He hesitated a moment; then, "Will you tell me what you mean by that
when I come?"

But "Red Mary" was winsome again. "When ye come, Mr. Smith, I'll not be
entertaining ye with troubles. I'll put on me company manner, and we'll
go out for a nice walk, if ye please."

All the way as he walked back to Reminitsky's to supper, Hal thought
about this girl; not merely her pleasantness to the eye, so unexpected
in this place of desolation, but her personality, which baffled him--the
pain that seemed always just beneath the surface of her thoughts, the
fierce pride which flashed out at the slightest suggestion of sympathy,
the way she had of brightening when he spoke the language of metaphor,
however trite. How had she come to know about poetry-books? He wanted to
know more about this miracle of Nature--this wild rose blooming on a
bare mountain-side!



SECTION 9.

There was one of Mary Burke's remarks upon which Hal soon got light--her
statement that North Valley was a place of fear. He listened to the
tales of these underworld men, until it came so that he shuddered with
dread each time that he went down in the cage.

There was a wire-haired and almond eyed Korean, named Cho, a
"rope-rider" in Hal's part of the mine. He was one of those who had
charge of the long trains of cars, called "trips," which were hauled
through the main passage-ways; the name "rope-rider" came from the fact
that he sat on the heavy iron ring to which the rope was attached. He
invited Hal to a seat with him, and Hal accepted, at peril of his job as
well as of his limbs. Cho had picked up what he fondly thought was
English, and now and then one could understand a word. He pointed upon
the ground, and shouted above the rattle of the cars: "Big dust!" Hal
saw that the ground was covered with six inches of coal-dust, while on
the old disused walls one could write his name in it. "Much blow-up!"
said the rope-rider; and when the last empty cars had been shunted off
into the working-rooms, and he was waiting to make up a return "trip,"
he laboured with gestures to explain what he meant. "Load cars. Bang!
Bust like hell!"

Hal knew that the mountain air in this region was famous for its
dryness; he learned now that the quality which meant life to invalids
from every part of the world meant death to those who toiled to keep the
invalids warm. Driven through the mines by great fans, this air took out
every particle of moisture, and left coal dust so thick and dry that
there were fatal explosions from the mere friction of loading-shovels.
So it happened that these mines were killing several times as many men
as other mines throughout the country.

Was there no remedy for this, Hal asked, talking with one of his
mule-drivers, Tim Rafferty, the evening after his ride with Cho. There
was a remedy, said Tim--the law required sprinkling the mines with
"adobe-dust"; and once in Tim's life, he remembered this law's being
obeyed. There had come some "big fellows" inspecting things, and
previous to their visit there had been an elaborate campaign of
sprinkling. But that had been several years ago, and now the apparatus
was stored away, nobody knew where, and one heard nothing about
sprinkling.

It was the same with precautions against gas. The North Valley mines
were especially "gassy," it appeared. In these old rambling passages one
smelt a stink as of all the rotten eggs in all the barn-yards of the
world; and this sulphuretted hydrogen was the least dangerous of the
gases against which a miner had to contend. There was the dreaded
"choke-damp," which was odourless, and heavier than air. Striking into
soft, greasy coal, one would open a pocket of this gas, a deposit laid
up for countless ages, awaiting its predestined victim. A man might sink
to sleep as he lay at work, and if his "buddy," or helper, happened to
be out of sight, and to delay a minute too long, it would be all over
with the man. And there was the still more dreaded "fire-damp," which
might wreck a whole mine, and kill scores and even hundreds of men.

Against these dangers there was a "fire-boss," whose duty was to go
through the mine, testing for gas, and making sure that the
ventilating-course was in order, and the fans working properly. The
"fire-boss" was supposed to make his rounds in the early morning, and
the law specified that no one should go to work till he had certified
that all was safe. But what if the "fire-boss" overslept himself, or
happened to be drunk? It was too much to expect thousands of dollars to
be lost for such a reason. So sometimes one saw men ordered to their
work, and sent down grumbling and cursing. Before many hours some of
them would be prostrated with headache, and begging to be taken out; and
perhaps the superintendent would not let them out, because if a few
came, the rest would get scared and want to come also.

Once, only last year, there had been an accident of that sort. A young
mule-driver, a Croatian, told Hal about it while they sat munching the
contents of their dinner-pails. The first cage-load of men had gone down
into the mine, sullenly protesting; and soon afterwards some one had
taken down a naked light, and there had been an explosion which had
sounded like the blowing up of the inside of the world. Eight men had
been killed, the force of the explosion being so great that some of the
bodies had been wedged between the shaft wall and the cage, and it had
been necessary to cut them to pieces to get them out. It was them Japs
that were to blame, vowed Hal's informant. They hadn't ought to turn
them loose in coal mines, for the devil himself couldn't keep a Jap from
sneaking off to get a smoke.

So Hal understood how North Valley was a place of fear. What tales the
old chambers of these mines could have told, if they had had voices! Hal
watched the throngs pouring in to their labours, and reflected that
according to the statisticians of the government eight or nine of every
thousand of them were destined to die violent deaths before a year was
out, and some thirty more would be badly injured. And they knew this,
they knew it better than all the statisticians of the government; yet
they went to their tasks! Reflecting upon this, Hal was full of wonder.
What was the force that kept men at such a task? Was it a sense of duty?
Did they understand that society had to have coal and that some one had
to do the "dirty work" of providing it? Did they have a vision of a
future, great and wonderful, which was to grow out of their ill-requited
toil? Or were they simply fools or cowards, submitting blindly, because
they had not the wit nor the will to do otherwise? Curiosity held him,
he wanted to understand the inner souls of these silent and patient
armies which through the ages have surrendered their lives to other
men's control.



