At this time the immediate cause of the explosion was unknown, but they could tell it was a “dust explosion” by the clouds of coke-dust, and no one who had been into the mine and seen its dry condition would doubt what they would find when they went down and traced out the “force” and its effects. They were supposed to do regular sprinkling, but in such matters the bosses used their own judgment. Hal was only half listening to these explanations. The thing was too raw and too horrible to him. What difference did it make whose fault it was? The accident had happened, and the question was now how to meet the emergency! Underneath Olson’s sentences he heard the cry of men and boys being asphyxiated in dark dungeons--he heard the wailing of women, like a surf beating on a distant shore, or the faint, persistent accompaniment of muted strings: “O, mein Mann! O, mein Mann!” They came upon Jeff Cotton again. With half a dozen men to help him, he was pushing back the crowd from the pit-mouth, and stretching barbed wired to hold them back. He was none too gentle about it, Hal thought; but doubtless women are provoking when they are hysterical. He was answering their frenzied questions, “Yes, yes! We’re getting a new fan. We’re doing everything we can, I tell you. We’ll get them out. Go home and wait.” But of course no one would go home. How could a woman sit in her house, or go about her ordinary tasks of cooking or washing, while her man might be suffering asphyxiation under the ground? The least she could do was to stand at the pit-mouth--as near to him as she could get! Some of them stood motionless, hour after hour, while others wandered through the village streets, asking the same people, over and over again, if they had seen their loved ones. Several had turned up, like Patrick Burke; there seemed always a chance for one more. SECTION 27. In the course of the afternoon Hal came upon Mary Burke on the street. She had long ago found her father, and seen him off to O’Callahan’s to celebrate the favours of Providence. Now Mary was concerned with a graver matter. Number Two Mine was in danger! The explosion in Number One had been so violent that the gearing of the fan of the other mine, nearly a mile up the canyon, had been thrown out of order. So the fan had stopped; and when some one had gone to Alec Stone, asking that he bring out the men, Stone had refused. “What do ye think he said?” cried Mary. “What do ye think? ‘Damn the men! Save the mules!’” Hal had all but lost sight of the fact that there was a second mine in the village, in which hundreds of men and boys were still at work. “Wouldn’t they know about the explosion?” he asked. “They might have heard the noise,” said Mary. “But they’d not know what it was; and the bosses won’t tell them till they’ve got out the mules.” For all that he had seen in North Valley, Hal could hardly credit that story. “How do you know it, Mary?”