But Colina was used to this experience. It was one which she had
regularly undergone every winter of her existence. Therefore, her
inhabitants prepared for it and bore it with what equanimity they could
summon. It was but a small camp so far up in the mountains that the
mines were practically only worked during the late spring, the summer
and the early autumn months, for the water which ran the concentrating
and stamp mills was frozen early in the winter and the mines were
practically closed down. One or two, like the Mont d'Or, were kept open,
and worked a few hours a day, but no milling was done and the ore dumps
increased to vast size.
The railroad, a steep and tortuous way, was not, _per se_ a passenger
line, but existed to carry the ore down to the smelters, therefore, when
there was no ore to carry, it was a matter of indifference to the mine
owners who controlled the line whether trains ran or not; in fact, they
preferred not from a strictly business standpoint, and truly they had an
excellent excuse in the heavy drifts which completely obliterated the
narrow, shining, steel path which led to the world beyond the mountains.
The police officials whom Hanson consulted as soon as his returning
health permitted him to do so, realized that in spite of their anxiety
to secure the famous and slippery Crop-eared Jose, he was quite as
safely imprisoned by the mountains as if they themselves had secured
him. There was no possible escape for him.
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