SECTION 10.

Hal was coming to know these people; to see them no longer as a mass,
to be despised or pitied in bulk, but as individuals, with individual
temperaments and problems, exactly like people in the world of the
sunlight. Mary Burke and Tim Rafferty, Cho the Korean and Madvik the
Croatian--one by one these individualities etched themselves into the
foreground of Hal's picture, making it a thing of life, moving him to
sympathy and fellowship. Some of these people, to be sure, were stunted
and dulled to a sordid ugliness of soul and body--but on the other hand,
some of them were young, and had the light of hope in their hearts, and
the spark of rebellion.

There was "Andy," a boy of Greek parentage; Androkulos was his right
name--but it was too much to expect any one to get that straight in a
coal-camp. Hal noticed him at the store, and was struck by his beautiful
features, and the mournful look in his big black eyes. They got to
talking, and Andy made the discovery that Hal had not spent all his time
in coal-camps, but had seen the great world. It was pitiful, the
excitement that came into his voice; he was yearning for life, with its
joys and adventures--and it was his destiny to sit ten hours a day by
the side of a chute, with the rattle of coal in his ears and the dust of
coal in his nostrils, picking out slate with his fingers. He was one of
many scores of "breaker-boys."

"Why don't you go away?" asked Hal.

"Christ! How I get away? Got mother, two sisters."

"And your father?" So Hal made the discovery that Andy's father had been
one of those men whose bodies had had to be cut to pieces to get them
out of the shaft. Now the son was chained to the father's place, until
his time too should come!

"Don't want to be miner!" cried the boy. "Don't want to get _kil-lid_!"

He began to ask, timidly, what Hal thought he could do if he were to run
away from his family and try his luck in the world outside. Hal,
striving to remember where he had seen olive-skinned Greeks with big
black eyes in this beautiful land of the free, could hold out no better
prospect than a shoe-shining parlour, or the wiping out of wash-bowls in
a hotel-lavatory, handing over the tips to a fat padrone.

Andy had been to school, and had learned to read English, and the
teacher had loaned him books and magazines with wonderful pictures in
them; now he wanted more than pictures, he wanted the things which they
portrayed. So Hal came face to face with one of the difficulties of
mine-operators. They gathered a population of humble serfs, selected
from twenty or thirty races of hereditary bondsmen; but owing to the
absurd American custom of having public-schools, the children of this
population learned to speak English, and even to read it. So they became
too good for their lot in life; and then a wandering agitator would get
in, and all of a sudden there would be hell. Therefore in every
coal-camp had to be another kind of "fire-boss," whose duty it was to
guard against another kind of explosions--not of carbon monoxide, but of
the human soul.

The immediate duties of this office in North Valley devolved upon Jeff
Cotton, the camp-marshal. He was not at all what one would have expected
from a person of his trade--lean and rather distinguished-looking, a man
who in evening clothes might have passed for a diplomat. But his mouth
would become ugly when he was displeased, and he carried a gun with six
notches upon it; also he wore a deputy-sheriff's badge, to give him
immunity for other notches he might wish to add. When Jeff Cotton came
near, any man who was explosive went off to be explosive by himself. So
there was "order" in North Valley, and it was only on Saturday and
Sunday nights, when the drunks had to be suppressed, or on Monday
mornings when they had to be haled forth and kicked to their work, that
one realised upon what basis this "order" rested.

Besides Jeff Cotton, and his assistant, "Bud" Adams, who wore badges,
and were known, there were other assistants who wore no badges, and were
not supposed to be known. Coming up in the cage one evening, Hal made
some remark to the Croatian mule-driver, Madvik, about the high price of
company-store merchandise, and was surprised to get a sharp kick on the
ankle. Afterwards, as they were on their way to supper, Madvik gave him
the reason. "Red-faced feller, Gus. Look out for him--company spotter."

"Is that so?" said Hal, with interest. "How do you know?"

"I know. Everybody know."

"He don't look like he had much sense," said Hal--who had got his idea
of detectives from Sherlock Holmes.

"No take much sense. Go pit-boss, say, 'Joe feller talk too much. Say
store rob him.' Any damn fool do that. Hey?"

"To be sure," admitted Hal. "And the company pays him for it?"

"Pit-boss pay him. Maybe give him drink, maybe two bits. Then pit-boss
come to you: 'You shoot your mouth off too much, feller. Git the hell
out of here!' See?"

Hal saw.

"So you go down canyon. Then maybe you go 'nother mine. Boss say, 'Where
you work?' You say 'North Valley.' He say, 'What your name?' You say,
'Joe Smith.' He say, 'Wait.' He go in, look at paper; he come out, say,
'No job!' You say, 'Why not?' He say, 'Shoot off your mouth too much,
feller. Git the hell out of here!' See?"

"You mean a black-list," said Hal.

"Sure, black-list. Maybe telephone, find out all about you. You do
anything bad, like talk union"--Madvik had dropped his voice and
whispered the word "union"--"they send your picture--don't get job
nowhere in state. How you like that?"



SECTION 11.

