And then the Rafferty children, who had got to know Hal well, joined in
the teasing. "Mister Minetti! Lika da spagetti!" Hal, when he had
grasped the situation, was tempted to retaliate by reminding them that
he had offered to board with the Irish, and been turned down; but he
feared that the elder Rafferty might not appreciate this joke, so
instead he pretended to have supposed all along that the Rafferties were
Italians. He addressed the elder Rafferty gravely, pronouncing the name
with the accent on the second syllable--"Signer Rafferti"; and this so
amused the old man that he chuckled over it at intervals for an hour.
His heart warmed to this lively young fellow; he forgot some of his
suspicions, and after the youngsters had been sent away to bed, he
talked more or less frankly about his life as a coal-miner.

"Old Rafferty" had once been on the way to high station. He had been
made tipple-boss at the San JosГ© mine, but had given up his job because
he had thought that his religion did not permit him to do what he was
ordered to do. It had been a crude proposition of keeping the men's
score at a certain level, no matter how much coal they might send up;
and when Rafferty had quit rather than obey such orders, he had had to
leave the mine altogether; for of course everybody knew why he had quit,
and his mere presence had the effect of keeping discontent alive.

"You think there are no honest companies at all?" Hal asked.

The old man answered, "There be some, but 'tis not so easy as ye might
think to be honest. They have to meet each other's prices, and when one
short-weights, the others have to. 'Tis a way of cuttin' wages without
the men findin' it out; and there be people that do not like to fall
behind with their profits." Hal found himself thinking of old Peter
Harrigan, who controlled the General Fuel Company, and had made the
remark: "I am a great clamourer for dividends!"

"The trouble with the miner," continued Old Rafferty, "is that he has no
one to speak for him. He stands alone--"

During this discourse, Hal had glanced at "Red Mary," and noticed that
she sat with her arms on the table, her sturdy shoulders bowed in a
fashion which told of a hard day's toil. But here she broke into the
conversation; her voice came suddenly, alive with scorn: "The trouble
with the miner is that he's a _slave!_"

"Ah, now--" put in the old man, protestingly.

"He has the whole world against him, and he hasn't got the sense to get
together--to form a union, and stand by it!"

There fell a sudden silence in the Rafferty home. Even Hal was
startled--for this was the first time during his stay in the camp that
he had heard the dread word "union" spoken above a whisper.

"I know!" said Mary, her grey eyes full of defiance. "Ye'll not have the
word spoken! But some will speak it in spite of ye!"

"'Tis all very well," said the old man. "When ye're young, and a woman
too--"

"A woman! Is it only the women that can have courage?"

"Sure," said he, with a wry smile, "'tis the women that have the
tongues, and that can't he stopped from usin' them. Even the boss must
know that."

"Maybe so," replied Mary. "And maybe 'tis the women have the most to
suffer in a coal-camp; and maybe the boss knows that." The girl's cheeks
were red.

"Mebbe so," said Rafferty; and after that there was silence, while he
sat puffing his pipe. It was evident that he did not care to go on, that
he did not want union speeches made in his home. After a while Mrs.
Rafferty made a timid effort to change the course of the talk, by asking
after Mary's sister, who had not been well; and after they had discussed
remedies for the ailments of children, Mary rose, saying, "I'll be goin'
along."

Hal rose also. "I'll walk with you, if I may," he said.

"Sure," said she; and it seemed that the cheerfulness of the Rafferty
family was restored by the sight of a bit of gallantry.



SECTION 19.

They strolled down the street, and Hal remarked, "That's the first word
I've heard here about a union."

Mary looked about her nervously. "Hush!" she whispered.

"But I thought you said you were talking about it!"

She answered, "'Tis one thing, talkin' in a friend's house, and another
outside. What's the good of throwin' away your job?"

He lowered his voice. "Would you seriously like to have a union here?"

"Seriously?" said she. "Didn't ye see Mr. Rafferty--what a coward he is?
That's the way they are! No, 'twas just a burst of my temper. I'm a bit
crazy to-night--something happened to set me off."

He thought she was going on, but apparently she changed her mind.
Finally he asked, "What happened?"

"Oh, 'twould do no good to talk," she answered; and they walked a bit
farther in silence.

"Tell me about it, won't you?" he said; and the kindness in his tone
made its impression.

"'Tis not much ye know of a coal-camp, Joe Smith," she said. "Can't ye
imagine what it's like--bein' a woman in a place like this? And a woman
they think good-lookin'!"

"Oh, so it's that!" said he, and was silent again. "Some one's been
troubling you?" he ventured after a while.

"Sure! Some one's always troublin' us women! Always! Never a day but we
hear it. Winks and nudges--everywhere ye turn."

"Who is it?"

"The bosses, the clerks--anybody that has a chance to wear a stiff
collar, and thinks he can offer money to a girl. It begins before she's
out of short skirts, and there's never any peace afterwards."

"And you can't make them understand?"

"I've made them understand me a bit; now they go after my old man."

"What?"

"Sure! D'ye suppose they'd not try that? Him that's so crazy for liquor,
and can never get enough of it!"

"And your father?--" But Hal stopped. She would not want that question
asked!

She had seen his hesitation, however. "He was a decent man once," she
declared. "'Tis the life here, that turns a man into a coward. 'Tis
everything ye need, everywhere ye turn--ye have to ask favours from some
boss. The room ye work in, the dead work they pile on ye; or maybe 'tis
more credit ye need at the store, or maybe the doctor to come when ye're
sick. Just now 'tis our roof that leaks--so bad we can't find a dry
place to sleep when it rains."

