Licking Valley courier., 1922-01-26


For what win the previous nielrt's
broken rest and the more or less ex-
citing and strenuous day, slept like
tired baby, and when | awoke the
sur was shining in at the Two high
window holes at something more than
an acute angle and Daddy Hiram was
making coffee and frying bacon and
baking pan-bread over a chip fire
built on piece of boiler iron we had
turned down for hearth purposes the
previous evening.
The old angel took my reproach-
full abuse for his unselfshness quite
good-naturedly, as he did most things,
and made his report of the nights
doings. Up to midnight there had
been nothing stirring; but after that
there had been noises on the black
smith shop side, and indications thar
the Jumpers were at work on some
thing in the boiler shed. Since this
lay beyond our field of vision, we
couldn't see what was going eon, nor
could we apply the dynamite remedy.
Shortly after we had finished break
fast the work noises began again, but
with the blanketing blacksmith shop in
the way we couldn't see thing and
could only make wild guesses at what
the raiders were up to. Along about
the middle of the forenoon they fred
up one or more of the boilers; d whiff
of wind coming along the side of the
mountain blew the smoke over so that
some of II drifted into the shaft-house
through the high windows. Still we
were completely lost in the guessing
wilderness.
1t was little after noon, while we
were squatting on the floor to eat
another meal warmed up over the chip
fire, that we found out the answer
to all the guesses and learned what
the mechanical noises of the night
and forenoon had been leading up to.
One of the left-overs from the work
ing period of the mine was gO0d-siZed
steam force pump which, we took 1t,
had once been installed on one Of the
lower mine levels and had been hosted
out Of the shaft ahead Of the adyane-
ing water flood and put under shelter
In a corner of the boiler shed. AS
| was passing my tin cup for more of
Daddy's excellent coffee the rattle and
clank of pump began to make itself
heard, together with the coughing
ghugichug of the steam exhaust there
. from.
"That's that low-leve pumpr l ex-
claimed. "They must have connected
1t up with the boil"
Whoosh that was just as far as
got. In the middle midst of the word
boilers" tE'yJ-lSsh>je+-sf muddy VIII
ter came crrvlng up through one Of
the window openings to arch over and
fall. splash, all over US as we sat
munching' our dinner. Eyerlostingly
ruined the dinner, put out the Ire, az
set the coffee pot, aud made drowned
rats of both Of us in less time than Il
takes to tell it-much less.
So much for that. or course, we ran
and ducked and lodged, like the
drowned rats speak of hunting for
a hole. But now Bullert0ns deyilish
engineering ingenuity came into play.
BY some means us yet unknown TO us,
he had contrived movable nozzle to
his sQuirt-gun, and in another minute
there wasn't single dry spot left in
that shafthouse. venture to say that
Daddy and and the dog ran a full
mile trying to get out of range Of that
demoniacal sozzle-machlne, but there
wasn't corner of the place that II
couldn't, and didn't, reach.
During the night the scoundrels had
laid a pipe line from the pump in the
boiler shed alongside of our prison
fortress; this with an upright eXten
sion on the business end Of It. At the
top Of the sandpipe stem there was an
elbow with short Joint of pipe
screwed into II to point our way; and
on the end of this nozzle there was q
piece of rubber hose. Under the jerky
impulses of the pump strokes this gsx
ible extension of the nozzle aoppet
up and down and around and side
wise, like the nose of a patent lawr
sprinkler; and there you are-or ther,
we were.
"Gosh-to- Solomon Daddy splut
tered, 1--WE amt on the water wagon
we're spank inside Of 1t Are you re
memberin', Stannle, that they can keel
this gosh-dum thing mp f'rever? All II
the world they've got to do is to pu