out for the dust every minute of his
life, but he's got nerve, all right. He'll bulldoze and fight and
growl and gouge, but he's there in other ways. I don't like him, and
we quit pretty sudden, yet I saw him do somethin' once that beat me."

"Did you work on the Rattler?" another voice queried.

"No," the other went on, "I worked for him down on the Placer Belle in
California. It was under the old system and was a small mine. Kept all
the dynamite on the hundred-foot level in an old chamber. Every man
went there to get it when it was time to load his holes. I was
startin' for mine one evenin', whistlin' along, when I smelled smoke.
Stopped and sniffed, and about weakened. Knowed it was comin' from the
powder room down there. It wan't more'n twenty feet from the shaft,
and there was two or three tons of it in that hole. Ran back and gave
the alarm bell to the engineer, then ducked my head and went toward
the smoke to see if anything could be done before she blew up the
whole works. On his hands and knees, with all that was left of his
coat, was Bully. He'd got the fire nearly smothered out, and we
coughed and spit, and drowned the rest of the sparks from the water
barrel. He'd fought it to a finish all alone, and I had to drag him
out to the cage that was slidin' up and down as if the engineer was on
a drunk, and every time it went up I could see the boys' faces, kind
of white, and worried, and hear the alarms bangin' away like mad. But
he'd put the fire out there with all that stuff around him. That took
some nerve, I tell you!"

"What did he do for you?" asked another voice.

The narrator gave a heavy laugh, and chuckled.

"Do for me? When he got fresh air in him again, up in the hoist, he
sat up and opened his hand. In it was a candlestick and a snipe,
burned on the side till the wick looked about a foot long. 'Who owns
this candlestick?' says he. No one spoke, but some of us knowed it
belonged to old Deacon Wells, an absent-minded old cuss, but the
deacon had a family of nigh on to ten kids. So nobody answered. 'Some
fool left this here,' Bully bellowed, tearing around. 'And that's what
started the fire. I'll kick the man off the works that owns the
stick.' Still nobody said anything. He caught me grinnin'. 'You know
who it was,' says he. 'Sure I do,' says I, 'but I'm a little
tongue-tied.' Then he told me he'd fire me if I didn't say who it was.
'Give me my time-check,' says I, and he gave it. He found out
af