Book + 

II + 

The Serfs of King Coal + 

I + 

Hal was now started upon a new career, more full of excitements than that of stableman or buddy, with perils greater than those of falling rock or the hind feet of mules in the stomach. The inertia which overwork produces had not had time to become a disease with him; youth was on his side, with its zest for more and yet more experience. He found it thrilling to be a conspirator, to carry about with him secrets as dark and mysterious as the passages of the mine in which he worked. + 

But Jerry Minetti, the first person he told of Tom Olson’s purpose in North Valley, was older in such thrills. The carefree look which Jerry was accustomed to wear vanished abruptly, and fear came into his eyes. “I know it come some day,” he exclaimed⁠—“trouble for me and Rosa!” + 

“How do you mean?” + 

“We get into it⁠—get in sure. I say Rosa, ‘Call yourself Socialist⁠—what good that do? No help any. No use to vote here⁠—they don’t count no Socialist vote, only for joke!’ I say, ‘Got to have union. Got to strike!’ But Rosa say, ‘Wait little bit. Save little bit money, let children grow up. Then we help, no care if we no got any home.’ ” + 

“But we’re not going to start a union now!” objected Hal. “I have another plan for the present.” + 

Jerry, however, was not to be put at ease. “No can wait!” he declared. “Men no stand it! I say, ‘It come some day quick⁠—like blowup in mine! Somebody start fight, everybody fight.’ ” And Jerry looked at Rosa, who sat with her black eyes fixed anxiously upon her husband. “We get into it,” he said; and Hal saw their eyes turn to the room where Little Jerry and the baby were sleeping. + 

Hal said nothing⁠—he was beginning to understand the meaning of rebellion to such people. He watched with curiosity and pity the struggle that went on; a struggle as old as the soul of man⁠—between the voice of self-interest, of comfort and prudence, and the call of duty, of the ideal. No trumpet sounded for this conflict, only the still small voice within. + 

After a while Jerry asked what it was Hal and Olson had planned; and Hal explained that he wanted to make a test of the company’s attitude toward the check-weighman law. Hal thought it a fine scheme; what did Jerry think? + 

Jerry smiled sadly. “Yes, fine scheme for young feller⁠—no got family!” + 

“That’s all right,” said Hal, “I’ll take the job⁠—I’ll be the check-weighman.” + 

“Got to have committee,” said Jerry⁠—“committee go see boss.” + 

“All right, but we’ll get young fellows for that too⁠—men who have no families. Some of the fellows who live in the chicken-coops in shantytown. They won’t care what happens to them.” + 

But Jerry would not share Hal’s smile. “No got sense ’nough, them fellers. Take sense to stick together.” He explained that they would need a group of men to stand back of the committee; such a group would have to be organised, to hold meetings in secret⁠—it would be practically the same thing as a union, would be so regarded by the bosses and their spotters. And no organisation of any sort was permitted in the camps. There had been some Serbians who had wanted to belong to a fraternal order back in their home country, but even that had been forbidden. If you wanted to insure your life or your health, the company would attend to it⁠—and get the profit from it. For that matter, you could not even buy a post-office money-order, to send funds back to the old country; the post-office clerk, who was at the same time a clerk in the company-store, would sell you some sort of a store-draft. + 

So Hal was facing the very difficulties about which Olson had warned him. The first of them was Jerry’s fear. Yet Hal knew that Jerry was no “coward”; if any man had a contempt for Jerry’s attitude, it was because he had never been in Jerry’s place! + 

“All I’ll ask of you now is advice,” said Hal. “Give me the names of some young fellows who are trustworthy, and I’ll get their help without anybody suspecting you.” + 

“You my boarder!” was Jerry’s reply to this. + 

So again Hal was “up against it.” “You mean that would get you into trouble?” + 

“Sure! They know we talk. They know I talk Socialism, anyhow. They fire me sure!” + 

