Show I j life of a gilsonite miner by Max Peatross EDITOR'S NOTE This is another installment of by Max A few days later while shipping ore from the I had a lesson in or maybe it was God or perhaps it was There I two buckets of ore left in the I figured I would ship them both and leave an empty I jumped on the bucket as it went by the landing and rode it down to the The let a little slack in the and I pushed the bail over to the dropped the chute into the and opened the gate The wet ore hung on the bottom of the bin refusing to after much banging and I got the bucket full and gave the bell line a One the signal the signal to stop if the bucket was in motion or to go up if the bucket was already I waited and nothing happened McDonald must have gotten off the hoist for a drink I waited another and then decided to pull the pole and leave the bucket of ore in the bin It probably wouldn't come out There was a hole off the north side of the bucket between a liner board one one a stull on the the wall on the east side and the bucket on the bottom side Through this hole I had to wiggle to get down past the bucket and pull the pole If it had been an inch smaller or I had been ten pounds I would never have made As it was it took a amount of squirming grunting and time to get The which always managed to get balled up or never made the maneuver less It was only when I got back out on top that I learned how close I had come to being a smear on the hard rocks of the shaft McDonald had gotten off the and I rang the bell before he got back on But then he wasn't quite sure whether the bell had or so he hesitated a Then feeling assured that it had he gunned the motor and started to ease in the clutch and let off the he decide he do he'd I could always ring and I did when I had won the battle of the We compared waiting The time he had waited until he gunned the motor and then changed his mind was a little longer than the time I had waited before starting through the If he had lifted the bucket everything above my belt would have been washed down the shaft to be bailed out of the When one is alone out on the desert or in the mountains or anywhere he can abide the the and even prefer it as long as the sun is The strength of God is upon The eyes of evil are blinded by the and they slip to the other side where they can torture the soul with fear in The the and all forms of life around and on them are compatible with a man and rejoice with him in their The corundum sky of the cloudless desert is the shielding hand of lest man in his visions should pierce its opaqueness and view the things he could not A man works and is born and and the light reduces his mourning to a who is alone in a solitary can make friends with himself and do things in the light of his own knowledge and as the sun is shining let the sun go down upon the lonely and he becomes his own worst and there is no comfort beside the campfire The evil has traced its course The animals and insects either put away for the night or become a conspirator with the and the blackness itself is evil If he turns one side to the he must soon turn it around because his flesh can endure the dark only a short It is not the heat of the fire that relaxes the neives on a warm but the light of the fire And the side away and a man shudders and turns around The darkness of the opposite of the fire comes across to he shudders again and builds the fire up high until the heat drives him back into the and this demon is worse than the small companionable fire he had After a couple of hours he makes his bed upon the bosom of his the who absorbs his emotions until sleep and he wakes again to the hope of another dawn A superstitious man receives a worse Pete was a superstitious He brought a mixture of several and when he came to work at the he brought his superstitions with TO BE |