Before long Hal had a chance to see this system of espionage at work,
and he began to understand something of the force which kept these
silent and patient armies at their tasks. On a Sunday morning he was
strolling with his mule-driver friend Tim Rafferty, a kindly lad with a
pair of dreamy blue eyes in his coal-smutted face. They came to Tim's
home, and he invited Hal to come in and meet his family. The father was
a bowed and toil-worn man, but with tremendous strength in his solid
frame, the product of many generations of labour in coal-mines. He was
known as "Old Rafferty," despite the fact that he was well under fifty.
He had been a pit-boy at the age of nine, and he showed Hal a faded
leather album with pictures of his ancestors in the "oul' country"--men
with sad, deeply lined faces, sitting very stiff and solemn to have
their presentments made permanent for posterity.

The mother of the family was a gaunt, grey-haired woman, with no teeth,
but with a warm heart. Hal took to her, because her home was clean; he
sat on the family door-step, amid a crowd of little Rafferties with
newly-washed Sunday faces, and fascinated them with tales of adventures
cribbed from Clark Russell and Captain Mayne Reid. As a reward he was
invited to stay for dinner, and had a clean knife and fork, and a clean
plate of steaming hot potatoes, with two slices of salt pork on the
side. It was so wonderful that he forthwith inquired if he might forsake
his company boarding-house and come and board with them.

Mrs. Rafferty opened wide her eyes. "Sure," exclaimed she, "do you think
you'd be let?"

"Why not?" asked Hal.

"Sure, 't would be a bad example for the others."

"Do you mean I _have_ to board at Reminitsky's?"

"There be six company boardin'-houses," said the woman.

"And what would they do if I came to you?"

"First you'd get a hint, and then you'd go down the canyon, and maybe us
after ye."

"But there's lots of people have boarders in shanty-town," objected Hal.

"Oh! Them wops! Nobody counts them--they live any way they happen to
fall. But you started at Reminitsky's, and 't would not be healthy for
them that took ye away."

"I see," laughed Hal. "There seem to be a lot of unhealthy things
hereabouts."

"Sure there be! They sent down Nick Ammons because his wife bought milk
down the canyon. They had a sick baby, and it's not much you get in this
thin stuff at the store. They put chalk in it, I think; any way, you can
see somethin' white in the bottom."

"So you have to trade at the store, too!"

"I thought ye said ye'd worked in coal-mines," put in Old Rafferty, who
had been a silent listener.

"So I have," said Hal. "But it wasn't quite that bad."

"Sure," said Mrs. Rafferty, "I'd like to know where 'twas then--in this
country. Me and me old man spent weary years a-huntin'."

Thus far the conversation had proceeded naturally; but suddenly it was
as if a shadow passed over it--a shadow of fear. Hal saw Old Rafferty
look at his wife, and frown and make signs to her. After all, what did
they know about this handsome young stranger, who talked so glibly, and
had been in so many parts of the world?

"'Tis not complainin' we'd be," said the old man.

And his wife made haste to add, "If they let peddlers and the like of
them come in, 'twould be no end to it, I suppose. We find they treat us
here as well as anywhere."

"'Tis no joke, the life of workin' men, wherever ye try it," added the
other; and when young Tim started to express an opinion, they shut him
up with such evident anxiety that Hal's heart ached for them, and he
made haste to change the subject.



SECTION 12.

On the evening of the same Sunday Hal went to pay his promised call upon
Mary Burke. She opened the front door of the cabin to let him in, and
even by the dim rays of the little kerosene lamp, there came to him an
impression of cheerfulness. "Hello," she said--just as she had said it
when he had slid down the mountain into the family wash. He followed her
into the room, and saw that the impression he had got of cheerfulness
came from Mary herself. How bright and fresh she looked! The old blue
calico, which had not been entirely clean, was newly laundered now, and
on the shoulder where the rent had been was a neat patch of unfaded
blue.

There being only three rooms in Mary's home, two of these necessarily
bed-rooms, she entertained her company in the kitchen. The room was
bare, Hal saw--there was not even so much as a clock by way of ornament.
The only charm the girl had been able to give to it, in preparation for
company, was that of cleanness. The board floor had been newly sanded
and scrubbed; the kitchen table also had been scrubbed, and the kettle
on the stove, and the cracked tea-pot and bowls on the shelf. Mary's
little brother and sister were in the room: Jennie, a dark-eyed,
dark-haired little girl, frail, with a sad, rather frightened face; and
Tommie, a round headed youngster, like a thousand other round headed and
freckle-faced boys. Both of them were now sitting very straight in their
chairs, staring at the visitor with a certain resentment, he thought. He
suspected that they had been included in the general scrubbing. Inasmuch
as it had been uncertain just when the visitor would come, they must
have been required to do this every night, and he could imagine family
disturbances, with arguments possibly not altogether complimentary to
Mary's new "feller."

There seemed to be a certain uneasiness in the place.

Mary did not invite her company to a seat, but stood irresolute; and
after Hal had ventured a couple of friendly remarks to the children, she
said, abruptly, "Shall we be takin' that walk that we spoke of, Mr.
Smith?"

"Delighted!" said Hal; and while she pinned on her hat before the broken
mirror on the shelf, he smiled at the children and quoted two lines from
his Harrigan song--

  "Oh, Mary-Jane, come out in the lane,
  The moon is a-shinin' in the old pecan!"

Tommie and Jennie were too shy to answer, but Mary exclaimed, "'Tis in a
tin-can ye see it shinin' here!"

They went out. In the soft summer night it was pleasant to stroll under
the moon--especially when they had come to the remoter parts of the
village, where there were not so many weary people on door-steps and
children playing noisily. There were other young couples walking here,
under the same moon; the hardest day's toil could not so sap their
energies that they did not feel the spell of this soft summer night.