"I see," said Hal. "Who owns the house?"

"Sure, there's none but company houses here."

"Who's supposed to fix it?"

"Mr. Kosegi, the house-agent. But we gave him up long ago--if he does
anything, he raises the rent. Today my father went to Mr. Cotton. He's
supposed to look out for the health of the place, and it seems hardly
healthy to keep people wet in their beds."

"And what did Cotton say?" asked Hal, when she stopped again.

"Well, don't ye know Jeff Cotton--can't ye guess what he'd say? 'That's
a fine girl ye got, Burke! Why don't ye make her listen to reason?' And
then he laughed, and told me old father he'd better learn to take a
hint. 'Twas bad for an old man to sleep in the rain--he might get
carried off by pneumonia."

Hal could no longer keep back the question, "What did your father do?"

"I'd not have ye think hard of my old father," she said, quickly. "He
used to be a fightin' man, in the days before O'Callahan had his way
with him. But now he knows what a camp-marshal can do to a miner!"



SECTION 20.

Mary Burke had said that the company could stand breaking the bones of
its men; and not long after Number Two started up again, Hal had a
chance to note the truth of this assertion.

A miner's life depended upon the proper timbering of the room where he
worked. The company undertook to furnish the timbers, but when the miner
needed them, he would find none at hand, and would have to make the
mile-long trip to the surface. He would select timbers of the proper
length, and would mark them--the understanding being that they were to
be delivered to his room by some of the labourers. But then some one
else would carry them off--here was more graft and favouritism, and the
miner might lose a day or two of work, while meantime his account was
piling up at the store, and his children might have no shoes to go to
school. Sometimes he would give up waiting for timbers, and go on taking
out coal; so there would be a fall of rock--and the coroner's jury would
bring in a verdict of "negligence," and the coal-operators would talk
solemnly about the impossibility of teaching caution to miners. Not so
very long ago Hal had read an interview which the president of the
General Fuel Company had given to a newspaper, in which he set forth the
idea that the more experience a miner had the more dangerous it was to
employ him, because he thought he knew it all, and would not heed the
wise regulations which the company laid down for his safety!

In Number Two mine there were some places being operated by the "room
and pillar" method; the coal being taken out as from a series of rooms,
the portion corresponding to the walls of the rooms being left to uphold
the roof. These walls are the "pillars"; and when the end of the vein is
reached, the miner begins to work backwards, "pulling the pillars," and
letting the roof collapse behind him. This is a dangerous task; as he
works, the man has to listen to the drumming sounds of the rock above
his head, and has to judge just when to make his escape. Sometimes he is
too anxious to save a tool; or sometimes the collapse comes without
warning. In that case the victim is seldom dug out; for it must be
admitted that a man buried under a mountain is as well buried as a
company could be expected to arrange it.

In Number Two mine a man was caught in this way. He stumbled as he ran,
and the lower half of his body was pinned fast; the doctor had to come
and pump opiates into him, while the rescue crew was digging him loose.
The first Hal knew of the accident was when he saw the body stretched
out on a plank, with a couple of old sacks to cover it. He noticed that
nobody stopped for a second glance. Going up from work, he asked his
friend Madvik, the mule driver, who answered, "Lit'uanian feller--got
mash." And that was all. Nobody knew him, and nobody cared about him.

It happened that Mike Sikoria had been working nearby, and was one of
those who helped to get the victim out. Mike's negro "buddy" had been in
too great haste to get some of the rock out of the way, and had got his
hand crushed, and would not be able to work for a month or so. Mike told
Hal about it, in his broken English. It was a terrible thing to see a
man trapped like that, gasping, his eyes almost popping out of his head.
Fortunately he was a young fellow, and had no family.

Hal asked what they would do with the body; the answer was they would
bury him in the morning. The company had a piece of ground up the
canyon.

"But won't they have an inquest?" he inquired.

"Inques'?" repeated the other. "What's he?"

"Doesn't the coroner see the body?"

The old Slovak shrugged his bowed shoulders; if there was a coroner in
this part of the world, he had never heard of it; and he had worked in a
good many mines, and seen a good many men put under the ground. "Put him
in a box and dig a hole," was the way he described the procedure.

"And doesn't the priest come?"

"Priest too far away."

Afterwards Hal made inquiry among the English-speaking men, and learned
that the coroner did sometimes come to the camp. He would empanel a jury
consisting of Jeff Cotton, the marshal, and Predovich, the Galician Jew
who worked in the company store, and a clerk or two from the company's
office, and a couple of Mexican labourers who had no idea what it was
all about. This jury would view the corpse, and ask a couple of men what
had happened, and then bring in a verdict: "We find that the deceased
met his death from a fall of rock caused by his own fault." (In one case
they had added the picturesque detail: "No relatives, and damned few
friends!")

For this service the coroner got a fee, and the company got an official
verdict, which would be final in case some foreign consul should
threaten a damage suit. So well did they have matters in hand that
nobody in North Valley had ever got anything for death or injury; in
fact, as Hal found later, there had not been a damage suit filed against
any coal-operator in that county for twenty-three years!

This particular, accident was of consequence to Hal, because it got him
a chance to see the real work of mining. Old Mike was without a helper,
and made the proposition that Hal should take the job. It was better
than a stableman's, for it paid two dollars a day.

"But will the boss let me change?" asked Hal.

"You give him ten dollar, he change you," said Mike.