“But how about your cousin, the pit-boss in Number One?” + 

“He no help. May be get fired himself. Say damn fool⁠—board check-weighman!” + 

“All right,” said Hal. “Then I’ll move away now, before it’s too late. You can say I was a troublemaker, and you turned me off.” + 

The Minettis sat gazing at each other⁠—a mournful pair. They hated to lose their boarder, who was such good company, and paid them such good money. As for Hal, he felt nearly as bad, for he liked Jerry and his girl-wife, and Little Jerry⁠—even the black-eyed baby, who made so much noise and interrupted conversation! + 

“No!” said Jerry. “I no run, away! I do my share!” + 

“That’s all right,” replied Hal. “You do your share⁠—but not just yet. You stay on in the camp and help Olson after I’m fired. We don’t want the best men put out at once.” + 

So, after further argument, it was decided, and Hal saw little Rosa sink back in her chair and draw a deep breath of relief. The time for martyrdom was put off; her little three-roomed cabin, her furniture and her shining pans and her pretty white lace curtains, might be hers for a few weeks longer! + 

II + 

Hal went back to Reminitsky’s boardinghouse; a heavy sacrifice, but not without its compensations, because it gave him more chance to talk with the men. + 

He and Jerry made up a list of those who could be trusted with the secret: the list beginning with the name of Mike Sikoria. To be put on a committee, and sent to interview a boss, would appeal to Old Mike as the purpose for which he had been put upon earth! But they would not tell him about it until the last minute, for fear lest in his excitement he might shout out the announcement the next time he lost one of his cars. + 

There was a young Bulgarian miner named Wresmak who worked near Hal. The road into this man’s room ran up an incline, and he had hardly been able to push his “empties” up the grade. While he was sweating and straining at the task, Alec Stone had come along, and having a giant’s contempt for physical weakness, began to cuff him. The man raised his arm⁠—whether in offence or to ward off the blow, no one could be sure; but Stone fell upon him and kicked him all the way down the passage, pouring out upon him furious curses. Now the man was in another room, where he had taken out over forty carloads of rock, and been allowed only three dollars for it. No one who watched his face when the pit-boss passed would doubt that this man would be ready to take his chances in a movement of protest. + 

Then there was a man whom Jerry knew, who had just come out of the hospital, after contact with the butt-end of the camp-marshal’s revolver. This was a Pole, who unfortunately did not know a word of English; but Olson, the organiser, had got into touch with another Pole, who spoke a little English, and would pass the word on to his fellow-countryman. Also there was a young Italian, Rovetta, whom Jerry knew and whose loyalty he could vouch for. + 

There was another person Hal thought of⁠—Mary Burke. He had been deliberately avoiding her of late; it seemed the one safe thing to do⁠—although it seemed also a cruel thing, and left his mind ill at ease. He went over and over what had happened. How had the trouble got started? It is a man’s duty in such cases to take the blame upon himself; but a man does not like to take blame upon himself, and he tries to make it as light as possible. Should Hal say that it was because he had been too officious that night in helping Mary where the path was rough? She had not actually needed such help, she was quite as capable on her feet as he! But he had really gone farther than that⁠—he had had a definite sentimental impulse; and he had been a cad⁠—he should have known all along that all this girl’s discontent, all the longing of her starved soul, would become centred upon him, who was so “different,” who had had opportunity, who made her think of the “poetry-books”! + 

But here suddenly seemed a solution of the difficulty; here was a new interest for Mary, a safe channel in which her emotions could run. A woman could not serve on a miners’ committee, but she would be a good adviser, and her sharp tongue would be a weapon to drive others into line. Being aflame with this enterprise, Hal became impersonal, man-fashion⁠—and so fell into another sentimental trap! He did not stop to think that Mary’s interest in the check-weighman movement might be conditioned in part by a desire to see more of him; still less did it occur to him that he might be glad for a pretext to see Mary. + 

No, he was picturing her in a new role, an activity more inspiriting than cooking and nursing. His “poetry-book” imagination took fire; he gave her a hope and a purpose, a pathway with a goal at the end. Had there not been women leaders in every great proletarian movement? + 