Hal, being tired, was content to stroll and enjoy the stillness; but
Mary Burke sought information about the mysterious young man she was
with. "Ye've not worked long in coal-mines, Mr. Smith?" she remarked.

Hal was a trifle disconcerted. "How did you find that out?"

"Ye don't look it--ye don't talk it. Ye're not like anybody or anything
around here. I don't know how to say it, but ye make me think more of
the poetry-books."

Flattered as Hal was by this naГЇve confession, he did not want to talk
of the mystery of himself. He took refuge in a question about the
"poetry-books." "I've read some," said the girl; "more than ye'd have
thought, perhaps." This with a flash of her defiance.

He asked more questions, and learned that she, like the Greek boy,
"Andy," had come under the influence of that disturbing American
institution, the public-school; she had learned to read, and the pretty
young teacher had helped her, lending her books and magazines. Thus she
had been given a key to a treasure-house, a magic carpet on which to
travel over the world. These similes Mary herself used--for the Arabian
Nights had been one of the books that were loaned to her. On rainy days
she would hide behind the sofa, reading at a spot where the light crept
in--so that she might be safe from small brothers and sisters!

Joe Smith had read these same books, it appeared; and this seemed
remarkable to Mary, for books cost money and were hard to get. She
explained how she had searched the camp for new magic carpets, finding a
"poetry-book" by Longfellow, and a book of American history, and a story
called "David Copperfield," and last and strangest of all, another story
called "Pride and Prejudice." A curious freak of fortune--the prim and
sentimentally quivering Jane Austen in a coal-camp in a far Western
wilderness! An adventure for Jane, as well as for Mary!

What had Mary made of it, Hal wondered. Had she revelled, shop-girl
fashion, in scenes of pallid ease? He learned that what she had made of
it was despair. This world outside, with its freedom and cleanness, its
people living gracious and worth-while lives, was not for her; she was
chained to a scrub-pail in a coal-camp. Things had got so much worse
since the death of her mother, she said. Her voice had become dull and
hard--Hal thought that he had never heard a young voice express such
hopelessness.

"You've never been anywhere but here?" he asked.

"I been in two other camps," she said--"first the Gordon, and then East
Run. But they're all alike."

"But you've been down to the towns?"

"Only for a day, once or twice a year. Once I was in Sheridan, and in a
church I heard a lady sing."

She stopped for a moment, lost in this memory. Then suddenly her voice
changed--and he could imagine in the darkness that she had tossed her
head defiantly. "I'll not be entertainin' company with my troubles! Ye
know how tiresome that is when ye hear it from somebody else--like my
next-door neighbour, Mrs. Zamboni. D' ye know her?"

"No," said Hal.

"The poor old lady has troubles enough, God knows. Her man's not much
good--he's troubled with the drink; and she's got eleven childer, and
that's too many for one woman. Don't ye think so?"

She asked this with a naГЇvetГ© which made Hal laugh. "Yes," he said, "I
do."

"Well, I think people'd help her more if she'd not complain so! And half
of it in the Slavish language, that a body can't understand!" So Mary
began to tell funny things about Mrs. Zamboni and her other polyglot
neighbours, imitating their murdering of the Irish dialect. Hal thought
her humour was naГЇve and delightful, and he led her on to more cheerful
gossip during the remainder of their walk.



SECTION 13.

But then, as they were on their way home, tragedy fell upon them.
Hearing a step behind them, Mary turned and looked; then catching Hal by
the arm, she drew him into the shadows at the side, whispering to him to
be silent. The bent figure of a man went past them, lurching from side
to side.

When he had turned and gone into the house, Mary said, "It's my father.
He's ugly when he's like that." And Hal could hear her quick breathing
in the darkness.

So that was Mary's trouble--the difficulty in her home life to which she
had referred at their first meeting! Hal understood many things in a
flash--why her home was bare of ornament, and why she did not invite her
company to sit down. He stood silent, not knowing what to say. Before he
could find the word, Mary burst out, "Oh, how I hate O'Callahan, that
sells the stuff to my father! His home with plenty to eat in it, and his
wife dressin' in silk and goin' down to mass every Sunday, and thinkin'
herself too good for a common miner's daughter! Sometimes I think I'd
like to kill them both."

"That wouldn't help much," Hal ventured.

"No, I know--there'd only be some other one in his place. Ye got to do
more than that, to change things here. Ye got to get after them that
make money out of O'Callahan."

So Mary's mind was groping for causes! Hal had thought her excitement
was due to humiliation, or to fear of a scene of violence when she
reached home; but she was thinking of the deeper aspects of this
terrible drink problem. There was still enough unconscious snobbery in
Hal Warner for him to be surprised at this phenomenon in a common
miner's daughter; and so, as at their first meeting, his pity was turned
to intellectual interest.

"They'll stop the drink business altogether some day," he said. He had
not known that he was a Prohibitionist; he had become one suddenly!

"Well," she answered, "they'd best stop it soon, if they don't want to
he too late. 'Tis a sight to make your heart sick to see the young lads
comin' home staggerin', too drunk even to fight."

Hal had not had time to see much of this aspect of North Valley. "They
sell to boys?" he asked.

"Sure, who's to care? A boy's money's as good as a man's."

"But I should think the company--"

"The company lets the saloon-buildin'--that's all the company cares."

"But they must care something about the efficiency of their hands!"

"Sure, there's plenty more where they come from. When ye can't work,
they fire ye, and that's all there is to it."

"And is it so easy to get skilled men?"

