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"The only green left, between here and the Hope, is the hundred acres around the camp"

"It was the rain that saved us"

"Did Lou Cross and his crew ever report?"

Patience and I had planned to just get coffee, but it s a whole breakfast

"Excuse me," Patience says e’re almost finished She stands and walks toward the kitchen to talk to the bald-headed cook I can’t i "More pancakes, please"? "Thank you for the nice meal"? She comes back with a clean, e itto do with the burial preparations

"My breasts," she whispers, s, as if I would enjoy the joke "They’re so full, I need to go soet a breast infection I left the baby and Danny with Mrs Maddock"

"What are you going to do with the milk?"

"I don’t know Put it in a pitcher next to Mrs Ross’s coffee?" Here we both start laughing so hard I almost choke

Rescue

Back at headquarters, the big news is that Lou Cross and his crew have at last been rescued Loonie Tinkshell sits on one of the wooden chairs in the waiting area projecting his voice so the h the open infirully about a quarterin a rocky area at the side of the ravine, I could hear water dripping soan to explore That’s when I slid down the ers’ coal mines Their holes are all over these hills"

Here the porch door swings open and, who should li coffee but Lou Cross hi his cowboy hat He has on a clean uniform and, of course, looks quite dapper

"There you are, you son of a bitch" He slaps the mechanic on his back, pulls up a chair, and straddles it backward "Pardon in’ hero We were more dead than alive when he slid into that hole

"Here’s how it happened" he begins, like a storyteller "My boys and I found the bootleggers’shaft about the same way Loonie did and it saved our lives," Lou continues "We were headed across the west slope, trying to meet up with the rest of the caar" He smacks his hand hard on the back of his chair to make his point "Smoke so thick and air so hot, we dropped our tools and ran, but there was no e could outrun the fla, was in the lead one ht into the hole Lucky for all of us, the slope was only a forty-five-degree angle, not straight down, but there were boulders at the bottom That’s how Arthur broke his ankle" I look across the waiting roo in a cast, Dr Blurins and raises his hand, in case soroup don’t know hi in our hands and heels If it hadn’t been for that ht on our tails, drawn up the ravine like creosote in a tin stovepipeWhoosh!"

"When I dropped down into the pit, I was kind of scared" This is Loonie Tinkshell, continuing the narrative "I wasn’t sure what I had found ‘Hello!’ I called into the black ‘Anyone down here?’

"‘Hell yes!’ Lou answered "

"The worst part was the heat," Arthur, the kid with the cast, observes "It was like ere trapped in a cooking pot The twelve of us crowded away froot as far back as we could, but the shaft ended right there