Three rescued from old mine

THIDA, Ark. -- Dreams of gold drew them in. Teams of rescuers pulled them out.

Three boys who went looking for riches in a Civil War-era mine got caught in a cave-in that trapped them in a crawl space 200 feet underground for a day and a half. Rescuers dug with their hands and small shovels and crawled on their bellies to reach the three, who were a little dehydrated and scared but unhurt.

William Zachary Foster, 9, had feared the worst. "We wasn't going to get out. We didn't have any food and we'd starve to death," he said Tuesday at a hospital in Batesville, where the three boys were treated.

The boy had been eager to search for gold after finding sparkling dust on his shirt in a previous trip to the mine. On Sunday morning, he and his brother, David Keith Foster, 11, and their 19-year-old cousin, Jeffery Keith Foster, set out to explore.

Local lore has it that the sandy walls of the old mine hide gold, though none has ever been found. Residents also talk of train robbers who may have left their stolen treasures in the mine in the late 1800s.

Five minutes into the boys' trek, the ground rumbled and the dirt ceiling collapsed. A wall of mud about 100 feet beyond the mine's 6-by-4-foot entranceway blocked their escape.

When the children didn't return home from the mine, their parents alerted authorities. Volunteers from rural fire departments came in droves. Digging by hand and with small shovels at about a foot an hour, the rescuers worked nonstop.

The three were in a pocket about 200 feet underground, big enough to move around in, too small to stand. With only one flashlight, they sat in the dark much of the time to keep the batteries from going down.

The boys were held overnight for observation and were released Tuesday.

Now firefighters are deciding what to do with the remaining mines -- a popular hangout for teen-agers around Thida, population 150. For the time being, residents say, what happened to the Foster boys will be enough to keep kids out of the mines.