The Aberdeen weekly. [volume] (Aberdeen, Miss.) 1878-1933, 1922-04-07

/ broke into Jeanie's kitchen and raidet
| the cupboard for a bite OF something
to eat. There was plenty of bread
| and some cold fried ham, and cuttinf
a couple of generous sandwiches,
/ liked out to make my breakfast il
the open
The sandwiches disposed of, l begaI
to quarter the bench woodland back
and forth. searching for some indica
lions of the railroad survey. In due
time l found one of the location stakes
and from its facing and the markings
on it, got the direction of the proposed
line and was able to trace it for some
distance along the bench. As Dad
dy had said, 1t ran within few hun
dred yards of the Cinnabar claim, ant
a short sidetrack would make his sug-
gestion perfectly feasible; our ore
could be shot into the cars with but a
single handling.
From tracing the railroad survey,
edged around TO take another look al
the possibilities of the drainage tunnel
Daddy and 1 had figured on. Going
over the ground this second time, and
with some better knowledge of the diff
ficulties, ii appeared that we must have
ridiculously underestimated the prob
able cost. Pacing the distances care
fully, and guessing at the differences
in altitude by the heights of the trees,
l saw that it wouldn't be safe to count
upon less than a mile of tunneling,
and this. in the solid porphyry of Old
Cinnabar. and in a situation remote
from the nearest base of supplies,
would run-no, it wouldn't run; it
would fairly gallop into money.
Was this what Fullerton meant to do
if he could Dust me? That he was ut
terly confident of his ability to drain
the Cinnabar was evident. But how
was it to be done? Would he, or his
hackers. be willing to spend a quar-
ter Of a million or more, and the better
part of a years time, driving that
mile-long tunnel?
The longer 1 thought about it, the
larger the conviction grew that no
such expensive expedient was to be
resOrted to. Fullerton or his hackers,
or both, knew some other and far
cheaper and more expeditions way of
getting rid of the water. Sitting on a
big rock that had in some former earth
CONFUSION tumbled from the broken
cliffs above the mine, I gave the me-
chanical fraction of my brain lit was
a small fraction and sadly under-de-
veloped) free rein.
Two possibilities suggested them
selves. A siphOn, a big pipe, starting
at the bottom of the shaft and leading
tain to a point lower than the shaft
bottom, would, after it was once
started, automatically discharge a
stream of it's own bigness, whatever
that should be. But the cost of over
a mile of such pipe was beyond my
means; and If two six-inch pumps
driven night and day had failed to
make any impression upon the flood,
what could be expected of a siphOn
which, in the nature of things, couldn't
be much bigger than an ordinary
street water main?
The other possibility was even less
hopeful. 1t was the driving of short
tunnel. which Daddy and 1 might I'M
dertake without additional help, from
the level of the high bench straight in
to an intersection with the mine shaft.
This, estimated, might tap the water
at point possibly twenty feet below
its present level in the shaft. Its sue
cess, as 1 saw at once, would depend
entirely upon the location and volume
of the underground lake which was
supposed to be supplying the flood. If
this reservoir were shallow and high
in the mountain, the short tunnel
might drain it. If it were deep and
low, nothing would be accomplished.
The question was still hanging hope
leSsly up in the air when l made my
way around to the mine buildings by
the left-hand gulch path. sneaked in
and began to shuck myself into Dad