brother thinks he's a miner becos he's allus diggin' tunnels an' sluicin' sandbars. I've helped him some, offtimes. More'n that, we'd likely bring down a sight more'n we displaced. There's a heap of it ready to shift."
His conclusions were only too logical, Sheridan thought, glancing at the mass of clay and at the cliffs back of it where the ledges were piled with similar stuff, weathered, crumbled, ready to be launched.
"Couldn't tunnel in without shorin'," went on Red. "An' where's yore timber?"
Sheridan glanced at Quong and found no encouragement. If they had been in China he supposed Quong would have set a thousand coolies to work and basketed the dirt away. But they were not in China. The nature of the friable dump demanded a gang of men and a lot of time, short of a steam shovel or a hydraulic Long Tom; both out of the question.
"We've got to sink a shaft," he said, still revolving the problem for a better solution. They might riddle the mass like a Swiss cheese with shafts without hitting a wagon or knowing they were near one. And a shaft, eighty feet deep, would be a herculean task.
"It depends upon how far those wagons got in before they were covered up. How about that, Quong? What's your judgment?"
"Juan's horse was lame," said the Chinaman. "He had fallen a good way behind in that last rush. Yet he saw the wagons in the gap. They may have slowed up a bit, but they must have been well in towards the cave."
