"Out with it! I'll fire you both, you lazy, good for nothings!" he bellowed. "You ain't fit even to be swampers behind a pair of lazy mules. Push, I tell you! Push! Something will be doing here in a jiffy if you don't get that car out of the way!" His words were prophetic in a measure, for something did happen a few seconds later, though Spooner was not the author of it. Rather was he the victim. With a crash the trap door at the bottom of the rise burst open with a sound like a dynamite explosion in a new drift. A dark object was hurled out into the level, landing squirming on the soft ore in the car. "What--what----" Spooner did not finish what he was about to say. The dark object bounded from the ore car, landing with great force against the angry contractor. Spooner toppled over backwards, the breath pretty well knocked out of him, collapsing in the gutter at the side of the track. Steve Rush had found the Spooner contract at last. The lad was not much the worse for his exciting slide, though he had been somewhat bruised when he burst through the wooden trap door at the lower end of the rise. Steve was up in a twinkling. He looked about him and in a half laughing voice demanded: "Where am I?" "I reckon you're on seventeen," answered one of the miners. "Where's the boss?" "He's down there under you somewhere. I guess you knocked the daylight out of him. I hope you did. If it wasn't for my wife and family I'd a done it long time ago." "Yes; I'd give a year's wages for the privilege of turning the diamond drill on him," added the head driller. "Did I hit a man?" asked Steve anxiously. "No; you hit an apology for a man," was the quick reply. By this time young Rush was bending over, looking down into the shadows that hung over the gutter along the side of the track. He made out the figure of a man lying there. "Help me get him up, men," he cried. "Don't you see that he is hurt?" "Serve him right if he is," growled the trammer, the workman who pushed the cars of ore out into the main level. "I tell you he is hurt. Lend a hand here!" commanded the boy sternly. Something in his tone led the others to obey his order promptly. They gathered up Contractor Spooner and carried him over to where the light from the candles could be thrown on his face. "Douse him with a pail of water," suggested the drill-man. Someone quickly adopted the suggestion, with the result that Spooner sat up almost at once, choking, roaring and threatening between his gasps for breath. "Who--who did it? Who did it?" snarled the contractor, struggling to his feet. "Who hit me?" The man's hat had fallen from his head, and for the moment Steve did not answer. He was too fully absorbed in gazing at the harsh face of the man before him.