’ said Javier.
‘Aren’t they working today?’ said Sam.
‘Not here, they have another mine in the artisanal town over the hill which they are exploiting right now. They agreed to let us do a year of exploration before coming back to work this mine.’
‘Is there light inside?’
‘Zombie can switch on the generator,’ said Javier.
There was no way she was calling him Zombie.
The initial stretch of the adit leading into the mine was straight and flat enough to contain steel tracks on which to run the ore carts. Several mothballed carts were stored upside down on a wooden platform under a zinc-roofed lean-to on the ground outside the entrance. A layer of rust had erased any paint from their sides but thick grease covered their wheels.
Dim yellow bulbs hung down from a length of wire running along the roof of the adit, the section joins covered in masking tape.
‘Don’t touch the wire,’ said Javier.
‘I wasn’t planning on it,’ said Sam, keeping her head low.
As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she noticed that the walls were made of sturdy volcanic rock and she relaxed. There were faults running through the rocks which had shifted the strata up and down. Water ran from the surface through these fractures into the mine. A cold drop fell down Sam’s neck and she squeaked.
‘Wow, that water’s freezing,’ she said.
‘It’s clean enough to drink after being filtered through the rocks,’ said Javier, and he threw his head back with his mouth open catching a trickle of water in it.
‘I’ll take your word for it.’
As they progressed further into the mine, the adit narrowed and it was necessary to stoop in places. The string of light bulbs petered out.
‘Do you have a torch?’ said Javier. ‘The most interesting part of the mine is up ahead.’
Sam took out her windup torch which she had been dying to try. She wound the handle with vigour.
‘What’s that?’
‘Oh, it’s a torch that my father gave me to keep in my rucksack in case the batteries run out on my normal one. It doesn’t need batteries but you have to wind it for a full minute to get a good result.’
‘That’s amazing. You will have to give it to me when you leave.’
Was that a dig? Sam decided to ignore it. There was no point reacting to imagined slights at this early stage.
As they continue upslope, numerous crosscuts ran at right angles to the tunnel. Some of them extended up and down for several metres where the miners had followed the vertical vein as far as possible. Several caverns still contained the rickety wooden scaffolding used to access the gold-bearing material.
Sam shivered as the damp penetrated her clothes. The flickering bulbs did not allow her to see the geology clearly and the lack of support on some sections of the tunnel’s roof made her nervous. Another unstable rabbit warren waiting for the slightest tremor to reseal itself.
‘How far do the tunnels go?’ she said.
‘Kilometres. We haven’t gone to the end. There’s only so far you can carry out sacks of rock on your back along these narrow rat holes.’
‘Do we have a surveyor on site?’
‘We have hired a guy from Arboleda in the past when we need one.’
‘Can you get him up here for me?’
‘Sure, we’ll send one of the boys with a message after lunch. How long will he be needed?’
‘At least a month, probably two. He can take the weekends off if he lives in the village.’
‘I’ll let him know.’
‘Okay, I’ve seen enough for now. Can we go to the core shed?’
‘Lunch is at twelve o’clock. Why don’t you eat first and then you can spend the afternoon down there?’
Sam strolled back to the canteen with Napoleon. He kept his head down and did not look at her as if he was embarrassed to be with the boss.
‘What’s the artisanal town like?’ said Sam.
‘Dirty, dangerous, full of desperate people. You shouldn’t go there. You might not come back.’
‘Have you worked there?’
He nodded but did not answer, a clear signal that he did not want to talk about it. There was plenty of time to find out. Sam let it ride.
Before going down to the core shed, Sam peeped into the shower cubicle. It looked clean. There were hooks for hanging her clothes and a concrete floor with a drain in the middle.
‘Would you like me to heat water for you tonight? I can do it in one of the large saucepans. That should give you enough for a decent wash. If you had smaller feet, you could stand in it.’ said Selma, looking pointedly at Sam’s large boots. ‘Do you have flip flops? You should wear them if you want to avoid infections although I don’t suppose once will be a problem.’
‘No, I don’t have any, but I wanted to see if I could get a new, thicker mattress for my bed, so perhaps we could do a quick list. One of the boys has to go down to Arboleda to speak with the surveyor anyway so perhaps he could buy the supplies while he is down there.’ said Sam. ‘The water would be great. I’ll have a wash after dinner when the men have gone to their bunk house.’
The core shed was perched on the end of the ridge parallel to that holding the accommodation. It was newly built and contained boxes of core piled five high on shelves made of two-inch beams. The beams had been oiled allowing the wooden core boxes to slide out with relative ease.
Nevertheless, Sam struggled to extract one from its alcove. Javier stood watching, his arms folded, a sneer on his face. She did not ask for help even though her sinews were screaming, staggering over to the display table and plonking the box down with as much dignity as she could muster. She wiped her hands on her trousers and grabbed a spray bottle, squirting water onto the core to illuminate the textures of the rock.
