Chapter 10
Since opening the mine, Andrew had come to realize a couple of things.
The first was that when planning the whole venture, he and his friends had been quite na?ve.
They hadn’t factored a lot of possibilities into their plans, such as the possibility of catastrophic outside disasters like the flood.
All the disasters he’d thought of had directly involved the mine.
The second thing he had realized was that he really hated all the administration that being the man in charge brought. Everything was his problem. Everything was his responsibility. And all of his time was spent dealing with one crisis after another so he had no time for rocks anymore.
Andrew had loved rocks his whole life. He’d picked them up, smoothed and rounded, on the beach; sharp and colorful in the mountains, laced with quartz; spotted with exotic minerals and wet in streams. He loved what rocks could tell him about the world, and he missed that journey of knowledge.
Now, he was nothing but an administrator. A bureaucrat.
Julie’s eyes were filled with concern when she looked at him, and somehow, his wife’s expression brought it all to the surface. He sighed.
“It’s okay, Jules, I’m fine,” Andrew said, rubbing his face with his hands. “I just need to come to terms with my job. They don’t need me down the mineshaft as much as they need me up here, working on the nonsense.”
“What nonsense?”
“There’s a lot of it,” he said. “Is there something you need me for?”
She smiled. “I need you for a lot of things, but none of them are work related.”
He grinned. “Really?”
She laughed. “Is there anything I can help with?”
He shook his head. What could she do? Sort out his transport problems, or maybe fix the troubles that Troy was having with the elevator, which refused to function properly?
“I’ll make you a tonic,” Julie said. “Something to perk you up.”
Andrew nodded. “That sounds good. I’ll take you up on that offer.”
She beamed and, placing her hands on his makeshift desk, she leaned forward to kiss him softly. He loved the feeling of her being near him like that. It was always soothing.
“You know,” she said. “Maybe some of this bureaucratic nonsense that you despise could be set aside for a day or two. You never know; maybe the others do need you down in the mine but are too worried about the load you’re shouldering to ask for help.
Maybe you could go down there and see how things are coming along. ”
Andrew was certain that to anyone else it would sound as though his wife was trying to give him even more work, but he knew what she was doing. She was giving him permission to go and have some fun as only a geologist could, in the ground surrounded by rocks.
He regarded the paperwork and moved it all to the side. Grabbing his toolbelt, which held a little pick and hammer set and a whole lot of other things he might need in the mine, and pulling on his gloves, he hurried to the cave entrance.
“You going down?” Troy asked, looking up from the wheel he was tightening on the elevator.
It was a prototype and could only handle about an eighth of the load the actual elevator would be able to hold when it was made.
But the pulley kept getting stuck and no matter how he counterweighted it, the darn thing never worked smoothly.
“I am,” Andrew said with a smile.
“I’m sure the men will be happy to have you there,” Troy said. “I’ll lower you.”
Andrew went to the tripod system and stuck his foot in the loop of a rope.
He held onto the rope with both hands, and as Troy turned the handle, he was lowered into the hole in the ground.
As daylight disappeared until it was nothing but a hole in the roof, Andrew felt his spirits lifting.
Down here there were adventures to be had and things to explore, and he was ready.
If they were lucky, they might even find some silver or gold in the ore. They were common minerals to find in the vicinity of copper.
When he reached the bottom of the shaft, he unhooked his foot and walked off into the horizontal shaft that led from the main cave into the rest of the mine.
The main chamber was obviously a natural cave.
There was evidence in the rock surfaces that, at some point, this land had been under the sea.
There were a lot of rocks that had the shapes of shells embedded in them.
Apart from that, there was also the rounding of the rocks and the walls in the cave to consider.
This told Andrew that for a long time, this cave had been submerged, and there was constant water movement, which accounted for the rounding and the wear patterns in the rocks. They were quite beautiful.
Through the horizontal shaft, which showed none of those features, having been enlarged by tools, was another natural cave. This one was a lot smaller and showed signs of their work. There were score marks where sections of rock had been removed for testing the ore.
