Panic broke loose. Every Mexican in the group quit, scampering out of the cave and heading for Carlsbad. They were scared. But so were Johnny and Wayne. They knew how hard it was to get men to work in the cave and, with this mass exodus of workers, they would be in for a hard lecture from Victor when he returned and found what had happened. They pleaded with the frightened men, but it was useless. They had seen that white figure with their own eyes. They had heard the cave was haunted; now they knew that what they had heard was true. Come back to work? Not in that cave! Some picked up their belongings, while the others were in too much of a hurry to get out of that section of the country. When Victor returned and learned what had happened, he nearly fired John and Wayne on the spot. Needless to say, John and Wayne had learned their lesson, and they were much more careful about what they tried on the workers in the future. On one occasion a man by the name of Priest came out from Carlsbad to see the cave and learn how guano was being taken out. The boys were always ready to oblige anyone like this, so they told him to get on the car and they would take him down. The car hadn't gone very far when the steel cable on the drum slipped a bit and the car suddenly dropped about a foot. Priest was so frightened he began to pray. The boys thought that was quite an incident, seeing a Priest pray on a cable car going after guano, and they always got a bang out of telling it. That car contributed its share of incidents at the cave. One other time we had just received several hundred empty sacks and were preparing to send them below where the men could fill them with guano. Generally the workers in the cave would walk the ladders when they wanted to go into the cave or come out. But this time there were three boys who decided they would get a free ride as long as the car was going anyway with the sacks. So they jumped on. Sitting gaily on the sacks they appeared ready for a thrill, so they called out to the whim man, "Let 'er go!" He did. The boys were asking for a fast ride, so he decided to give it to them. He forgot to take into consideration that the weight of the several hundred sacks plus the weight of the three boys was too much for the car, and as it gained momentum in its downward plunge the brake gave way. The car was now falling freely of its own weight, and in an instant would crash at the bottom, totally wrecking the car and possibly killing the three boys. I happened to see the whole thing, being right there at the time, and before I could think what was happening I had instinctively grabbed a 4×4 timber close by and rammed it into the whim. Smoke billowed from the 4×4 as it hit the whim. The car slowed up just as it hit the bottom. From our position at the top of the shaft we couldn't tell how hard the car had landed, nor could we tell if anyone had been badly hurt.