"It don't take much skill to get out coal. The skill is in keepin' your
bones whole--and if you can stand breakin' 'em, the company can stand
it."

They had come to the little cabin. Mary stood for a moment in silence.
"I'm talkin' bitter again!" she exclaimed suddenly. "And I promised ye
me company manner! But things keep happening to set me off." And she
turned abruptly and ran into the house. Hal stood for a moment wondering
if she would return; then, deciding that she had meant that as good
night, he went slowly up the street.

He fought against a mood of real depression, the first he had known
since his coming to North Valley. He had managed so far to keep a
certain degree of aloofness, that he might see this industrial world
without prejudice. But to-night his pity for Mary had involved him more
deeply. To be sure, he might be able to help her, to find her work in
some less crushing environment; but his mind went on to the
question--how many girls might there be in mining-camps, young and
eager, hungering for life, but crushed by poverty, and by the burden of
the drink problem?

A man walked past Hal, greeting him in the semi-darkness with a nod and
a motion of the hand. It was the Reverend Spragg, the gentleman who was
officially commissioned to combat the demon rum in North Valley.

Hal had been to the little white church the Sunday before, and heard the
Reverend Spragg preach a doctrinal sermon, in which the blood of the
lamb was liberally sprinkled, and the congregation heard where and how
they were to receive compensation for the distresses they endured in
this vale of tears.

What a mockery it seemed! Once, indubitably, people had believed such
doctrines; they had been willing to go to the stake for them. But now
nobody went to the stake for them--on the contrary, the company
compelled every worker to contribute out of his scanty earnings towards
the preaching of them. How could the most ignorant of zealots confront
such an arrangement without suspicion of his own piety? Somewhere at the
head of the great dividend-paying machine that was called the General
Fuel Company must be some devilish intelligence that had worked it all
out, that had given the orders to its ecclesiastical staff: "We want the
present--we leave you the future! We want the bodies--we leave you the
souls! Teach them what you will about heaven--so long as you let us
plunder them on earth!"

In accordance with this devil's program, the Reverend Spragg might
denounce the demon rum, but he said nothing about dividends based on the
renting of rum-shops, nor about local politicians maintained by company
contributions, plus the profits of wholesale liquor. He said nothing
about the conclusions of modern hygiene, concerning over-work as a cause
of the craving for alcohol; the phrase "industrial drinking," it seemed,
was not known in General Fuel Company theology! In fact, when you
listened to such a sermon, you would never have guessed that the hearers
of it had physical bodies at all; certainly you would never have guessed
that the preacher had a body, which was nourished by food produced by
the overworked and under-nourished wage-slaves whom he taught!



SECTION 14.

For the most part the victims of this system were cowed and spoke of
their wrongs only in whispers; but there was one place in the camp, Hal
found, where they could not keep silence, where their sense of outrage
battled with their fear. This place was the solar plexus of the
mine-organism, the centre of its nervous energies; to change the simile,
it was the judgment-seat, where the miner had sentence passed upon
him--sentence either to plenty, or to starvation and despair.

This place was the "tipple," where the coal that came out of the mine
was weighed and recorded. Every digger, as he came from the cage, made
for this spot. There was a bulletin-board, and on it his number, and the
record of the weights of the cars he had sent out that day. And every
man, no matter how ignorant, had learned enough English to read those
figures.

Hal had gradually come to realise that here was the place of drama. Most
of the men would look, and then, without a sound or glance about, would
slouch off with drooping shoulders. Others would mumble to
themselves--or, what amounted to the same thing, would mumble to one
another in barbarous dialects. But about one in five could speak
English; and scarcely an evening passed that some man did not break
loose, shaking his fist at the sky, or at the weigh-boss--behind the
latter's back. He might gather a knot of fellow-grumblers about him; it
was to be noted that the camp-marshal had the habit of being on hand at
this hour.

It was on one of these occasions that Hal first noticed Mike Sikoria, a
grizzle-haired old Slovak, who had spent twenty years in the mines of
these regions. All the bitterness of all the wrongs of all these years
welled up in Old Mike, as he shouted his score aloud: "Nineteen,
twenty-two, twenty-four, twenty! Is that my weight, Mister? You want me
to believe that's my weight?"

"That's your weight," said the weigh-boss, coldly.

"Well, by Judas, your scale is off, Mister! Look at them cars--them cars
is big! You measure them cars, Mister--seven feet long, three and a half
feet high, four feet wide. And you tell me them don't go but twenty?"

"You don't load them right," said the boss.

"Don't load them right?" echoed the old miner; he became suddenly
plaintive, as if more hurt than angered by such an insinuation. "You
know all the years I work, and you tell me I don't know a load? When I
load a car, I load him like a miner, I don't load him like a Jap, that
don't know about a mine! I put it up--I chunk it up like a stack of hay.
I load him square--like that." With gestures the old fellow was
illustrating what he meant. "See there! There's a ton on the top, and a
ton and a half on the bottom--and you tell me I get only nineteen,
twenty!"

"That's your weight," said the boss, implacably.

"But, Mister, your scale is wrong! I tell you I used to get my weight. I
used to get forty-five, forty-six on them cars. Here's my buddy--ask him
if it ain't so. What is it, Bo?"

"Um m m-mum," said Bo, who was a negro--though one could hardly be sure
of this for the coal-dust on him.

"I can't make a living no more!" exclaimed the old Slovak, his voice
trembling and his wizened dark eyes full of pleading. "What you think I
make? For fifteen days, fifty cents! I pay board, and so help me God,
Mister--and I stand right here--I swear for God I make fifty cents. I
dig the coal and I ain't got no weight, I ain't got nothing! Your scale
is wrong!"