"Sorry," said Hal, "I haven't got ten dollars."

"You give him ten dollar credit," said the other.

And Hal laughed. "They take scrip for graft, do they?"

"Sure they take him," said Mike.

"Suppose I treat my mules bad?" continued the other. "So I can make him
change me for nothing!"

"He change you to hell!" replied Mike. "You get him cross, he put us in
bad room, cost us ten dollar a week. No, sir--you give him drink, say
fine feller, make him feel good. You talk American--give him jolly!"



SECTION 21.

Hal was glad of this opportunity to get better acquainted with his
pit-boss. Alec Stone was six feet high, and built in proportion, with
arms like hams--soft with fat, yet possessed of enormous strength. He
had learned his manner of handling men on a sugar-plantation in
Louisiana--a fact which, when Hal heard it, explained much. Like a
stage-manager who does not heed the real names of his actors, but calls
them by their character-names, Stone had the habit of addressing his men
by their nationalities: "You, Polack, get that rock into the car! Hey,
Jap, bring them tools over here! Shut your mouth, now, Dago, and get to
work, or I'll kick the breeches off you, sure as you're alive!"

Hal had witnessed one occasion when there was a dispute as to whose duty
it was to move timbers. There was a great two-handled cross-cut saw
lying on the ground, and Stone seized it and began to wave it, like a
mighty broadsword, in the face of a little Bohemian miner. "Load them
timbers, Hunkie, or I'll carve you into bits!" And as the terrified man
shrunk back, he followed, until his victim was flat against a wall, the
weapon swinging to and fro under his nose after the fashion of "The Pit
and the Pendulum." "Carve you into pieces, Hunkie! Carve you into
stew-meat!" When at last the boss stepped back, the little Bohemian
leaped to load the timbers.

The curious part about it to Hal was that Stone seemed to be reasonably
good-natured about such proceedings. Hardly one time in a thousand did
he carry out his bloodthirsty threats, and like as not he would laugh
when he had finished his tirade, and the object of it would grin in
turn--but without slackening his frightened efforts. After the
broad-sword waving episode, seeing that Hal had been watching, the boss
remarked, "That's the way you have to manage them wops." Hal took this
remark as a tribute to his American blood, and was duly flattered.

He sought out the boss that evening, and found him with his feet upon
the railing of his home. "Mr. Stone," said he, "I've something I'd like
to ask you."

"Fire away, kid," said the other.

"Won't you come up to the saloon and have a drink?"

"Want to get something out of me, hey? You can't work me, kid!" But
nevertheless he slung down his feet from the railing, and knocked the
ashes out of his pipe and strolled up the street with Hal.

"Mr. Stone," said Hal, "I want to make a change."

"What's that? Got a grouch on them mules?"

"No, sir, but I got a better job in sight. Mike Sikoria's buddy is laid
up, and I'd like to take his place, if you're willing."

"Why, that's a nigger's place, kid. Ain't you scared to take a nigger's
place?"

"Why, sir?"

"Don't you know about hoodoos?"

"What I want," said Hal, "is the nigger's pay."

"No," said the boss, abruptly, "you stick by them mules. I got a good
stableman, and I don't want to spoil him. You stick, and by and by I'll
give you a raise. You go into them pits, the first thing you know you'll
get a fall of rock on your head, and the nigger's pay won't be no good
to you."

They came to the saloon and entered. Hal noted that a silence fell
within, and every one nodded and watched. It was pleasant to be seen
going out with one's boss.

O'Callahan, the proprietor, came forward with his best society smile and
joined them, and at Hal's invitation they ordered whiskies. "No, you
stick to your job," continued the pit-boss. "You stay by it, and when
you've learned to manage mules, I'll make a boss out of you, and let you
manage men."

Some of the bystanders tittered. The pit-boss poured down his whiskey,
and set the glass on the bar. "That's no joke," said he, in a tone that
every one could hear. "I learned that long ago about niggers. They'd say
to me, 'For God's sake, don't talk to our niggers like that. Some night
you'll have your house set afire.' But I said, 'Pet a nigger, and you've
got a spoiled nigger.' I'd say, 'Nigger, don't you give me any of your
imp, or I'll kick the breeches off you.' And they knew I was a
gentleman, and they stepped lively."

"Have another drink," said Hal.

The pit-boss drank, and becoming more sociable, told nigger stories. On
the sugar-plantations there was a rush season, when the rule was twenty
hours' work a day; when some of the niggers tried to shirk it, they
would arrest them for swearing or crap-shooting, and work them as
convicts, without pay. The pit-boss told how one "buck" had been brought
before the justice of the peace, and the charge read, "being
cross-eyed"; for which offence he had been sentenced to sixty days' hard
labour. This anecdote was enjoyed by the men in the saloon--whose
race-feelings seemed to be stronger than their class-feelings.

When the pair went out again, it was late, and the boss was cordial.
"Mr. Stone," began Hal, "I don't want to bother you, but I'd like first
rate to get more pay. If you could see your way to let me have that
buddy's job, I'd be more than glad to divide with you."

"Divide with me?" said Stone. "How d'ye mean?" Hal waited with some
apprehension--for if Mike had not assured him so positively, he would
have expected a swing from the pit-boss's mighty arm.

"It's worth about fifteen a month more to me. I haven't any cash, but if
you'd be willing to charge off ten dollars from my store-account, it
would be well worth my while."

