Foxfire

by Anya Seton

  But Saba knew that her Jonathan would have understood. Indeed they had discussed it many times. He knew that when the spirit is filled and dwelling in the climate of its dreams and memories it cares little about physical conditions. He knew that except for himself and Dart, all Saba’s love was given to her own people—to Tanosay.

  Dart, rounding the last curve on the mine road and seeing the head frame over the old Shamrock shaft outlined against the sky, had a sudden memory of his grandfather, a memory of which he had not thought in years.

  Tanosay had been old and decaying, too, that last time Dart had seen him, and yet he, too, had loomed against the night sky with an imperturbable and rooted dignity. A wonderful old guy, Dart thought. He remembered the tall, brown, and seamed body, scarred from a hundred wounds, the shrewd black eyes which could gaze unmoved on murder and yet could soften to tenderness for children, especially a grandson. He remembered the old man’s rare laugh, chuckling and bubbling like a mountain spring. How few white people realized the keenness of the Indian sense of humor. He had heard Tanosay laugh that day, and he had also seen the old face grow dark and stern as the northern sky when the storm clouds gathered. For Tanosay knew that It-which-must-not-be-mentioned was stealing ndar on soft padded feet, and soon the women’s doleful voices would be uplifted for him in the death dirge. “Listen well, Ishkinazi—” he had said to Dart, calling him as always by his nickname “tall boy,” for real names were never used in conversation. “Listen well, my son, for it is the last time....” Dart had listened, but his boy’s attention had wandered. He had been deeply impressed but he had not altogether understood the old man’s effort to hand down to him some of the secret wisdom of the “Dinneh,” some of the certainties about life and death, and about the Apache holy trinity Earth, Air, and Water.

  Dart now approached the collar of the new Plymouth mine shaft and smiled a little to himself as he turned right and entered the change house. He knew how Tanosay would have dealt with a man as stupid and bungling as Mablett. The Indians, true socialists, never hesitated to sacrifice one individual for the good of the tribe. But unfortunately the beauties of civilization also entailed such watery virtues as caution and expediency and conformity.

  The eleven-thirty whistle blew as Dart climbed into his muddy blue jeans and rubber boots. He hauled aloft on the pulley the suit in which he had dined at the Mablett’s. He hurried up to the mine office to read the order book. Sure enough, Mablett had not been there and the order to start pulling the pillars in the old No. 33 stope was unchanged. Dart set his lips and erased the order. The men began to straggle off shift and cue up outside the paymaster’s window. Dart lit a cigarette and sat waiting until the shift bosses came into the room.

  The night boss that week, Tom Rubrick, Tessie’s husband, was a wiry little terrier of a Cornishman, with darting eyes which missed nothing and a nervous energy which incited his men to top production. He was an excellent boss, and they worked well for him. He came off shift at his usual jog trot, hurriedly munching a Cornish pastry he had found in his pocket, and gave a low, surprised whistle when he saw Dart.

  “And wot be ye doing ’ere at this time o’ night? I thought ye went to Bull’ead’s party?”

  “I did for a while. Saw your wife there. I left early for ... reasons.”

  Tom cocked his head and glanced at the order book. He saw the erasure of a line which had drawn his startled attention as he went on shift that afternoon. The situation was thus fairly clear to him.

  Dart knew that alone of the three shift bosses, Tom was sympathetic to Dart’s problems. Tiger Burton on dayshift, despite his nickname which came from his early predilection for Faro, or Tiger, was a meager and colorless man, middle-aged and sallow. He had known Mablett in Butte days, he owed his job to him—and he was plainly Mablett’s creature. Big Olaf, on graveyard, obeyed orders with Scandinavian literalness and complete lack of curiosity.

  Olaf came in now and leaned against the lintel, his graying blond head lowered, his jaws working ruminatively on a plug of tobacco, waiting without interest for Dart and Tom to finish conferring.

  Tom, however, did have curiosity, but he also had respect for the young mine foreman who, he knew, would not tell him the story of the changed orders. Dart maintained discipline, and no matter what the justification, he did not complain of superiors to subordinates. Tom’s curiosity was too much for him, however, and he whispered, “You and Bull’ead ’ave a set-to, tonight?”

  Dart’s lips twitched, he passed over this second disrespectful use of the superintendent’s nickname, and shrugged.

