The company covers up the deaths. Orville Orr, a company-paid deputy sheriff who rousts workers each morning, transports workers' corpses to a funeral home 20 miles away. The bodies receive a cornfield burial, their graves marked by cornstalk crosses. Dry drilling - no water dampening the dust from the drills - produces tunnel air laden with high concentrations of silica. Workers have no respiratory protection and develop acute silicosis. Orville learns the truth - the deaths could have been prevented. He first attempts to get breathing protection for workers. That failing, he takes action to secure the first autopsy of a tunnel worker and build evidence of the company's responsibility for the fatalities. Armen, the daughter of a tunnel worker and a union organizer who died of silicosis, joins him and they fall in love. The autopsy prompts an attempt on Orville's life; he narrowly escapes. The autopsy's findings lead to legal action by workers and their families. An epilogue describes the outcomes of courtroom trials and a later congressional investigation.