They walked for a short way in silence. "Well, I'll tell you," said the
boss, at last; "that old Slovak is a kicker--one of these fellows that
thinks he could run the mine if he had a chance. And if you get to
listenin' to him, and think you can come to me and grumble, by God--"

"That's all right, sir," put in Hal, quickly. "I'll manage that for
you--I'll shut him up. If you'd like me to, I'll see what fellows he
talks with, and if any of them are trying to make trouble, I'll tip you
off."

"Now that's the talk," said the boss, promptly. "You do that, and I'll
keep my eye on you and give you a chance. Not that I'm afraid of the old
fellow--I told him last time that if I heard from him again, I'd kick
the breeches off him. But when you got half a thousand of this foreign
scum, some of them Anarchists, and some of them Bulgars and Montynegroes
that's been fightin' each other at home--"

"I understand," said Hal. "You have to watch 'em."

"That's it," said the pit-boss. "And by the way, when you tell the
store-clerk about that fifteen dollars, just say you lost it at poker."

"I said ten dollars," put in Hal, quickly.

"Yes, I know," responded the other. "But _I_ said fifteen!"



SECTION 22.

Hal told himself with satisfaction that he was now to do the real work
of coal-mining. His imagination had been occupied with it for a long
time; but as so often happens in the life of man, the first contact with
reality killed the results of many years' imagining. It killed all
imagining, in fact; Hal found that his entire stock of energy, both
mental and physical, was consumed in enduring torment. If any one had
told him the horror of attempting to work in a room five feet high, he
would not have believed it. It was like some of the dreadful devices of
torture which one saw in European castles, the "iron maiden" and the
"spiked collar." Hal's back burned as if hot irons were being run up and
down it; every separate joint and muscle cried aloud. It seemed as if he
could never learn the lesson of the jagged ceiling above his head--he
bumped it and continued to bump it, until his scalp was a mass of cuts
and bruises, and his head ached till he was nearly blind, and he would
have to throw himself flat on the ground.

Then old Mike Sikoria would grin. "I know. Like green mule! Some day get
tough!"

Hal recalled the great thick callouses on the flanks of his former
charges, where the harness rubbed against them. "Yes, I'm a 'green
mule,' all right!"

It was amazing how many ways there were to bruise and tear one's
fingers, loading lumps of coal into a car. He put on a pair of gloves,
but these wore through in a day. And then the gas, and the smoke of
powder, stifling one; and the terrible burning of the eyes, from the
dust and the feeble light. There was no way to rub these burning eyes,
because everything about one was equally dusty. Could anybody have
imagined the torment of that--any of those ladies who rode in softly
upholstered parlour-cars, or reclined upon the decks of steam-ships in
gleaming tropic seas?

Old Mike was good to his new "buddy." Mike's spine was bent and his
hands were hardened by forty years of this sort of toil, so he could do
the work of two men, and entertain his friend with comments into the
bargain. The old fellow had the habit of talking all the time, like a
child; he would talk to his helper, to himself, to his tools. He would
call these tools by obscene and terrifying names--but with entire
friendliness and good humour. "Get in there, you son-of-a-gun!" he would
say to his pick. "Come along here, you wop!" he would say to his car.
"In with you, now, you old buster!" he would say to a lump of coal. And
he would lecture Hal on the details of mining. He would tell stories of
successful days, or of terrible mishaps. Above all he would tell about
rascality--cursing the "G. F. C.," its foremen and superintendents, its
officials, directors and stock-holders, and the world which permitted
such a criminal institution to exist.

Noon-time would come, and Hal would lie upon his back, too worn to eat.
Old Mike would sit munching; his abundant whiskers came to a point on
his chin, and as his jaws moved, he looked for all the world like an
aged billy-goat. He was a kind-hearted and anxious old billy-goat, and
sought to tempt his buddy with a bit of cheese or a swig of cold coffee.
He believed in eating--no man could keep up steam if he did not stoke
the furnace. Failing in this, he would try to divert Hal's mind, telling
stories of mining-life in America and Russia. He was most proud to have
an "American feller" for a buddy, and tried to make the work as easy as
possible, for fear lest Hal might quit.

Hal did not quit; but he would drag himself out towards night, so
exhausted that he would fall asleep in the cage. He would fall asleep at
supper, and go in and sink down on his cot and sleep like a log. And oh,
the torture of being routed out before daybreak! Having to shake the
sleep out of his head, and move his creaking joints, and become aware of
the burning in his eyes, and the blisters and sores on his hands!

It was a week before he had a moment that was not pain; and he never got
fully used to the labour. It was impossible for any one to work so hard
and keep his mental alertness, his eagerness and sensitiveness; it was
impossible to work so hard and be an adventurer--to be anything, in
fact, but a machine. Hal had heard that phrase of contempt, "the inertia
of the masses," and had wondered about it. He no longer wondered, he
knew. Could a man be brave enough to protest to a pit-boss when his body
was numb with weariness? Could he think out a definite conclusion as to
his rights and wrongs, and back his conclusion with effective action,
when his mental faculties were paralysed by such weariness of body?

Hal had come here, as one goes upon the deck of a ship in mid-ocean, to
see the storm. In this ocean of social misery, of ignorance and despair,
one saw upturned, tortured faces, writhing limbs and clutching hands; in
one's ears was a storm of lamentation, upon one's cheek a spray of blood
and tears. Hal found himself so deep in this ocean that he could no
longer find consolation in the thought that he could escape whenever he
wanted to: that he could say to himself, It is sad, it is terrible--but
thank God, I can get out of it when I choose! I can go back into the
warm and well-lighted saloon and tell the other passengers how
picturesque it is, what an interesting experience they are missing!