  “Well, ’ow in the name o’ ’eaven did ye ever make ’im back down on them orders?”

  “Mr. Tyson was there,” said Dart briefly.

  “Aow...” said Tom, enlightened. He shook his head and sighed. A mine that had bickering at the top was a bad thing. But the lad was right. Bullhead was forever taking wicked chances. “You going underground, sir?” he said glancing at Dart’s clothes, and raising his voice to include Olaf, who shambled forward.

  “Yes,” said Dart. “As long as I’m here, I’ll do some sampling. What’s the report, Tom?” The conversation became technical as Rubrick reported to Olaf, the incoming shift boss, the mine activities of the last eight hours. They had been working on the 700 level, water seepage was getting worse. One of the pumps had broken down, repaired at 10 p.m. The ore didn’t look so good in the new drift, and they were running into heavy ground. Curly Jim, one of the muckers, had dropped a rock on his foot and had gone home, but said he didn’t need a doctor.

  That’s just as well, thought Dart. I doubt that Hugh’ll do any doctoring tonight.

  Twelve holes had been drilled in the face of the cross-cut, continued Tom, the blasts set for eleven-twenty after the men had left as usual. “Watch out for missed ’oles, though,” said Tom, “I’ve not too much faith in this new lot o’ powder Mr. Mablett’s got in.” He glanced at Dart. “Got it cheap, didn’t ’e?”

  “I believe so,” said Dart noncommittally. “You know we’ve got to cut costs every way we can.”

  “Sure,” remarked Olaf the Swede, in the brief silence, and resumed chewing.

  Rubrick cocked one eyebrow and gave Dart a shrewd, affectionate glance. “Well, watch out for yourselves, lads,” he said. “There’s something don’t feel right underground. Me Cousin Jacks’ve been ’earing the Tommyknockers all evening.”

  Dart laughed. “Your Cousin Jacks wouldn’t have sneaked a little hootch down in their lunch boxes, would they?”

  “No, sir,” said Rubrick, suddenly serious. “You know I don’t let ’em drink on the job.”

  “I know,” said Dart. He knew, too, how foolish it was to argue with the miners’ superstitions. The lamps that dimmed or flickered—an evil portent. The taboo against whistling, against women in the mine. The Tommyknockers, tiny English elves who tapped amongst the rocks to warn their countrymen of danger. He smiled and stood up. “The Tommyknockers didn’t know the change of orders, they thought we were going into the old workings, maybe.” He grinned at Rubrick, then turned to Olaf. “You got it all?” The Swede nodded. “Then we better get going.”

  They left Rubrick scribbling his report in the order book, and walked outside the office and around a pile of timber to the hoist. The men were already waiting by the cage, a dozen of them, six more than the usual skeleton crew on graveyard, since Mablett had ordered extra men for the No. 33 stope work. They greeted Dart pleasantly. Despite his reserve and the knowledge that he was a “technical” man, he was liked by most of the miners for his industry and his justice, and for his identification with their welfare. The divergences of opinion between the mine superintendent and foreman naturally filtered underground at times and the majority of the men favored Dart.

  He stood by the cage with Olaf watching them pile in; a heterogeneous lot—two “Bohunks” from Montenegro and Jugoslavia, one Polack, three Mexicans, a Cornishman, an Irishman, a Finn, and the others native Americans, incl
uding as Dart noted with interest, one of the Apache boys whose name was Grover Cleveland. The Apaches when complying with the Agency’s request for pronounceable English names were apt to pick at random from the Indian school’s textbooks.

  Cleveland was a stocky, good-looking young man, quick to laugh and slow to anger. He was an Aravaipa, descendant of Eskiminzin, long-suffering chief who had repeatedly trusted the white man, and as repeatedly been betrayed. Dart had known Cleveland slightly during his boyhood days on the reservation and often talked with him in the mine, and he was glad to see him tonight. The Indian was an expert driller, a good all-around miner, far better than most of the flotsam and jetsam Mablett insisted on hiring.

  “Hello, Cleve,” said Dart, catching up with the Apache as they walked down the tunnel on the 700 level towards the new cross-cut. “Glad to see you. I was afraid—I heard you had quit.”

  “I quit tomorrow, Nan tan,” said Cleve, using the Apache word for Boss. “I’m going home.”

