Word: shafted
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...with his fellow pros is: "This won't hurt a bit... Ouch!" He has a loose swing, hits a long straight ball, steadies down under pressure like a real pro, works well on the greens with his unorthodox putter (a gooseneck with the blade extending forward from the shaft instead of backward...
Again & again, the word would come from somewhere: "Only a couple of hours more now." Again & again, there were fresh delays: Tempers were short; arguments flared over what might have been done. At last diggers, deep in the shaft, began to tunnel laterally toward Kathy's iron prison. Whitey was only a few shovelfuls away from the well pipe, when he was hauled to the surface, his face angry and set. There was water in his boots. Slowly at first, then faster, water poured into the tunnel. Digging stopped...
...three hours before the shaft could be pumped dry. Whitey went back down. "He deserves a knighthood," said a worker, "but he doesn't even have a job." Others relieved him. The lateral tunnel began to cave in. The low talk of the workmen was carried over the loudspeaker. "It's caving to beat the band," said the voice below. Timbers went down for shoring. The men worked on, regardless of danger, or bone-deep fatigue. Little O. A. Kelly leaned back wearily when he was pulled to the surface, and swore: "I'm going in there...
Then, in the glare of the television lights, a doctor stepped into the bucket and was lowered into the shaft. A few minutes later, the announcement came at last over the loudspeaker: "Kathy is dead and apparently has been dead since she was last heard speaking." Kathy's body had been found just below the tunneled opening. Her knees were wedged against her chest. Kathy had fallen into a coma, and then died because her cramped body could not get enough oxygen. There was no pain in her face...
...doctor asked the crowd to leave. As the last figures disappeared, Bill Yancey was hauled slowly up the shaft. In his arms was a small, blanketed form. Tenderly he laid the bundle on a white pillow in the back of a black car. In silence, the car rolled slowly past the derricks and the piled dirt, past the gaping hole and the steel casing, past the rows of exhausted, grimy workmen...