As the three friends hurried up Pine Nut Gulch toward the Katie Brackett the youngest of them reflected that the method of approach had been made smooth for him. It was not now necessary for him to skulk up through the sage. The whole town was on its way to the scene of the disaster. A stream of people was headed for the mine. Nimble boys passed them on the run. Less active citizens they overtook and left behind. The sounds of voices, of movements of many people, came to them through the darkness. Hugh still carried his sawed-off shotgun. He might need it. He might not. He realized that for the moment his vengeance must take second place. The common thought and effort of Piodie must centre on the business of saving the poor fellows trapped in that fiery furnace six hundred feet below ground. The superintendent of the mine was calling for volunteer rescuers just as Hugh and Dan reached the shaft house. McClintock hid his shotgun under a pile of lumber and stepped forward. The cage was a double decker. There was a rush of men to get on the lower floor. They knew well enough the danger that faced them, but it is a risk a brave miner is always willing to take for the lives of doomed companions. “Hold on! Get back there. Don’t crowd!” ordered the superintendent. “No married man can go. You, Finlay—and Trelawney—and Big Bill. That makes six. All right.” The lower compartment dropped and the second level was even with the ground. The superintendent stepped into the cage. Byers crowded in next. Budd, puffing hard, pushed close. With an elbow driven hard into his midriff Hugh thrust him back. “Don’t you hear? No married men wanted, Jim.” McClintock vaulted over the edge of the cage and dropped into it. A big Ayrshire mucker shouted at the superintendent. “An’ when did ye divorce your wife an’ twa weans, boss?” “I’ve got to go, Sandy. It’s my job,” the mine boss called back. “That’s all. No room for more. Jam that gate shut.” The engineer moved a lever and the bucket dropped into the darkness. Every few seconds there was a flash of light as the cage passed a station. Except for that the darkness was dense. Hugh heard someone beside him say, “I hear Dodson’s caught in a drift.” Carstairs, the superintendent, answered: “Yes. Dutch is with him. They went to look at that new vein we struck yesterday.” No accident contains more terrible possibilities than a fire in a mine. Flame and gas pursue the trapped victims as they fly. Cut off from the shaft, buried hundreds of feet in the ground, the miners run the risk of being asphyxiated, burned, or blown up in an explosion of released gases.