“Are you saying they deliberately buried forty people alive?”
“There had been cave-ins deeper in, folks said they sounded like something was farting or burping deep down in the earth, but the Chinese were still okay—still alive, anyway—behind the first rockfall, begging to be dug out. They were eating the mine-ponies by then, I imagine, and they’d had no water or light for two days. The mining engineers went in—poked their heads in, anyway—and said it was too dangerous for any sort of rescue operation.”
“So what did they do?” Mary asked.
Billingsley shrugged. “Set dynamite charges at the front of the mine and brought that down, too. Shut her up.”
“Are you saying they deliberately buried forty people alive?” Cynthia asked.
“Forty-two counting the line-boss and the foreman,” Billingsley said. “The line-boss was white, but a drunk and a man known to speak foul language to decent women. No one spoke up for him. The foreman either, far as that goes.”
“How could they do it?”
“Most were Chinese, ma’am,” Billingsley said, “so it was easy.”
