The Explosion

He replied that that seemed to be a unusually heavy one, and it was. There must have been a ton of giant powder burnt in that explosion. The tunnel had caved in, and the debris from above on the mountain had covered the place many feet in depth. It was perfectly apparent that both shafts within must have been torn to pieces and the whole mine was a wreck. Thousands of tons of much doubtless filled the holes, and to have reached the bottom of the shafts would have required as great an expenditure as the total amount that had been used in developing the mine.

It was clear to all of us that the explosion had been effected on purpose. These counterfeiters had taken into account the chances of the mine being some day raided by the officials who would trace to that place the counterfeit silver dollars. They had stored hundreds of pounds of dynamite where the concussion of its ignition would produce the severest of effects, and they had connected it with an electric wire leading to the refinery. Spencer had given the signal to discharge the blast, and the battery was turned on; the result was that minting machine, dies, rollers and whatever else of evidence as in the crime of counterfeiting had instantly become buried beneath thousands of tons of debris.

We then proceeded to the refinery,intending to seize the silver bars which I had seen so numerously piled therein, but lo! every one had vanished. I asked where they were, but received no reply: to direct questions put to the foreman of the refinery I received the reply that he did not know. I looked into the melting kettle; it was full of silver metal. The box bars with their silver dollars had been thrown into the kettle, and had melted into bullion; but no trace of the form of a box or the shape of a dollar could be discerned in the molten mass of bright metal.

I chafed under the realization that withal I was to leave the mine without a particle of legal evidence that any counterfeiting had been in progress there, but such was the fact: I had no such evidence. We took with us all the men employed at the place, together with Davis and Spencer, but the most of them ... knew nothing beyond their immediate duties at the mines, and from these I learned nothing.