He went to call on her, and met her at the door of her cabin. “ ’Tis a cheerin’ sight to see ye, Joe Smith!” she said. And she looked him in the eye and smiled. + 

“The same to you, Mary Burke!” he answered. + 

She was game, he saw; she was going to be a “good sport.” But he noticed that she was paler than when he had seen her last. Could it be that these gorgeous Irish complexions ever faded? He thought that she was thinner too; the old blue calico seemed less tight upon her. + 

Hal plunged into his theme. “Mary, I had a vision of you today!” + 

“Of me, lad? What’s that?” + 

He laughed. “I saw you with a glory in your face, and your hair shining like a crown of gold. You were mounted on a snow-white horse, and wore a robe of white, soft and lustrous⁠—like Joan of Arc, or a leader in a suffrage parade. You were riding at the head of a host⁠—I’ve still got the music in my ears, Mary!” + 

“Go on with ye, lad⁠—what’s all this about?” + 

“Come in and I’ll tell you,” he said. + 

So they went into the bare kitchen, and sat in bare wooden chairs⁠—Mary folding her hands in her lap like a child who has been promised a fairy-story. “Now hurry,” said she. “I want to know about this new dress ye’re givin’ me. Are ye tired of me old calico?” + 

He joined in her smile. “This is a dress you will weave for yourself, Mary, out of the finest threads of your own nature⁠—out of courage and devotion and self-sacrifice.” + 

“Sure, ’tis the poetry-book again! But what is it ye’re really meanin’?” + 

He looked about him. “Is anybody here?” + 

“Nobody.” + 

But instinctively he lowered his voice as he told his story. There was an organiser of the “big union” in the camp, and he was going to rouse the slaves to protest. + 

The laughter went out of Mary’s face. “Oh! It’s that!” she said, in a flat tone. The vision of the snow-white horse and the soft and lustrous robe was gone. “Ye can never do anything of that sort here!” + 

“Why not?” + 

“ ’Tis the men in this place. Don’t ye remember what I told ye at Mr. Rafferty’s? They’re cowards!” + 

“Ah, Mary, it’s easy to say that. But it’s not so pleasant being turned out of your home⁠—” + 

“Do ye have to tell me that?” she cried, with sudden passion. “Haven’t I seen that?” + 

“Yes, Mary; but I want to do something⁠—” + 

“Yes, and haven’t I wanted to do something? Sure, I’ve wanted to bite off the noses of the bosses!” + 

“Well,” he laughed, “we’ll make that a part of our programme.” But Mary was not to be lured into cheerfulness; her mood was so full of pain and bewilderment that he had an impulse to reach out and take her hand again. But he checked that; he had come to divert her energies into a safe channel! + 

“We must waken these men to resistance, Mary!” + 

“Ye can’t do it, Joe⁠—not the English-speakin’ men. The Greeks and the Bulgars, maybe⁠—they’re fightin’ at home, and they might fight here. But the Irish never⁠—never! Them that had any backbone went out long ago. Them that stayed has been made into bootlicks. I know them, every man of them. They grumble, and curse the boss, but then they think of the blacklist, and they go back and cringe at his feet.” + 

“What such men want⁠—” + 

“ ’Tis booze they want, and carousin’ with the rotten women in the coal-towns, and sittin’ up all night winnin’ each other’s money with a greasy pack of cards! They take their pleasure where they find it, and ’tis nothin’ better they want.” + 

“Then, Mary, if that’s so, don’t you see it’s all the more reason for trying to teach them? If not for their own sakes, for the sake of their children! The children, mustn’t grow up like that! They are learning English, at least⁠—” + 

Mary gave a scornful laugh. “Have ye been up to that school?” + 

He answered no; and she told him there were a hundred and twenty children packed in one room, three in a seat, and solid all round the wall. She went on, with swift anger⁠—the school was supposed to be paid for out of taxes, but as nobody owned any property but the company, it was all in the company’s hands. The school-board consisted of Mr. Cartwright, the mine-superintendent, and Jake Predovich, a clerk in the store, and the preacher, the Reverend Spraggs. Old Spraggs would bump his nose on the floor if the “super” told him to. + 

