"Bailey-GiantsInTheEarth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bailey Dale)

DALE BAILEY

GIANTS IN THE EARTH

Burns didn't imagine he could ever bring himself to really like Moore, but as he
watched the man work the auger in the flickering shaft of his cap light, he had
to admit a kind of grudging admiration for the fellow's grace. Down here in the
mines, you noticed such things, for a clumsy man could kill you. It was just
Moore's piety that bothered Bums; he had a way of preaching at a man.

Now, Moore swung back from the wall, nodding, a thin gaunt-featured man with
lips pinched for want of living. The breast auger extended from his chest like a
spear; it gleamed dully beyond a glittery haze of coal dust. Bums stepped
forward, tamped a charge into the hole, plugged it with a dummy, and turned
around to look for Moore, but the other man had already retreated through the
blackness into the heading shaft. An empty cart stood on fresh-laid track,
waiting to be filled, but otherwise the room was empty. Somewhere a miner
hollered musically, and the sound chased itself through the darkness. There was
a stink of metal and sweat, and the rattle of dust in his lungs. He could feel
that old dread tighten through his chest.

Damn Blankenship for not wetting down the walls, he thought. Tight-fisted
sonofabitch.

And then, with a gutteral sigh for the way life had of creeping up on a man --
first a wife, and then a baby, and then you were trapped, there was nothing to
do but work the coal -- Bums turned back to the wall. He struck a match and
touched it to the fuse. The fuse sputtered uncertainly, and for a moment Bums
thought it might be bad, and then it caught with a hiss that seemed thunderous.
It flared a self-devouring cherry, and Bums spun away, squeezing the match
between his fingers as he stumbled from the room and flattened himself against
the wall in the main shaft.

The charge went up with a muffled thud, and he braced himself for a second,
more-powerful explosion that did not come. The dust had not ignited. He heard
the wall crumble, tumbling Blankenship's coal out of the seam, and a thick cloud
mushroomed into the main shaft. Bums glanced over at Moore. In the glare of the
cap light, the other man's face looked pale and washed out, his eyes like
glinting sapphire chips set far back in bony hollows.

Moore smiled thinly and lifted the auger Over his head. "The Lord's with us."

"Lucky, I reckon," Burns said. He hunkered down, dug through the tool poke, and
hefted his shovel and axe. "Reckon we ought to get to it," he said.

Burns stood and ducked back into the room without waiting for Moore to follow.
Coughing thick dust, he picked his way through the rabble to the chest-high hole
the charge had gouged in the wall. He dropped the shovel and went to his knees