  Dart sighed. It would be hard to get another driller as intelligent and trustworthy, and also Dart had a feeling of personal loss. “Is it the money?” he asked. “I’ll try very hard to get you a raise.”

  The Apache lifted his head and in the light of their two carbide hat lamps they looked at each other steadily.

  “It’s not the money, Nantan,” he shrugged. Suddenly his black eyes twinkled and his smooth brown face creased in a smile. “There’ll be big tulapai party next week, at San Carlos, and coming-out dance for my little sister. We’ll get very drunk, have big fun.”

  Dart smiled, too; he knew it was useless to argue, but he knew there were other reasons behind this wish to return to the reservation. “How about the other boys?” he said slowly, referring to the other five Apaches who worked in the mine.

  “They go too, Nantan.”

  “You’ll come back though, later, after the dance, won’t you? I’ll see that you get your jobs back.”

  The Indian did not answer. They walked along through the silent dim tunnel. Their lamps, and that of Olaf just ahead glimmered like dancing will-o’-the-wisps in the darkness. Three muckers followed them; they were Mexicans and they chuckled softly and told filthy jokes in Spanish as they walked. The other members of the shift had scattered earlier to other parts of the mine according to their several jobs. There was no sound but the squelch of rubber boots through the deepening puddles, and the tap, tap of dripping, invisible water. Then Cleve spoke suddenly in a low tone, and he spoke in Apache. “We cannot work here, Nantan. Not for this Tiger Burton.”

  “Burton?” repeated Dart, surprised.

  Cleve nodded. “He is not like other men, he is hissing and sly as a serpent. He is crooked as a serpent, too. He is not a stupid bull like Mablett. He is a very bad man. He is crazy.”

  Dart tightened his lips and sighed with exasperation. He agreed on the estimate of Mablett but Burton, the shift boss, had always seemed efficient. Dart had seen no special fault in him except that he was Mablett’s sycophant.

  “Your talk is foolish,” he answered, also in Apache. “There are many things not quite right in the world. One must do the best one can in spite of it.”

  The Indian made a noise in his throat—of indulgence, or derision. Dart waited during another silence. Apache conversation cannot be hurried.

  Then Cleve spoke again. “Burton hates the Apaches, Nantan. His mother was killed by Geronimo nearly fifty winters ago. You did not know that, did you?”

  “No,” said Dart startled. “I thought Tiger came from Butte, like Mablett.”

  “Later. But he was born in Nogales. He is Mexican. This he hides. Even if he were not crazy and bad I could not work under a Mexican, Nantan.” Cleve twisted his head to look up at Dart, and again his black eyes twinkled.

  Dart grinned, for the Apache resentment towards the white was pale beside their contempt for the Mexicans. “Okay, I know,” he said in English. “But I’ll be mighty sorry to lose you boys. How’d you find all this out, by the way?”

  Cleve lowered his head and shifted his pile of drills to the other shoulder. “I knew him fifteen years ago when my father worked in the Magma Mine at Superior. I was just a kid then, I wasn’t sure it was the same man of whom my father told me, until yesterday. We were alone in the stope. He called me a stinking name, and his eyes held murder. I do not wish to kill him, so I go.—Watch out for yourself, too, Nantan,” he added softly. “He is mad for power and revenge.”

  “Nonsense!” said Dart in English, and he would have smiled except that Cleve’s round face was solemn and Dart knew that Cleve had made a great concession in giving this lengthy explanation. “Thanks anyway,” he said.

  He had discounted all Cleve’s story, knowing how touchy the Apaches were, and the thought of personal danger for such flimsy reasons seemed to him ridiculous. If Tiger Burton were indeed an enemy, it was because he shared Mablett’s hostility towards Dart, not because of a fifty-year-past trouble with Geronimo. And if he wished to hide his Mexican blood, that was his privilege.

  “Oh, Cleve, when you get back there to the reservation—you know where my mother lives up Blue Spring? Please go and see her, tell her I’m thinking of her, will you?”

  “Mebbe so,” said Cleve. And this universal response which may mean anything Dart knew was this time affirmative.

