The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1906-07-29

Judge. The weather was cooler, so
much cooler that IL was impossible to
be comfortable on the boarding house
Porch. Later the skies became over
cast again and one of the veteran min
ers predicted snow. Think OF that you
Salt Lakers who have been swelterins
for the past two or three weelxsl After
dinner we gathered in the office. heated
by steam from the shaft house boilers,
and began the talkfest.
Somebody asked the veteran of the
party about close calls in mines. He
said he had had two. The first hap
pened years ago, and this is the way he
told the story:
Il was coming up the shaft in skip
with a foreman who had been with me
for years. said he. Everything was
going smoothly and we were nearly at
the surface when the skip struck an OBJ
struction and turned over. / grasped
the edge with one hand and hung on
until. with the other hand. I got a grip
on ladder. The foreman, poor fellow,
went down twenty-four levels" That's
2,400 feet, if you don't happen to know,
and the man was undoubtedly dead be-
fore he struck the bottom.
"And did you go down i'm the mine
again." somebody asked
II certainly did," was the reply. 81
went down the very next morning at
o'clock That is the only way I know
of to cure that scared feeling"
And the next oali?"
There was a part of the mine OF
which we were suspicious The ore
had been cleaned out of it and there
were symptoms of an imminent cave.
All the miners had been warned to stay
out of that part of the workings, but il
is the business of a superintendent
often TO go where he would not send his
men. One day / went into the suspect
ed section. | had gotten about a hum
dred yards from the station when | no
ticed that little flakes were failing from
the roof of the drift That didn't look
very satisfactory to me, and / lost no
time in getting back to the station. /
had barely put my foot on the solid
ground when with roar and a rumble,
the old workings went down. They car
ried with them hosting plant on the
surface, too, and / don't know how
many hundreds of thousands of tons of
dirt would have been on top of me if ]
had stayed a few seconds longer" The
veteran blew a retrospective puff of
smoke toward the ceilings.
How about the third call?' he was
asked.
Third Call to Come.
THAT is yet to come" was the an
swer. Somehow, have a feeling that
the third time will see the end. A man
can't always be lucky" Yet that min
ing man is underground nearly every
day of his life, and when he isn't polk
ing around under the surface he is TAX
ing long chances on top. Like so many
other mining men he has come to be
fatalist. When his time comes he is
going, not before, and by no act of his
can he hasten or delay his passing
That's his feeling, and it isn't q bad
one in the mining business. AS for the
writer-well, if he had ever had one
approximately narrow escape i'm mine
he would today be living in some prai-
RE town where mines of any sort are
unknown.
1t was bedtime before anybody
seemed to realize it and then, snug
gled under two heavy quilts and blan
ket how we did Sleep There was muir
der in my heart when, at o'clock next
morning, we were routed out for break
fast and another day in ''the everlast-
ing hills" l left the veteran and my
travelling companion to go underground
again. they being victims of an obses-
sion of that character. and journeyed
down the canyon to Park City, where
spent the morning gathering such
data as might seem interesting. At
little after noon, mounted on Nellie, the
gentlest beast, in the Kimball stables,
set out through Thames canyon for
the Odin mine, the agreed meeting
place.
If anybody tells you the sun isn't hot
in Thames canyon between 2 and 8
o'clock in the afternoon, the truth is
not in that person. 1t was, oh, SO hot,
and Nellie was utterly lacking in am
bition. She had two gaits. Her pref
erence was a slow walk, but occasion
ally she could be urged into a bone
breaking trot. The truth is I didn't
care much for either gait. The best
that could be said was that they beat