"Get out!" said the weigh-boss, turning away.

"But, Mister!" cried Old Mike, following behind him, and pouring his
whole soul into his words. "What is this life, Mister? You work like a
burro, and you don't get nothing for it! You burn your own powder--half
a dollar a day powder--what you think of that? Crosscut--and you get
nothing! Take the skip and a pillar, and you get nothing! Brush--and you
get nothing! Here, by Judas, a poor man, going and working his body to
the last point, and blood is run out! You starve me to death, I say! I
have got to have something to eat, haven't I?"

And suddenly the boss whirled upon him. "Get the hell out of here!" he
shouted. "If you don't like it, get your time and quit. Shut your face,
or I'll shut it for you."

The old man quailed and fell silent. He stood for a moment more, biting
his whiskered lips nervously; then his shoulders sank together, and he
turned and slunk off, followed by his negro helper.



SECTION 15.

Old Mike boarded at Reminitsky's, and after supper was over, Hal sought
him out. He was easy to know, and proved an interesting acquaintance.
With the help of his eloquence Hal wandered through a score of camps in
the district. The old fellow had a temper that he could not manage, and
so he was always on the move; but all places were alike, he said--there
was always some trick by which a miner was cheated of his earnings. A
miner was a little business man, a contractor who took a certain job,
with its expenses and its chance of profit or loss. A "place" was
assigned to him by the boss--and he undertook to get out the coal from
it, being paid at the rate of fifty-five cents a ton for each ton of
clean coal. In some "places" a man could earn good money, and in others
he would work for weeks, and not be able to keep up with his
store-account.

It all depended upon the amount of rock and slate that was found with
the coal. If the vein was low, the man had one or two feet of rock to
take off the ceiling, and this had to be loaded on separate cars and
taken away. This work was called "brushing," and for it the miner
received no pay. Or perhaps it was necessary to cut through a new
passage, and clean out the rock; or perhaps to "grade the bottom," and
lay the ties and rails over which the cars were brought in to be loaded;
or perhaps the vein ran into a "fault," a broken place where there was
rock instead of coal--and this rock must be hewed away before the miner
could get at the coal. All such work was called "dead-work," and it was
the cause of unceasing war. In the old days the company had paid extra
for it; now, since they had got the upper hand of the men, they were
refusing to pay. And so it was important to the miner to have a "place"
assigned him where there was not so much of this dead work. And the
"place" a man got depended upon the boss; so here, at the very outset,
was endless opportunity for favouritism and graft, for quarrelling, or
"keeping in" with the boss. What chance did a man stand who was poor and
old and ugly, and could not speak English good? inquired old Mike, with
bitterness. The boss stole his cars and gave them to other people; he
took the weight off the cars, and gave them to fellows who boarded with
him, or treated him to drinks, or otherwise curried favour with him.

"I work five days in the Southeastern," said Mike, and when I work them
five days, so help me God, brother, if I don't get up out of this chair,
fifteen cents I was still in the hole yet. Fourteen inches of rock! And
the Mr. Bishop--that is the superintendent--I says, 'Do you pay
something for that rock?' 'Huh?' says he. 'Well,' I says, 'if you don't
pay nothing for the rock, I don't go ahead with it. I ain't got no place
to put that rock.' 'Get the hell out of here,' says he, and when I
started to fight he pull gun on me. And then I go to Cedar Mountain, and
the super give me work there, and he says, 'You go Number Four,' and he
says, 'Rail is in Number Three, and the ties.' And he says, 'I pay you
for it when you put it in.' So I take it away and I put it in, and I
work till twelve o'clock. Carried the three pair of rails and the ties,
and I pulled all the spikes--"

"Pulled the spikes?" asked Hal.

"Got no good spikes. Got to use old spikes, what you pull out of them
old ties. So then I says, 'What is my half day, what you promise me?'
Says he, 'You ain't dug no coal yet!' 'But, mister,' says I, 'you
promise me pay to pull them spikes and put in them ties!' Says he,
'Company pay nothin' for dead work--you know that,' says he, and that is
all the satisfaction I get."

"And you didn't get your half day's pay?"

"Sure I get nothin'. Boss do just as he please in coal mine."



SECTION 16.

There was another way, Old Mike explained, in which the miner was at the
mercy of others; this was the matter of stealing cars. Each miner had
brass checks with his number on them, and when he sent up a loaded car,
he hung one of these checks on a hook inside. In the course of the long
journey to the tipple, some one would change the check, and the car was
gone. In some mines, the number was put on the car with chalk; and how
easy it was for some one to rub it out and change it! It appeared to Hal
that it would have been a simple matter to put a number padlock on the
car, instead of a check; but such an equipment would have cost the
company one or two hundred dollars, he was told, and so the stealing
went on year after year.

"You think it's the bosses steal these cars?" asked Hal.

"Sometimes bosses, sometimes bosses' friend--sometimes company himself
steal them from miners." In North Valley it was the company, the old
Slovak insisted. It was no use sending up more than six cars in one day,
be declared; you could never get credit for more than six. Nor was it
worth while loading more than a ton on a car; they did not really weigh
the cars, the boss just ran them quickly over the scales, and had orders
not to go above a certain average. Mike told of an Italian who had
loaded a car for a test, so high that he could barely pass it under the
roof of the entry, and went up on the tipple and saw it weighed himself,
and it was sixty-five hundred pounds. They gave him thirty-five hundred,
and when he started to fight, they arrested him. Mike had not seen him
arrested, but when he had come out of the mine, the man was gone, and
nobody ever saw him again. After that they put a door onto the
weigh-room, so that no one could see the scales.