“Now, now!” said Hal, laughing. “You’re down on him because his grandfather was an Orangeman!” + 

III + 

Mary Burke had been suckled upon despair, and the poison of it was deep in her blood. Hal began to realise that it would be as hard to give her a hope as to rouse the workers whom she despised. She was brave enough, no doubt, but how could he persuade her to be brave for men who had no courage for themselves? + 

“Mary,” he said, “in your heart you don’t really hate these people. You know how they suffer, you pity them for it. You give their children your last cent when they need it⁠—” + 

“Ah, lad!” she cried, and he saw tears suddenly spring into her eyes. “ ’Tis because I love them so that I hate them! Sometimes ’tis the bosses I would murder, sometimes ’tis the men. What is it ye’re wantin’ me to do?” + 

And then, even before he could answer, she began to run over the list of her acquaintances in the camp. Yes, there was one man Hal ought to talk to; he would be too old to join them, but his advice would be invaluable, and they could be sure he would never betray them. That was old John Edstrom, a Swede from Minnesota, who had worked in this district from the time the mines had first started up. He had been active in the great strike eight years ago, and had been blacklisted, his four sons with him. The sons were scattered now to the four parts of the world, but the father had stayed nearby, working as a ranch-hand and railroad labourer, until a couple of years ago, during a rush season, he had got a chance to come back into the mines. + 

He was old, old, declared Mary⁠—must be sixty. And when Hal remarked that that did not sound so frightfully aged, she answered that one seldom heard of a man being able to work in a coal-mine at that age; in fact, there were not many who managed to live to that age. Edstrom’s wife was dying now, and he was having a hard time. + 

“ ’Twould not be fair to let such an old gentleman lose his job,” said Mary. “But at least he could give ye good advice.” + 

So that evening the two of them went to call on John Edstrom, in a tiny unpainted cabin in “shantytown,” with a bare earth floor, and a half partition of rough boards to hide his dying wife from his callers. The woman’s trouble was cancer, and this made calling a trying matter, for there was a fearful odour in the place. For some time it was impossible for Hal to force himself to think about anything else; but finally he overcame this weakness, telling himself that this was a war, and that a man must be ready for the hospital as well as for the parade-ground. + 

He looked about, and saw that the cracks of Edstrom’s cabin were stopped with rags, and the broken windowpanes mended with brown paper. The old man had evidently made an effort to keep the place neat, and Hal noticed a row of books on a shelf. Because it was cold in these mountain regions at night, even in September, the old man had a fire in the little cast-iron stove, and sat huddled by it. There were only a few hairs left on his head, and his scrubby beard was as white as anything could be in a coal-camp. The first impression of his face was of its pallor, and then of the benevolence in the faded dark eyes; also his voice was gentle, like a caress. He rose to greet his visitors, and put out to Hal a trembling hand, which resembled the paw of some animal, horny and misshapen. He made a move to draw up a bench, and apologised for his unskillful housekeeping. It occurred to Hal that a man might be able to work in a coal-mine at sixty, and not be able to work in it at sixty-one. + 

Hal had requested Mary to say nothing about his purpose, until after he had a chance to judge for himself. So now the girl inquired about Mrs. Edstrom. There was no news, the man answered; she was lying in a stupor, as usual. Dr. Barrett had come again, but all he could do was to give her morphine. No one could do any more, the doctor declared. + 

“Sure, he’d not know it if they could!” sniffed Mary. + 

“He’s not such a bad one, when he’s sober,” said Edstrom, patiently. + 

“And how often is that?” sniffed Mary again. She added, by way of explanation to Hal, “He’s a cousin of the super.” + 