No one was in this section today; they had moved on with their testing and were further in through a few more shafts. Andrew continued on until he reached the section where the others were. This was a large cave, and the men had lit a couple of safety lanterns.
Michael, Kevin, and Jeff were working in this area. They were taking more samples for Ethan to test.
“Well, look who decided to come and do some work,” Jeff said, grinning as he saw Andrew. “Knew you couldn’t keep away.”
“That is true,” Andrew conceded. “So, how are things going down here?”
“We’ve mapped the seams,” Michael said, looking up from the notes he was taking in his notebook. “They go all through the previous two caverns into this one and then around here and out that way. I’m pretty sure we’ll have to tunnel through the rock there to follow it, but it will be worth it.”
“And if the copper isn’t enough,” Kevin said, his voice soft as always, “there’s what looks like some nice silver in here and possibly even a thread of decent gold going through. Not enough to get excited about, sadly.” He smiled. “But we also found a lot of these.”
He pulled something from a pocket and handed it over.
Andrew inspected it and smiled. “It’s a fossil,” he said.
“That it is,” Kevin said. “If we find some actual bone, though, we might have a problem. Universities with archeological departments are looking for dinosaur skeletons all over the country. We could let them know about a find, should we have one, and then they would shut the site down … but we could also get paid for it.”
“I don’t think Mr. McGregor is interested in science and fossils and all that sort of thing,” Adnrew said.
“If you find something bigger than this, just excavate it carefully and then we can see about shipping it off to a university. Who knows, we might get a few dollars for our trouble, but I’m not going to tell Uncle Ian about it. ”
“That old sour grape is really worrying you, isn’t he?” Jeff asked. Jeff had never liked Ian, even when the man was just considered a good family friend.
“He does own a fair amount of this mine,” Andrew said, looking around. “And he’s getting antsy. He wants us to produce copper so that he can start reeling in some profit. It’s all just business.”
“True,” Kevin said. “But all mines take a while to set up, especially if you plan to do it properly and not cut corners. Safety first.”
“Especially when it comes to that elevator Troy’s working on,” Jeff said with a laugh. “Why can’t he just use a design that’s been used before? Surely there are plenty to choose from.”
“He says it’s because this situation is different,” Michael said. “I don’t understand it all, but it’s something to do with the load and the shaft and the surrounding rock. Also, the lack of good timber. We might have to get some brought in.”
“Which begs the question, how are we going to get the ore out to market?” Kevin asked. “I was thinking that at the beginning we could send Kyle with the cart. He’s never down here if he can help it. I don’t think he likes being underground much.”
“That could work,” Andrew conceded. He thought of the cart. “It’s heavy though. A narrow-gauge steam engine would be better.”
“Of course it would be, but since we’re miles from the nearest railway line, I don’t see that as a viable option,” Jeff said.
It was true; they were miles from anywhere, and laying track would be another huge expense. They could also haul less ore. But since they hadn’t produced a load of any significance yet, he was worrying about things that weren’t even a real problem yet.
He decided to take a few samples himself.
They would help him to plan the way they should tackle the mine when they had the elevator sorted out.
Or maybe there was a way to get some ore out in the buckets again before that.
It was a lot of dull work, turning the handle at the top, and it would mean the men had to carry the buckets from one work area to the rope to be pulled up, but they could finally get something for the ore then.
He needed to find a smelter that wasn’t too far away, one that would refine the copper for them until they could get their plant up and running.
It was hot in the shafts, and soon Andrew was sweating.
“We’re going to have to sink some more air shafts,” Andrew said. “It’s painfully hot down here.”
“We have,” Kevin said. “But it seems to make little difference. I’m worried about the possibility of mine gas. We should get canaries.” The birds, which were known to be more sensitive to poisonous gases than humans were, were sometimes used to test air quality.
“Where are we going to get them from?” Michael asked. “Just keep an eye on your safety lantern and when the flame glows blue, then you know you’re in trouble.”
“That’s two seconds before you blow up,” Jeff said. “I’m with Kevin on this. Let’s get the birds.”