The more Hal listened to the men and reflected upon these things, the
more he came to see that the miner was a contractor who had no
opportunity to determine the size of the contract before he took it on,
nor afterwards to determine how much work he had done. More than that,
he was obliged to use supplies, over the price and measurements of which
he had no control. He used powder, and would find himself docked at the
end of the month for a certain quantity, and if the quantity was wrong,
he would have no redress. He was charged a certain sum for
"black-smithing"--the keeping of his tools in order; and he would find a
dollar or two deducted from his account each month, even though he had
not been near the blacksmith shop.

Let any business-man in the world consider the proposition, thought Hal,
and say if he would take a contract upon such terms! Would a man
undertake to build a dam, for example, with no chance to measure the
ground in advance, nor any way of determining how many cubic yards of
concrete he had to put in? Would a grocer sell to a customer who
proposed to come into the store and do his own weighing--and meantime
locking the grocer outside? Merely to put such questions was to show the
preposterousness of the thing; yet in this district were fifteen
thousand men working on precisely such terms.

Under the state law, the miner had a right to demand a check-weighman to
protect his interest at the scales, paying this check-weighman's wages
out of his own earnings. Whenever there was any public criticism about
conditions in the coal-mines, this law would be triumphantly cited by
the operators; and one had to have actual experience in order to realise
what a bitter mockery this was to the miner.

In the dining-room Hal sat next to a fair-haired Swedish giant named
Johannson, who loaded timbers ten hours a day. This fellow was one who
indulged in the luxury of speaking his mind, because he had youth and
huge muscles, and no family to tie him down. He was what is called a
"blanket-stiff," wandering from mine to harvest-field and from
harvest-field to lumber-camp. Some one broached the subject of
check-weighmen to him, and the whole table heard his scornful laugh. Let
any man ask for a check-weighman!

"You mean they would fire him?" asked Hal.

"Maybe!" was the answer. "Maybe they make him fire himself."

"How do you mean?"

"They make his life one damn misery till he go."

So it was with check-weighman--as with scrip, and with company stores,
and with all the provisions of the law to protect the miner against
accidents. You might demand your legal rights, but if you did, it was a
matter of the boss's temper. He might make your life one damn misery
till you went of your own accord. Or you might get a string of curses
and an order, "Down the canyon!"--and likely as not the toe of a boot in
your trouser-seat, or the muzzle of a revolver under your nose.



SECTION 17.

Such conditions made the coal-district a place of despair. Yet there
were men who managed to get along somehow, and to raise families and
keep decent homes. If one had the luck to escape accident, if he did not
marry too young, or did not have too many children; if he could manage
to escape the temptations of liquor, to which overwork and monotony
drove so many; if, above all, he could keep on the right side of his
boss--why then he might have a home, and even a little money on deposit
with the company.

Such a one was Jerry Minetti, who became one of Hal's best friends. He
was a Milanese, and his name was Gerolamo, which had become Jerry in the
"melting-pot." He was about twenty-five years of age, and what is
unusual with the Italians, was of good stature. Their meeting took
place--as did most of Hal's social experiences--on a Sunday. Jerry had
just had a sleep and a wash, and had put on a pair of new blue overalls,
so that he presented a cheering aspect in the sunlight. He walked with
his head up and his shoulders square, and one could see that he had few
cares in the world.

But what caught Hal's attention was not so much Jerry as what followed
at Jerry's heels; a perfect reproduction of him, quarter-size, also with
a newly-washed face and a pair of new blue overalls. He too had his head
up, and his shoulders square, and he was an irresistible object,
throwing out his heels and trying his best to keep step. Since the
longest strides he could take left him behind, he would break into a
run, and getting close under his father's heels, would begin keeping
step once more.

Hal was going in the same direction, and it affected him like the music
of a military band; he too wanted to throw his head up and square his
shoulders and keep step. And then other people, seeing the grin on his
face, would turn and watch, and grin also. But Jerry walked on gravely,
unaware of this circus in the rear.

They went into a house; and Hal, having nothing to do but enjoy life,
stood waiting for them to come out. They returned in the same
procession, only now the man had a sack of something on his shoulder,
while the little chap had a smaller load poised in imitation. So Hal
grinned again, and when they were opposite him, he said, "Hello."

"Hello," said Jerry, and stopped. Then, seeing Hal's grin, he grinned
back; and Hal looked at the little chap and grinned, and the little chap
grinned back. Jerry, seeing what Hal was grinning at, grinned more than
ever; so there stood all three in the middle of the road, grinning at
one another for no apparent reason.

"Gee, but that's a great kid!" said Hal.

"Gee, you bet!" said Jerry; and he set down his sack. If some one
desired to admire the kid, he was willing to stop any length of time.

"Yours?" asked Hal.

"You bet!" said Jerry, again.

"Hello, Buster!" said Hal.

"Hello yourself!" said the kid. One could see in a moment that he had
been in the "melting-pot."

"What's your name?" asked Hal.

"Jerry," was the reply.

"And what's his name?" Hal nodded towards the man--

"Big Jerry."

"Got any more like you at home?"

"One more," said Big Jerry. "Baby."

"He ain't like me," said Little Jerry. "He's little."

"And you're big?" said Hal.

"He can't walk!"