SECTION 23.

During these days of torment, Hal did not go to see "Red Mary"; but
then, one evening, the Minettis' baby having been sick, she came in to
ask about it, bringing what she called "a bit of a custard" in a bowl.
Hal was suspicious enough of the ways of men, especially of
business-men; but when it came to women he was without insight--it did
not occur to him as singular that an Irish girl with many troubles at
home should come out to nurse a Dago woman's baby. He did not reflect
that there were plenty of sick Irish babies in the camp, to whom Mary
might have taken her "bit of a custard." And when he saw the surprise of
Rosa, who had never met Mary before, he took it to be the touching
gratitude of the poor!

There are, in truth, many kinds of women, with many arts, and no man has
time to learn them all. Hal had observed the shop-girl type, who dress
themselves with many frills, and cast side-long glances, and indulge in
fits of giggles to attract the attention of the male; he was familiar
with the society-girl type, who achieve the same end with more subtle
and alluring means. But could there be a type who hold little Dago
babies in their laps, and call them pretty Irish names, and feed them
custard out of a spoon? Hal had never heard of that kind, and he thought
that "Red Mary" made a charming picture--a Celtic madonna with a
Sicilian infant in her arms.

He noticed that she was wearing the same faded blue calico-dress with a
patch on the shoulder. Man though he was, he realised that dress is an
important consideration in the lives of women. He was tempted to suspect
that this blue calico might be the only dress that Mary owned; but
seeing it newly laundered every time, he concluded that she must have at
least one other. At any rate, here she was, crisp and fresh-looking; and
with the new shining costume, she had put on the long promised "company
manner": high spirits and badinage, precisely like any belle of the
world of luxury, who powders and bedecks herself for a ball. She had
been grim and complaining in former meetings with this interesting young
man; she had frightened him away, apparently; perhaps she could win him
back by womanliness and good humour.

She rallied him upon his battered scalp and his creaking back, telling
him he looked ten years older--which he was fully prepared to believe.
Also she had fun with him for working under a Slovak--another loss of
caste, it appeared! This was a joke the Minettis could share
in--especially Little Jerry, who liked jokes. He told Mary how Joe Smith
had had to pay fifteen dollars for his new job, besides several drinks
at O'Callahan's. Also he told how Mike Sikoria had called Joe his "green
mule." Little Jerry complained about the turn of events, for in the old
days Joe had taught him a lot of fine new games--and now he was sore,
and would not play them. Also, in the old days he had sung a lot of
jolly songs, full of the most fascinating rhymes. There was a song about
a "monkey puzzle tree"! Had Mary ever seen that kind of tree? Little
Jerry never got tired of trying to imagine what it might look like.

The Dago urchin stood and watched gravely while Mary fed the custard to
the baby; and when two or three spoonfuls were held out to him, he
opened his mouth wide, and afterwards licked his lips. Gee, that was
good stuff!

When the last taste was gone, he stood gazing at Mary's shining coronet.
"Say," said he, "was your hair always like that?"

Hal and Mary burst into laughter, while Rosa cried "Hush!" She was never
sure what this youngster would say next.

"Sure, did ye think I painted it?" asked Mary.

"I didn't know," said Little Jerry. "It looks so nice and new." And he
turned to Hal. "Ain't it?"

"You bet," said Hal, and added, "Go on and tell her about it. Girls like
compliments."

"Compliments?" echoed Little Jerry. "What's that?"

"Why," said Hal, "that's when you say that her hair is like the sunrise,
and her eyes are like twilight, or that she's a wild rose on a
mountain-side."

"Oh," said the Dago urchin, somewhat doubtfully. "Anyhow," he added,
"she make nice custard!"



SECTION 24.

The time came for Mary to take her departure, and Hal got up, wincing
with pain, to escort her home. She regarded him gravely, having not
realised before how seriously he was suffering. As they walked along she
asked, "Why do ye do such work, when ye don't have to?"

"But I _do_ have to! I have to earn a living!"

"Ye don't have to earn it that way! A bright young fellow like you--an
American!"

"Well," said Hal, "I thought it would be interesting to see coal
mining."

"Now ye've seen it," said the girl--"now quit!"

"But it won't do me any harm to go on for a while!"

"Won't it? How can ye know? When any day they may carry you out on a
plank!"

Her "company manner" was gone; her voice was full of bitterness, as it
always was when she spoke of North Valley. "I know what I'm tellin' ye,
Joe Smith. Didn't I lose two brothers in it--as fine lads as ye'd find
anywhere in the world! And many another lad I've seen go in laughin',
and come out a corpse--or what is worse, for workin' people, a cripple.
Sometimes I'd like to go and stand at the pit-mouth in the mornin' and
cry to them, 'Go back, go back! Go down the canyon this day! Starve, if
ye have to, beg if ye have to, only find some other work but
coal-minin'!'"

Her voice had risen to a passion of protest; when she went on a new note
came into it--a note of personal terror. "It's worse now--since you
came, Joe! To see ye settin' out on the life of a miner--you, that are
young and strong and different. Oh, go away, Joe, go away while ye can!"

He was astonished at her intensity. "Don't worry about me, Mary," he
said. "Nothing will happen to me. I'll go away after a while."

The path was irregular, and he had been holding her arm as they walked.
He felt her trembling, and went on again, quickly, "It's not I that
should go away, Mary. It's yourself. You hate the place--it's terrible
for you to have to live here. Have you never thought of going away?"