The cold hard rock came alive under the water and yielded its secrets to her hand lens. The massive pressures and temperatures which had moulded the rocks and left their mark on the crystals always fascinated Sam. Time stood still as she search for signs of the power of the earth. The lack of metamorphic fluids was perturbing. The rock looked fresh despite intense fracturing. This did not bode well for a large low-grade deposit. If metamorphic fluids had not penetrated the rock it was unlikely to contain any gold.
Neither the rain on the roof, nor the arrival of Rhett disturbed her concentration. When she finally looked up, he was standing in the doorway smoking a cigarette looking out over the green expanse below them.
‘You finished then? We’re going to play football,’ he said. ‘Wanna come?’
‘
Football?’ said Sam.
‘Yes. There is a pitch below the core shed,’ said Javier.
‘I don’t understand. Isn’t it too steep to play football here?’
‘Come down and see.’
Sam followed Javier and Rhett along a steep narrow path which didn’t exactly inspire confidence but she held her tongue. They rounded the corner into the next small valley and to her surprise, there was a flat piece of land which emerged at right angles from the narrow part of the valley and ended in a steep wall between the two ridges like a dam with no water.
As they stepped onto it, Sam was struck by how unnaturally flat the area was. She dug the toe of her boot into the surface and bent down to look at the result. Black sand shimmered on the leather. It was a pond containing the milled remains of the rocks that had been excavated over many years to extract their golden content.
‘Wow. A tailings pond. I thought all the waste from the Denver stamp mill had escaped down the valley. Has it been sampled?’
‘I’ve no idea. Why would anyone sample it? Isn’t it waste rock?’
‘Waste rock from a primitive stamp mill tends to contain decent amounts of recoverable gold. A crude operation like the one above can lose eighty percent of the gold.’
‘You mean free gold?’
‘In every sense of the word. There are almost no costs involved in processing tailings with fine gold flakes in it. All you need is a Nelson concentrator and Bob’s your uncle.’
‘I do have an uncle Bob as it happens, and I’m pretty sure there’s a Nelson in the laboratory in Calderon.’
‘How come?’
‘Maclean bought it from a guy who had an alluvial mine that went bankrupt.’
‘Well, there you are then. Almost free gold. Shall we play?’
‘You’re playing?’
‘You didn’t think I was going to stand here and applaud, did you?’
‘No, I guess not.’
By the time they dragged themselves back up the hill to the accommodation buildings, Sam and the other footballers were panting with hunger. Selma had prepared a thick potato soup and a beef stew with rice which was gobbled up in silence. When the others had gone, Sam and Rhett sat sipping tea while Selma heated water for Sam’s shower.
‘Do you have a man in your life?’ said Rhett, out of the blue.
Sam was caught off guard by his direct question.
‘Um, no. Not right now,’ she said, blushing and fiddling with her cup. Rhett nodded as if she had confirmed his opinion.
‘I’m not surprised. You intimidate men.’
‘What? No, I don’t. I like men.’
‘Come on, get real. How is any man going to get past all the Indiana Jones, I can do it on my own, façade? You need to be more feminine.’
Looking for a suitable retort, Sam bit her lip. A feeling of hurt and misery threatened to overwhelm her. Don’t let him get to you. He’s probing for a weakness. Finally, she looked him in the eye.
‘Lots of men like me. Just because you want women to be like Stepford wives doesn’t mean I have to conform to your idea of femininity. This is my job and I’m good at it. I don’t have time to put on makeup at dawn and high heels get stuck in the mud. You should grow up.’
Rhett laughed, enjoying her distress.
‘There. Right there,’ he said. ‘That’s why you are alone.’
Sam stood up and marched into the shower, slamming the door so hard that a fat spider fell from the ceiling, scrabbling to get away on the smooth concrete floor. She stood in the cubicle, her chest heaving, trying not to cry. I can’t win. Nothing I ever do is good enough. If I want a job, I’m a woman. If I want a man, I’m a geologist.
Tears mingled with the water she tipped onto her head and she tried to scrub away his barbed comments. Slowly she regained control over her emotions. Who is he anyway to tell me who I am? Grow up Sam. He’s a dinosaur. There will always be people like him, living in the past, resenting women’s progress.
But it hurt.
Chapter VI
When Rhett came down to breakfast the next day, Sam was ready.
‘You still here?’ she said. ‘I don’t need a babysitter.’
‘I’m leaving this morning. Anyway, you’re stuck with me once a month. Amanda wants me to come and collect the samples for analysis. The logistics are easier if we travel together. And she wants me to keep an eye on your progress.’
‘Because I’m not a man? You made it quite clear last night that I’m pretty close.’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘Didn’t you?’
Sam sat down with her back to him at the geologists’ table.