"Neither can you walk!" laughed Hal, and caught him up and slung him
onto his shoulder. "Come on, we'll ride!"

So Big Jerry took up his sack again, and they started off; only this
time it was Hal who fell behind and kept step, squaring his shoulders
and flinging out his heels. Little Jerry caught onto the joke, and
giggled and kicked his sturdy legs with delight. Big Jerry would look
round, not knowing what the joke was, but enjoying it just the same.

They came to the three-room cabin which was Both Jerrys' home; and Mrs.
Jerry came to the door, a black-eyed Sicilian girl, who did not look old
enough to have even one baby. They had another bout of grinning, at the
end of which Big Jerry said, "You come in?"

"Sure," said Hal.

"You stay supper," added the other. "Got spaghetti."

"Gee!" said Hal. "All right, let me stay, and pay for it."

"Hell, no!" said Jerry. "You no pay!"

"No! No pay!" cried Mrs. Jerry, shaking her pretty head energetically.

"All right," said Hal, quickly, seeing that he might hurt their
feelings. "I'll stay if you're sure you have enough."

"Sure, plenty!" said Jerry. "Hey, Rosa?"

"Sure, plenty!" said Mrs. Jerry.

"Then I'll stay," said Hal. "You like spaghetti, Kid?"

"Jesus!" cried Little Jerry.

Hal looked about him at this Dago home. It was a tome in keeping with
its pretty occupant. There were lace curtains in the windows, even
shinier and whiter than at the Rafferties; there was an incredibly
bright-coloured rug on the floor, and bright coloured pictures of Mount
Vesuvius and of Garibaldi on the walls. Also there was a cabinet with
many interesting treasures to look at--a bit of coral and a conch-shell,
a shark's tooth and an Indian arrow-head, and a stuffed linnet with a
glass cover over him. A while back Hal would not have thought of such
things as especially stimulating to the imagination; but that was before
he had begun to spend five-sixths of his waking hours in the bowels of
the earth.

He ate supper, a real Dago supper; the spaghetti proved to be real Dago
spaghetti, smoking hot, with tomato sauce and a rich flavour of
meat-juice. And all through the meal Hal smacked his lips and grinned at
Little Jerry, who smacked his lips and grinned back. It was all so
different from feeding at Reminitsky's pig-trough, that Hal thought he
had never had such a good supper in his life before. As for Mr. and Mrs.
Jerry, they were so proud of their wonderful kid, who could swear in
English as good as a real American, that they were in the seventh
heaven.

When the meal was over, Hal leaned back and exclaimed, just as he had at
the Rafferties', "Lord, how I wish I could board here!"

He saw his host look at his wife. "All right," said he. "You come here.
I board you. Hey, Rosa?"

"Sure," said Rosa.

Hal looked at them, astonished. "You're sure they'll let you?" he asked.

"Let me? Who stop me?"

"I don't know. Maybe Reminitsky. You might get into trouble."

Jerry grinned. "I no fraid," said he. "Got friends here. Carmino my
cousin. You know Carmino?"

"No," said Hal.

"Pit-boss in Number One. He stand by me. Old Reminitsky go hang! You
come here, I give you bunk in that room, give you good grub. What you
pay Reminitsky?"

"Twenty-seven a month."

"All right, you pay me twenty-seven, you get everything good. Can't get
much stuff here, but Rosa good cook, she fix it."

Hal's new friend--besides being a favourite of the boss--was a
"shot-firer"; it was his duty to go about the mine at night, setting off
the charges of powder which the miners had got ready by day. This was
dangerous work, calling for a skilled man, and it paid pretty well; so
Jerry got on in the world and was not afraid to speak his mind, within
certain limits. He ignored the possibility that Hal might be a company
spy, and astonished him by rebellious talk of the different kinds of
graft in North Valley, and at other places he had worked since coming to
America as a boy. Minetti was a Socialist, Hal learned; he took an
Italian Socialist paper, and the clerk at the post-office knew what sort
of paper it was, and would "josh" him about it. What was more
remarkable, Mrs. Minetti was a Socialist also; that meant a great deal
to a man, as Jerry explained, because she was not under the domination
of a priest.



SECTION 18.

Hal made the move at once, sacrificing part of a month's board, which
Reminitsky would charge against his account with the company. But he was
willing to pay for the privilege of a clean home and clean food. To his
amusement he found that in the eyes of his Irish friends he was losing
caste by going to live with the Minettis. There were most rigid social
lines in North Valley, it appeared. The Americans and English and Scotch
looked down upon the Welsh and Irish; the Welsh and Irish looked down
upon the Dagoes and Frenchies; the Dagoes and Frenchies looked down upon
Polacks and Hunkies, these in turn upon Greeks, Bulgarians and
"Montynegroes," and so on through a score of races of Eastern Europe,
Lithuanians, Slovaks, and Croatians, Armenians, Roumanians, Rumelians,
Ruthenians--ending up with Greasers, niggers, and last and lowest, Japs.

It was when Hal went to pay another call upon the Rafferties that he
made this discovery. Mary Burke happened to be there, and when she
caught sight of him, her grey eyes beamed with mischief. "How do ye do,
Mr. Minetti?" she cried.

"How do ye do, Miss Rosetti?" he countered.

"You lika da spagett?"

"You no lika da spagett?"

"I told ye once," laughed the girl--"the good old pertaties is good
enough for me!"

"And you remember," said he, "what I answered?"

Yes, she remembered! Her cheeks took on the colour of the rose-leaves he
had specified as her probable diet.