She did not answer at once, and when she did the excitement was gone
from her voice; it was flat and dull with despair. "'Tis no use to think
of me. There's nothin' I can do--there's nothin' any girl can do when
she's poor. I've tried--but 'tis like bein' up against a stone wall. I
can't even save the money to get on a train with! I've tried it--I been
savin' for two years--and how much d'ye think I got, Joe? Seven dollars!
Seven dollars in two years! No--ye can't save money in a place where
there's so many things that wring the heart. Ye may hate them for being
cowards--but ye must help when ye see a man killed, and his family
turned out without a roof to cover them in the winter-time!"

"You're too tender-hearted, Mary."

"No, 'tis not that! Should I go off and leave me own brother and sister,
that need me?"

"But you could earn money and send it to them."

"I earn a little here--I do cleanin' and nursin' for some that need me."

"But outside--couldn't you earn more?"

"I could get a job in a restaurant for seven or eight a week, but I'd
have to spend more, and what I sent home would not go so far, with me
away. Or I could get a job in some other woman's home, and work fourteen
hours a day for it. But, Joe, 'tis not more drudgery I want, 'tis
somethin' fair to look upon--somethin' of my own!" She flung out her
arms suddenly like one being stifled. "Oh, I want somethin' that's fair
and clean!"

Again he felt her trembling. Again the path was rough, and having an
impulse of sympathy, he put his arm about her. In the world of leisure,
one might indulge in such considerateness, and he assumed it would not
he different with a miner's daughter. But then, when she was close to
him, he felt, rather than heard, a sob.

"Mary!" he whispered; and they stopped. Almost without realising it, he
put his other arm about her, and in a moment more he felt her warm
breath on his cheek, and she was trembling and shaking in his embrace.
"Joe! Joe!" she whispered. "_You_ take me away!"

She was a rose in a mining-camp, and Hal was deeply moved. The primrose
path of dalliance stretched fair before him, here in the soft summer
night, with a moon overhead which bore the same message as it bore in
the Italian gardens of the leisure-class. But not many minutes passed
before a cold fear began to steal over Hal. There was a girl at home,
waiting for him; and also there was the resolve which had been growing
in him since his coming to this place--a resolve to find some way of
compensation to the poor, to repay them for the freedom and culture he
had taken; not to prey upon them, upon any individual among them. There
were the Jeff Cottons for that!

"Mary," he pleaded, "we mustn't do this."

"Why not?"

"Because--I'm not free. There is some one else."

He felt her start, but she did not draw away.

"Where?" she asked, in a low voice.

"At home, waiting for me."

"And why didn't ye tell me?"

"I don't know."

Hal realised in a moment that the girl had ground of complaint against
him. According to the simple code of her world, he had gone some
distance with her; he had been seen to walk out with her, he had been
accounted her "fellow." He had led her to talk to him of herself--he had
insisted upon having her confidences. And these people who were poor did
not have subtleties, there was no room in their lives for intellectual
curiosities, for Platonic friendships or philanderings. "Forgive me,
Mary!" he said.

She made no answer; but a sob escaped her, and she drew back from his
arms--slowly. He struggled with an impulse to clasp her again. She was
beautiful, warm with life--and so much in need of happiness!

But he held himself in check, and for a minute or two they stood apart.
Then he asked, humbly, "We can still be friends, Mary, can't we? You
must know--I'm so _sorry_!"

But she could not endure being pitied. "'Tis nothin'," she said. "Only I
thought I was going to get away! That's what ye mean to me."



SECTION 25.

Hal had promised Alec Stone to keep a look-out for trouble-makers; and
one evening the boss stopped him on the street, and asked him if he had
anything to report. Hal took the occasion to indulge his sense of
humour.

"There's no harm in Mike Sikoria," said he. "He likes to shoot off his
head, but if he's got somebody to listen, that's all he wants. He's just
old and grouchy. But there's another fellow that I think would bear
watching."

"Who's that?" asked the boss.

"I don't know his last name. They call him Gus and he's a 'cager.'
Fellow with a red face."

"I know," said Stone--"Gus Durking."

"Well, he tried his best to get me to talk about unions. He keeps
bringing it up, and I think he's some kind of trouble-maker."

"I see," said the boss. "I'll get after him."

"You won't say I told you," said Hal, anxiously.

"Oh, no--sure not." And Hal caught the trace of a smile on the
pit-boss's face.

He went away, smiling in his turn. The "red-faced feller. Gus," was the
person Madvik had named as being a "spotter" for the company!

There were ins and outs to this matter of "spotting," and sometimes it
was not easy to know what to think. One Sunday morning Hal went for a
walk up the canyon, and on the way he met a young chap who got to
talking with him, and after a while brought up the question of
working-conditions in North Valley. He had only been there a week, he
said, but everybody he had met seemed to be grumbling about short
weight. He himself had a job as an "outside man," so it made no
difference to him, but he was interested, and wondered what Hal had
found.

Straightway came the question, was this really a workingman, or had Alec
Stone set some one to spying upon his spy. This was an intelligent
fellow, an American--which in itself was suspicious, for most of the new
men the company got in were from "somewhere East of Suez."

Hal decided to spar for a while. He did not know, he said, that
conditions were any worse here than elsewhere. You heard complaints, no
matter what sort of job you took.