  The men reached the cross-cut. It was still filled with acrid smoke and dust from the blasting. Olaf and Dart went ahead, clambering over the piles of scattered rock; Dart’s keen ears were alert for the faint buzzing which meant a delayed fuse. But there was nothing sinister or menacing, all the holes had fired. The three Mexican muckers went methodically to work, shoveling the broken rock into an ore car. Dart pulled out his little pick and began to sample. He frowned as he picked and pried the moist dark rocks from the just uncovered virgin depths of the mountain. Copper, yes—plenty of it, in a darker greenish streak through the waste rock. If only it paid to mine for copper, as it used to before the bottom fell out. Six cents a pound now—and three years ago copper had brought seventeen and a half cents. He stood frowning and balancing a small hunk of copper ore in his hand, staring at the rock wall ahead and calculating how many more yards they had to go before they hit the vein again. That slender dwindling vein of gold-bearing ore, on which the mine depended now. If they hit it. Little Jones, the chief engineer, was a competent geologist, but he was badly overworked. Jones, therefore, made mistakes; in fact, all geologists did. Dart put the sample in his pocket and walked away down the drift and back towards the shaft, thinking.

  What a strange occupation mining was.

  All these divergent personalities, stupid, intelligent, petty, violent, even weary and remote like Tyson, were yet bound tight together by loyalty to the mine. It was more than identification in a shared enterprise, most men felt that for their means of livelihood. The mine was a beloved entity, as a ship is to seamen.

  Even Mablett, stubborn and ill-judged as were his methods, cared deeply about the success of the mine. Give the devil his due, thought Dart. Of Tiger Burton he did not think at all.

  Dart shared with most native Westerners a large tolerance towards eccentricity. Here against the vast panorama of mountains and desert each individual became sharply silhouetted, traits intensified, passions more violent. The air itself bred sharper men than the soft and foggy East where corners blurred into a monotonous smooth mold.

  It was not, he thought, now cooled down completely from his anger earlier at the party, Mablett the man whom he disliked so much. Dart could forgive personal vituperation and blusterings if the end were gained, as it had been. But he could not overlook the continuing stupidity, the threat to the whole fabric of the mine.

  He reached the shaft and signaled to the hoistman, then while he stood waiting in the cool rock chamber there came to him a great love of this earth around him, the preciousness of the primitive return to the great mother, the beauty of the darkness and silence deep in the secret heart of the mountain. He felt
again, as he had earlier out on the surface of the mountain, an extension of consciousness and a clarification.

  The cage rattled down to a stop in front of him. “Hello, Mike,” he said to the old Irish eager. “Take me up to the three hundred, will you?”

  “You going over to the old workings, sir?” asked Mike, surprised. “’Twill be mighty dark and lonesome, over there. The men was glad they didn’t have to work there tonight. They said you changed the orders, said the big bosses didn’t even know you changed ’em.” He winked up at Dart, slyly admiring.

  Dart shook his head—thus gossip ran like wildfire through the mine. “Of course, Mr. Mablett knew it,” he said repressively. “We’ll start re-timbering there tomorrow, so it won’t be dark and lonesome any more. You’ll be telling me it’s haunted next.”

  “Well, it might be,” said Mike. “Them Cousin Jacks keep hearin’ the Tommyknockers.”

  “I’ll go scare the little dears away,” said Dart, stepping out into the pitch blackness of the 300 level. The cage clanged and rattled upwards toward the surface. Dart bent his head so that his lamp illumined his wrist watch. Two o’clock already. He thought with contrition about Amanda, lying there alone in the bed waiting for him. Mining’s a tough profession, my girl, he said to her, and it’s tougher to be a miner’s wife. Almost he regretted the impulse that had sent him over here. An impulse that had come while he was waiting for the cage and worrying about the mine’s welfare. An impulse born partly of hunch and partly from a subconscious memory.

  He hurried, half crouching along the tunnels of the old drifts. They were not high enough to accommodate his six feet two, and the hard skull-guard hat on top of that. These old workings had been untouched since shortly after Red Bill Cunningham’s death in ’98, when the Boston Company bought the mine for a song, since Red Bill’s original high-grade vein had suddenly pinched out. The new owners started sinking the Plymouth shaft to the west of the old Shamrock, and eventually found just enough gold-bearing ore to keep them going, as it still did in diminishing quantities. No one had bothered with the old workings for years, but now Tyson and Mablett were right. The time had come for recovery, for extracting from the old mine the remnants of ore which had been disdained in the lavish bonanza days.