Book 1. The Domain Of King Coal - Section 21 To Section 25

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_ 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! _

Read next: Book 1. The Domain Of King Coal: Section 26 To Section 29

Read previous: Book 1. The Domain Of King Coal: Section 16 To Section 20

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