Yes, said the stranger, but matters seemed to be especially bad in the
coal-camps. Probably it was because they were so remote, and the
companies owned everything in sight.

"Where have you been?" asked Hal, thinking that this might trap him.

But the other answered straight; he had evidently worked in half a dozen
of the camps. In Mateo he had paid a dollar a month for wash-house
privileges, and there had never been any water after the first three men
had washed. There had been a common wash-tub for all the men, an
unthinkably filthy arrangement. At Pine Creek--Hal found the very naming
of the place made his heart stand still--at Pine Creek he had boarded
with his boss, but the roof of the building leaked, and everything he
owned was ruined; the boss would do nothing--yet when the boarder moved,
he lost his job. At East Ridge, this man and a couple of other fellows
had rented a two room cabin and started to board themselves, in spite of
the fact that they had to pay a dollar-fifty a sack for potatoes and
eleven cents a pound for sugar at the company store. They had continued
until they made the discovery that the water supply had run short, and
that the water for which they were paying the company a dollar a month
was being pumped from the bottom of the mine, where the filth of mules
and men was plentiful!

Hal forced himself to remain non-committal; he shook his head and said
it was too bad, but the workers always got it in the neck, and he didn't
see what they could do about it. So they strolled back to the camp, the
stranger evidently baffled, and Hal, for his part, feeling like the
reader of a detective story at the end of the first chapter. Was this
young man the murderer, or was he the hero? One would have to read on in
the book to find out!



SECTION 26.

Hal kept his eye upon his new acquaintance, and perceived that he was
talking with others. Before long the man tackled Old Mike; and Mike of
course could not refuse an invitation to grumble, though it came from
the devil himself. Hal decided that something must be done about it.

He consulted his friend Jerry, who, being a radical, might have some
touch-stone by which to test the stranger. Jerry sought him out at
noon-time, and came back and reported that he was as much in the dark as
Hal. Either the man was an agitator, seeking to "start something," or
else he was a detective sent in by the company. There was only one way
to find out--which was for some one to talk freely with him, and see
what happened to that person!

After some hesitation, Hal decided that he would be the victim. It
rewakened his love of adventure, which digging in a coal-mine had
subdued in him. The mysterious stranger was a new sort of miner, digging
into the souls of men; Hal would countermine him, and perhaps blow him
up. He could afford the experiment better than some others--better, for
example, than little Mrs. David, who had already taken the stranger into
her home, and revealed to him the fact that her husband had been a
member of the most revolutionary of all miners' organisations, the South
Wales Federation.

So next Sunday Hal invited the stranger for another walk. The man showed
reluctance--until Hal said that he wanted to talk to him. As they walked
up the canyon, Hal began, "I've been thinking about what you said of
conditions in these camps, and I've concluded it would be a good thing
if we had a little shaking up here in North Valley."

"Is that so?" said the other.

"When I first came here, I used to think the men were grouchy. But now
I've had a chance to see for myself, and I don't believe anybody gets a
square deal. For one thing, nobody gets full weight in these mines--at
least not unless he's some favourite of the boss. I'm sure of it, for
I've tried all sorts of experiments with my partner. We've loaded a car
extra light, and got eighteen hundredweight, and then we've loaded one
high and solid, so that we'd know it had twice as much in it--but all we
ever got was twenty-two and twenty-three. There's just no way you can
get over that--though everybody knows those big cars can be made to hold
two or three tons."

"Yes, I suppose they might," said the other.

"And if you get the smallest piece of rock in, you get a 'double-O,'
sure as fate; and sometimes they say you got rock in when you didn't.
There's no law to make them prove it."

"No, I suppose not."

"What it comes to is simply this--they make you think they are paying
fifty-five a ton, but they've secretly cut you down to thirty-five. And
yesterday at the company-store I paid a dollar and a half for a pair of
blue overalls that I'd priced in Pedro for sixty cents."

"Well," said the other, "the company has to haul them up here, you
know!"

So, gradually, Hal made the discovery that the tables were turned--the
mysterious personage was now occupied in holding _him_ at arm's length!
For some reason, Hal's sudden interest in industrial justice had failed
to make an impression.

So his career as a detective came to an inglorious end. "Say, man!" he
exclaimed "What's your game, anyhow?"

"Game?" said the other, quietly. "How do you mean?"

"I mean, what are you here for?"

"I'm here for two dollars a day--the same as you, I guess."

Hal began to laugh. "You and I are like a couple of submarines, trying
to find each other under water. I think we'd better come to the surface
to do our fighting."

The other considered the simile, and seemed to like it. "You come
first," said he. But he did not smile. His quiet blue eyes were fixed on
Hal with deadly seriousness.

"All right," said Hal; "my story isn't very thrilling. I'm not an
escaped convict, I'm not a company spy, as you may be thinking. Nor am I
a 'natural born' coal-miner. I happen to have a brother and some friends
at home who think they know about the coal-industry, and it got on my
nerves, and I came to see for myself. That's all, except that I've found
things interesting, and want to stay on a while, so I hope you aren't a
'dick'!"

The other walked in silence, weighing Hal's words. "That's not exactly
what you'd call a usual story," he remarked, at last.

"I know," replied Hal. "The best I can say for it is that it's true."

"Well," said the stranger, "I'll take a chance on it. I have to trust
somebody, if I'm ever to get anywhere. I picked you out because I liked
your face." He gave Hal another searching look as he walked. "Your smile
isn't that of a cheat. But you're young--so let me remind you of the
importance of secrecy in this place."