‘What’s up,’ said one, in Spanish.
‘Oh, nothing. Señor Rhett is from the Stone Age.’
They all looked at him and laughed. A cheap shot but Sam felt better. Bastard deserves it.
Later that morning, a tiny man came into view, trotting beside a mule carrying a rolled-up mattress with what looked like a tripod in the middle. On the other side was a hessian sack full of vegetables for Selma. The man carried a wooden box strapped to his back swaddled in foam strips. Javier and Sam went outside to greet him.
‘Engineer, welcome back,’ said Javier. ‘This is Sam Harris. She’s the new boss up here.’
‘It’s an honour to meet you, madam. Galo Martin at your service.’
‘The honour is mine. Call me Sam, please.’
Galo Martin was even smaller close up. He had greasy black hair and a boxer’s nose that did not go with his neat slim body. He wore an embroidered waistcoat over moleskin trousers and leather riding boots. Underneath his battered nose he had a waxed moustache with curled tips. If he had worn a tiara, he could not have looked more out of place.
‘Shall we go inside?’ he said, his lively eyes flickering over Sam in much the way hers had done over him.
Sam and Galo went into the canteen. Javier did not come with them as he had zero interest in geology. Galo unfolded a map of the mine and camp site with neat contours and adit entrances marked on it. He spread it out on the table so that they could see it better. The tailings pond was clearly indicated, as were all the buildings on site. Galo Martin hopped up on one of the benches so that he could look down on the image.
‘Did you draw this map?’ said Sam.
‘Yes, this is my handy work.’ He twirled his moustache.
‘It’s wonderful. I think I saw another one of your maps in Calderon. The geology one?’
‘Yes, that’s mine. I worked with the geologists to put all their surface data on it.’
‘I noticed that we don’t have any cross sections of the geology. I presume we don’t have enough information.’
‘The information is available in the adits, but I wasn’t asked to map them yet.’
‘It’s an essential part of the puzzle, as far as I’m concerned. That’s why I want to make a three-dimensional map of the tunnel complex. Is it feasible to carry out with your equipment?’
She cast a doubtful glance at the old wooden box on the table. Galo drew himself up to his full height.
‘She may be old, but Ester’s still got it in her,’ he said, caressing the grain of the box which was holding down one end of the plan. ‘We can map out the three main levels in plan and then plot out some cross sections every fifty metres using the drilling to fill in the geology.’
‘You mean we’ll have a block model of the deposit? That would be great.’
‘Yes, we draw the cross sections and plans onto acetate sheets and make a frame to hold them. You’ll be able to turn it around and look at it from all angles.’
‘Wow. How fantastic. When can you start?’
Galo shrugged.
‘I’ve got nothing lined up right now. Is today okay?’
‘Better than okay. I’d like to come with you and learn how to operate Ester, if that’s all right with you.’
‘No problem. I’ll need an assistant too.’
Sam didn’t hesi
tate.
‘Napoleon’s a good lad. I’ll get him to help.’
Javier tutted behind them. ‘Don’t know why you would bother. Zombie doesn’t need any training. He’ll be dead soon.’
‘Please don’t call him that, and give him some new boots. His are falling to pieces,’ said Sam.
Javier grunted. ‘A waste of good boots if you ask me,’ he said, but Sam’s glare sent him sloping off to the storeroom.
What Javier hadn’t grasped was that Sam had selected Napoleon precisely because he hadn’t got long to live. The equipment was almost obsolete and she didn’t want the other men wasting their time training on it when they could be learning something more useful. Being Sam, she had also done it to be kind and make Napoleon feel valued. She didn’t lose anything by it so everyone was happy, except Javier.
Napoleon turned up to the adit entrance in his new boots, a big smile on his face. Galo Martin shook his hand and asked him a couple of questions. The answers seemed to satisfy him and soon they were setting up the theodolite at the adit entrance.
When Galo had removed the ancient instrument from its box, Sam photographed it as if it was an antique. It was unlikely that she would ever work with one again and she intended to take full advantage. Modern theodolites measured distances using a laser, but this old one relied on line of sight.
The simplicity of the method for measuring the tunnel’s dimensions was startling. The surveyor laid out the measuring tape along a line of sight through the tunnel of up to thirty metres at a time, starting at the point directly below the instrument found using a plumb line. Then they ran a piece of string one metre off the ground, directly above the tape, between a hook underneath the theodolite, and the top of a one metre piece of pipe held so that it stood on the far end of the tape.
First, Galo took a reading with the theodolite of the direction and slope of the tunnel. He twirled his waxed moustache before each measurement with the theodolite, a tic that fascinated Sam. Then, every five metres along the tape, Napoleon measured the distance between the both sides of the tunnel and the string, and from floor and ceiling, also to the string. The data was noted in Galo’s waterproof notebook with a stylish propelling pencil.