I wanted work in an ore producing mine.  It was safer and more regular and not as wet as shaft sinking.  Shafts were most dangerous.  You had to use high grade explosives and also the flimsy machinery to let a man down and to hoist him up.  At last I found work at a shaft named El Paso and very wet.  A miner with rheumatism or weak lungs could not work many days.  Conditions in shaft sinking would soon lay him up.  Three eight hour shifts with from one to two men on shifts, and size of shaft three by six in the clear and the depth fifty to five hundred feet.  Should paying ore be found, the shaft was made larger.

I worked in El Paso shaft several months.  DUVALS, from California, was the owner.  I had considerable trouble with water.  It would rise eight feet per hour when the pump would fail.  My cabin was one-half mile from the shaft.  They would send a man after me to get the pump working again.  One month I had forty-five days to my credit.  I felt no serious effect from the dampness, only a numbness and weakness about my ankles.  Mr. DUVAL told me he would build a house for me and pay my expenses if I would move here from Pennsylvania.  I could not think for a moment of bringing my wife and two small children to such a rough country.  My partner, JAMES, found work for both of us in another shaft called the Olive Branch.  It was not so deep.  It was only two hundred feet and was not for from El Paso.  Olive Branch worked three shifts with one man on each shift.  JAMES and myself worked about three months.  We got along agreeably in our cabin and also in the mine.  On this week my shift was from 7 a. m. to 3 p. m.  JAMES followed me from 3 p. m. to 11 p. m.

One night about ten o'clock I was sleeping soundly in the cabin when I heard a voice calling me.  "Ho, FRANCIS."  It woke me up.  I felt at once that there was something wrong by the tone of his voice.  I got up quickly and asked him what was the matter.  He told me that JAMES was badly hurt.  I asked him where JAMES was.  He told me at the bottom of the shaft.  I hurried over to the shaft and just got there in time to take hold of him as his head and shoulders came through the opening top of the shaft.  He stood upright in the bucket with one arm around the rope which was attached to the bucket as the hoisting rope was pulled up on the drum by horse-power--very slowly hoisting.  A wood fire was burning near.  We moved him to it; took off his rubber coat and his hip boots and we realized that he was badly injured.  His right shoulder was crushed and his arm was injured.  When I took off his boots blood poured from them and a large hole just above his right hip could be seen.  Blood was flowing from his side.  JAMES was a strong man in the prime of his life, but I could see that he was getting weaker.  Something must be done and that quickly.

The opener of the shaft came and looked at JAMES' shoulder and said that his arm would have to be taken off.  JAMES heard him and cried out, "No, no.  I won't have it off." He was growing weaker now and getting very weak.  Someone said, "Let's take him down to Leadville.  There is a Sister Hospital just opened up there."  I had not known this.  We hurriedly placed some boards together and carried him to Leadville, less than a mile away.  JAMES was growing weaker but was not complaining.  He surely had a lot of nerve.  Not even a groan came from his lips.  It was rough carrying.  The hour was midnight.  When we reached the hospital, they opened the door and we carried JAMES in.  A doctor instructed us to lay him on a platform or a table and he made a quick examination; then he shook his head.  We understood.

I went back to my cabin and prepared to go to work at the shaft by seven o'clock a. m.  It was a one man shift.  It was important that I should be on time and also I wanted to know how the accident occurred.  There was a man from Scranton, Pennsylvania who operated the hoisting of the bucket.  His name was REES.  As the bucket was hoisted above the trap doors on top of the shaft he failed to close them.  A one hundred and fifty pound truck was kept close by to lower heavy buckets on.  Then it was pushed out and dumped.  When he pushed the truck it fell down the shaft 260 feet and struck JAMES.  He failed to close the trap door.  I worked until three o'clock, the end of my shift.  I felt badly about my partner, JAMES.  I hurried to my cabin, cleaned up a bit.  I had only the one suit that I worked in.

Then I went down to Leadville.  When I came to the hospital door an elderly sister met me and asked if the injured man we brought in last night was my partner.  I told her that he was.  Then she told me he was dying and that if I had any questions to ask him I should ask them quickly, that he would soon be unconscious.  As I reached his bedside he faintly recognized me.  I asked him about his relatives.  He had never told me anything about them.  He faintly answered, "Bag Knorving" -- he had an old-fashioned carpet bag.  Knorving he should have about two hundred dollars."  I asked him about it.  He whispered faintly "Corner cabin.  Cobble stone."  These words came faintly, slower and slower.  JAMES was dying far from his home in Wales.  I stood by seeing my partner passing out.  After JAMES died, I left the hospital and notified all hands that worked at the shaft.  The next morning four of us dug his grave outside of Leadville in ground set aside for that purpose as many unknown men were being buried there.