"I'll keep mum," said Hal; and the stranger opened a flap inside his
shirt, and drew out a letter which certified him to be Thomas Olson, an
organiser for the United Mine-Workers, the great national union of the
coal-miners!



SECTION 27.

Hal was so startled by this discovery that he stopped in his tracks and
gazed at the man. He had heard a lot about "trouble-makers" in the
camps, but so far the only kind he had seen were those hired by the
company to make trouble for the men. But now, here was a union
organiser! Jerry had suggested the possibility, but Hal had not thought
of it seriously; an organiser was a mythological creature, whispered
about by the miners, cursed by the company and its servants, and by
Hal's friends at home. An incendiary, a fire-brand, a loudmouthed,
irresponsible person, stirring up blind and dangerous passions! Having
heard such things all his life, Hal's first impulse was of distrust. He
felt like the one-legged old switchman who had given him a place to
sleep, after his beating at Pine Creek, and who had said, "Don't you
talk no union business to me!"

Seeing Hal's emotion, the organiser gave an uneasy laugh. "While you're
hoping I'm not a 'dick,' I trust you understand I'm hoping _you're_ not
one."

Hal's answer was to the point. "I was taken for an organiser once," he
said, and his hands sought the seat of his ancient bruises.

The other laughed. "You got off with a beating? You were lucky. Down in
Alabama, not so long ago, they tarred and feathered one of us."

Dismay came upon Hal's face; but after a moment he too began to laugh.
"I was just thinking about my brother and his friends--what they'd have
said if I'd come home from Pine Creek in a coat of tar and feathers!"

"Possibly," ventured the other, "they'd have said you got what you
deserved."

"Yes, that seems to be their attitude. That's the rule they apply to all
the world--if anything goes wrong with you, it must he your own fault.
It's a land of equal opportunity."

"And you'll notice," said the organiser, "that the more privileges
people have had, the more boldly they talk that way."

Hal began to feel a sense of comradeship with this stranger, who was
able to understand one's family troubles! It had been a long time since
Hal had talked with any one from the outside world, and he found it a
relief to his mind. He remembered how, after he had got his beating, he
had lain out in the rain and congratulated himself that he was not what
the guards had taken him for. Now he was curious about the psychology of
an organiser. A man must have strong convictions to follow that
occupation!

He made the remark, and the other answered, "You can have my pay any
time you'll do my work. But let me tell you, too, it isn't being beaten
and kicked out of camp that bothers one most; it isn't the camp-marshal
and the spy and the blacklist. Your worst troubles are inside the heads
of the fellows you're trying to help! Have you ever thought what it
would mean to try to explain things to men who speak twenty different
languages?"

"Yes, of course," said Hal. "I wonder how you ever get a start."

"Well, you look for an interpreter--and maybe he's a company spy. Or
maybe the first man you try to convert reports you to the boss. For, of
course, some of the men are cowards, and some of them are crooks;
they'll sell out the next fellow for a better 'place'--maybe for a glass
of beer."

"That must have a tendency to weaken your convictions," said Hal.

"No," said the other, in a matter of fact tone. "It's hard, but one
can't blame the poor devils. They're ignorant--kept so deliberately. The
bosses bring them here, and have a regular system to keep them from
getting together. And of course these European peoples have their old
prejudices--national prejudices, religious prejudices, that keep them
apart. You see two fellows, one you think is exactly as miserable as the
other--but you find him despising the other, because back home he was
the other's superior. So they play into the bosses' hands."



SECTION 28.

They had come to a remote place in the canyon, and found themselves
seats on a flat rock, where they could talk in comfort.

"Put yourself in their place," said the organiser. "They're in a strange
country, and one person tells them one thing, and another tells them
something else. The masters and their agents say: 'Don't trust the union
agitators. They're a lot of grafters, they live easy and don't have to
work. They take your money and call you out on strike, and you lose your
jobs and your home; they sell you out, maybe, and go on to some other
place to repeat the same trick.' And the workers think maybe that's
true; they haven't the wit to see that if the union leaders are corrupt,
it must be because the bosses are buying them. So you see, they're
completely bedevilled; they don't know which way to turn."

The man was speaking quietly, but there was a little glow of excitement
in his face. "The company is forever repeating that these people are
satisfied--that it's we who are stirring them up. But are they
satisfied? You've been here long enough to know!"

"There's no need to discuss that," Hal answered. "Of course they're not
satisfied! They've seemed to me like a lot of children crying in the
dark--not knowing what's the matter with them, or who's to blame, or
where to turn for help."

Hal found himself losing his distrust of this man. He did not correspond
in any way to Hal's imaginary picture of a union organiser; he was a
blue-eyed, clean-looking young American, and instead of being wild and
loud-mouthed, he seemed rather wistful. He had indignation, of course,
but it did not take the form of ranting or florid eloquence; and this
repression was making its appeal to Hal, who, in spite of his democratic
impulses, had the habits of thought of a class which shrinks from
noisiness and over-emphasis.

Also Hal was interested in his attitude towards the weaknesses of
working-people. The "inertia" of the poor, which caused so many people
to despair for them--their cowardice and instability--these were things
about which Hal had heard all his life. "You can't help them," people
would say. "They're dirty and lazy, they drink and shirk, they betray
each other. They've always been like that." The idea would be summed up
in a formula: "You can't change human nature!" Even Mary Burke, herself
one of the working-class, spoke of the workers in this angry and
scornful way. But Olson had faith in their manhood, and went ahead to
awaken and teach them.