"Buddies"

"... My last buddy changed with the change of shifts, and now I was wondering, and worrying some, who'd be the next..."

I HAD worked two weeks on night shift. It was my turn to go on days, but I traded off with a home-guard with a family. He wanted to stay home nights and I knew what it meant to him. Used to be a home-guard myself, with a family. Now I was just a boomer, a ten-day man.

I liked night work best because the feather legs didn't come around and take up our time with a lot of fool questions-"What're you doing that for? Why don't you do it this way?" Or hindered our work trying to decide whether or not the ore-body went down, up, or straight ahead, when the only sure way to learn was to shoot hell out of it.

It was almost five o'clock. The day shift came off at four. Each shift shot its own rounds before coming on top. Powder smoke still fogged from the hole.

My last buddy changed with the change of shifts, and now I was wondering, and worrying some, who'd be the next.

Your life may depend on your buddy in a mine. He can grow careless in handling dynamite, bring blinding disaster, or drill into a missed hole where a "dead" fulminat ing cap or defective fuse fails to set off the blast. He can drop timber, tools, or rock down, or fail to guard properly in a ticklish place when he's on lookout. Then there's the green hand. He's likely excitable, a dreamer, or given to shooting off his mouth at the wrong time. And of course there's the kind who goes dumb in an emergency or does something else when he should be pulling fuse as fast as God will let him. You come to know them all if you live long enough.

I was one of a dozen standing near the collar of the 500-foot inclined shaft. In the group was a Cousin Jack. Those Cornwall English are among the best miners in the world.

The powder smoke was thinning now. It was almost straight up five o'clock and the gasoline hoist engine began chug-chugging away.

The shift-boss came striding from the hoist-house. He glanced over the group until finally his eyes rested on me and he frowned.

"You belong on day shift," he said.

I explained my trade-off with the home guard.

"All right," he grunted. He was a home guard himself but a shifter had no one to trade off with him.

"Buddies" A Story of the Mines

By Carl Raht Arizona Writers Project W. P. A.

He ducked his head at me, then at the Cornishman. "You two work in the Hundred level stope. Put some shots in the ceiling. Better go easy, it's loose ground and might come down. I want 20 skip loads of ore from you fellows tonight.

That was all he said. The shifter didn't say single-jack, double-jack, or machine drill the ground. Nor how many holes to drill. Hard-rock men didn't need telling.

I looked at the Cornishman and grinned. He grinned back. Each one knew the other was an old head. Maybe he'd been worrying some himself. Now both were satisfied.

The hoist-house whistle let out a quaver ing blast. Chuff-chuff, answered the gaso line engine as it took the weight of the two ton skip. Up came the skip flush with the collar of the shaft and stopped.

We hard-rock men piled in, two rows, with the heels of hobnails secured against metal cleats in the skip bottom, each man except the rearmost seated between the spread knees of the one behind him, just as on a toboggan sled that's ready to dart down the runway.

The bell clanged. The flanged wheels under the skip began turning on the steel track. Heads ducked as the skip dropped down the sixty degrees inclined shaft in a rumble of noise, clearing the hang-wall a scant foot. The skip stopped at the Hundred level. My Cornwall buddy and I were the only ones to unload. A miner reached out and yanked on the bell-cord. In the renewed rumble of the disappear ing skip, my partner led the way to the drift which presently opened into the stope where we were going to work.

"Twenty skip-loads of ore," the shifter had said and he didn't smile when he said it. That meant forty tons of broken ore.

All right, he'd get his forty tons. But hard-rock men take plenty time to size up unfamiliar ground; search out the peculiarities in the formation; plan to point the drill holes so as to break the most ore.

I had in mind what the shifter said about loose ground and my eyes prospected overhead while off came jumper coat, was folded and put with lunch pail in a safe place.

Meanwhile my buddy was doing the same. He didn't like the looks of the overburden either. Plenty ore, too, an oxide that carried good values. After working in it awhile you came out looking as if you'd walked under a ladder just as a bucket of red paint spilled off.

You could tell that nobody had worked in the stope recently and suspected the shiftboss had trouble finding men who would. But a couple of boomers would. Hell, yes! We'd been blown-up and caved-in-on in bigger and better mines than this hole.

I was looking at a 20-foot two-by-twelve plank set cross-wise well up under the ceiling. So was my partner. He looked around, found the long sharp-pointed steel bar, and said: "Watch for me, buddy, while I test this blarsted over'ead."

He climbed to the plank, with the reflector of my carbide lamp playing on the ceiling above him, and pricked down loose gobs ofore. It was soft ground all right, drilling would jar it down, anyway the drill would stick.

Drawings for ARIZONA HIGHWAYS By Ross Santee

I said so.

He thought so too, and said: "We'd better use the bar on these huppers. Blime, old son, we'll give the bloody shifter 'is twenty skip-loads!"

Some satisfaction working with an old head.

My buddy's attention centered on getting the first upper hole started. The sharp point of the long bar scarcely made a sound as he drove it into the ceiling.

Half a dozen strokes and the hole was started. With each upward drive a thin stream of gritty dust sifted down the steel bar to his hands and stained them red. In no time he had sunk the bar in a three foot hole. He grunted and climbed down.

"Shoot by noon," he said. Noon on night shift was lunch time.

It was now my turn with the steel bar, his to watch. I sent the pointed bit biting into the soft ground and heard a gob of ore fall plunk! on the plank behind me. Maybe it was a bad sign, maybe not. That was for my buddy to decide, he was on look-out.

into the soft ground and heard a gob of ore fall plunk! on the plank behind me. Maybe it was a bad sign, maybe not. That was for my buddy to decide, he was on look-out.

I kept on pricking at the hole, eyes on the steel as it churned home with a dull, gritty boomp.

Suddenly came my buddy's voice, sharp, clear-"She's coming down!"

I didn't look around nor set myself for a leap. Just let go the steel bar and flung bodily off the plank. Landed on the floor in a heap. My buddie was there tugging away, helped me scramble up; and we both dove headlong into the drift, trailed by a sound like the beat of a hundred bass-drums.

A puff of wind almost blasted out the lights. We were sprayed with red gritty dust. Boulders came hurtling at us but we leaped aside. Puff after puff followed, as more ground came down. It was a big cave-in.

The stope room was filling fast with a red running mass of ore. The shift-boss would have his twenty skip-loads all right -and then some!

I looked at my watch. It was just six o'clock. We'd been on shift an hour-seven more to go. Me and my buddy grinned at one another and settled ourselves in comfort far back in the drift.

We could get in a lot of snoozing in seven hours.