“The Lord might have said it’s only a waste of time to build this earth, if it was He who actually did it. I figure we should be thankful to the mountain which has rewarded our labor so generously. So we shouldn’t leave this place as careless picnic parties and dirty motorists so often do. We have wounded this mountain and I think it is our duty to close its wounds. The silent beauty of this place deserves our respect. Besides, I want to think of this place the way we found it and not as it has been while we were taking away its treasures, which this same mountain has guarded for millions of years. I couldn’t sleep well thinking I had left the mountain looking like a junk-yard. I’m sorry we can’t do this restoration perfectly—that we can do no better than show our good intention and our gratitude. If you two guys won’t help me, I’ll do it all alone, but I shall do it just the same.”
Curtin laughed. “The way you talk about a mountain as a personality is funny. Anyway, count me in. I’m with you. You should sweep a cabin when leaving it after it has sheltered you for the night. All right with me. Let’s tackle the job.”
“I have still another reason,” Howard explained, “a reason which is less sentimental, and I suppose this is a reason which will appeal to you, Dobbs, in particular. It’s this. Suppose after we have left, somebody comes up, looks around, and touches the right button. What then? We’ll have a dozen goddamned bandits after us inside of a few hours, to catch up with us and ease us of our lives and our income. Well, Dobbs, better level this part off and make it look like a flower-garden. Don’t always think of your pay. There may be good pay in it anyhow, even if we don’t see it right now.”
“All right, I’ll do what I can, but leave me alone; I’m no gardener.” He was reconciled, Dobbs was, only he didn’t want to show it for fear Curtin might poke fun at him.
2
Lunch was as usual. A kettle of tea, a leathery pancake, and a piece of dried meat which needed constant chewing. Lunch over, a pipe or two, and they were at work again. Daylight had to be used from the first ray to the last. Days in the tropics, even in midsummer, are not long—only slightly longer than the nights. Breakfast had to be over when the first rays of the sun shot above the horizon, and the mine was never left before dark had fallen. Only so had it been possible for the partners to do much work, interrupted as they often were by tropical cloudbursts, when for hours the whole plateau would become a lake.
“It sure has been the hardest job I ever had,” Curtin said when they were sitting by the fire smoking and reflecting on their life during the last months.
“Doubtless it was hard work,” Howard admitted. “But I’m positive that none of us in all his life ever made as good wages as we have made here.”
“Maybe.” This from Dobbs. “Yes, maybe. Only I think it might be better—”
“Better what?” Curtin asked, afraid that Dobbs might again bring up the question of staying for a few months more.
“Oh, nothing. Forget it.” Dobbs tried to shake off certain thoughts which apparently were troubling his mind.
“Yes, we’ve got our pay.” Howard spoke as though he had not listened to what the other two had said to each other. “We’ve got the money. That’s perfectly all right. But I figure as long as it isn’t in the bank, or at least in a civilized town, we can hardly call it our own. We have a hellish long way before us and a tough job still before we have everything safely at the nearest depot. That worries me a lot.”
Neither Dobbs nor Curtin said anything. They knocked their pipes out and all went back to work.
3
The derricks, stages, and wheels were finally broken and set fire to, so as to leave no trace of their machinery. Then they covered the charred timber with earth. Aftec this was done they dug shrubs from the woods and planted them here.
Howard had a good reason for doing everything so carefully. “Suppose one of you guys gambles his earnings away or loses them some other way, he may return, and he can still make his living here. So let’s hide the place as well as we can to keep it safe for any one of us who might be in need.”
Within two days the partners had changed the mine so much that a few weeks later it would have been very difficult to discover that it had formerly been a working_place.