Things were better here than in some places, said Edstrom. At Harvey’s Run, where he had worked, a man had got his eye hurt, and had lost it through the doctor’s instrument slipping; broken arms and legs had been set wrong, and either the men had to go through life as cripples, or go elsewhere and have the bones re-broken and reset. It was like everything else⁠—the doctor was a part of the company machine, and if you had too much to say about him, it was down the canyon with you. You not only had a dollar a month taken out of your pay, but if you were injured, and he came to attend you, he would charge whatever extra he pleased. + 

“And you have to pay?” asked Hal. + 

“They take it off your account,” said the old man. + 

“Sometimes they take it when he’s done nothin’ at all,” added Mary. “They charged Mrs. Zamboni twenty-five dollars for her last baby⁠—and Dr. Barrett never set foot across her door till three hours after the baby was in my arms!” + 

IV + 

The talk went on. Wishing to draw the old man out, Hal spoke of various troubles of the miners, and at last he suggested that the remedy might be found in a union. Edstrom’s dark eyes studied him, and then turned to Mary. “Joe’s all right,” said the girl, quickly. “You can trust him.” + 

Edstrom made no direct answer to this, but remarked that he had once been in a strike. He was a marked man, now, and could only stay in the camp so long as he attended strictly to his own affairs. The part he had played in the big strike had never been forgotten; the bosses had let him work again, partly because they had needed him at a rush time, and partly because the pit-boss happened to be a personal friend. + 

“Tell him about the big strike,” said Mary. “He’s new in this district.” + 

The old man had apparently accepted Mary’s word for Hal’s good faith, for he began to narrate those terrible events which were a whispered tradition of the camps. There had been a mighty effort of ten thousand slaves for freedom; and it had been crushed with utter ruthlessness. Ever since these mines had been started, the operators had controlled the local powers of government, and now, in the emergency, they had brought in the state militia as well, and used it frankly to drive the strikers back to work. They had seized the leaders and active men, and thrown them into jail without trial or charges; when the jails would hold no more, they kept some two hundred in an open stockade, called a “bullpen,” and finally they loaded them into freight-cars, took them at night out of the state, and dumped them off in the midst of the desert without food or water. + 

John Edstrom had been one of these men. He told how one of his sons had been beaten and severely injured in jail, and how another had been kept for weeks in a damp cellar, so that he had come out crippled with rheumatism for life. The officers of the state militia had done these things; and when some of the local authorities were moved to protest, the militia had arrested them⁠—even the judges of the civil courts had been forbidden to sit, under threat of imprisonment. “To hell with the constitution!” had been the word of the general in command; his subordinate had made famous the saying, “No habeas corpus; we’ll give them postmortems!” + 

Tom Olson had impressed Hal with his self-control, but this old man made an even deeper impression upon him. As he listened, he became humble, touched with awe. Incredible as it might seem, when John Edstrom talked about his cruel experiences, it was without bitterness in his voice, and apparently without any in his heart. Here, in the midst of want and desolation, with his family broken and scattered, and the wolf of starvation at his door, he could look back upon the past without hatred of those who had ruined him. Nor was this because he was old and feeble, and had lost the spirit of revolt; it was because he had studied economics, and convinced himself that it was an evil system which blinded men’s eyes and poisoned their souls. A better day was coming, he said, when this evil system would be changed, and it would be possible for men to be merciful to one another. + 

At this point in the conversation, Mary Burke gave voice once more to her corroding despair. How could things ever be changed? The bosses were mean-hearted, and the men were cowards and traitors. That left nobody but God to do the changing⁠—and God had left things as they were for such a long time! + 

Hal was interested to hear how Edstrom dealt with this attitude. “Mary,” he said, “did you ever read about ants in Africa?” + 

“No,” said she. + 

“They travel in long columns, millions and millions of them. And when they come to a ditch, the front ones fall in, and more and more of them on top, till they fill up the ditch, and the rest cross over. We are ants, Mary.” + 

“No matter how many go in,” cried the girl, “none will ever get across. There’s no bottom to the ditch!” + 

He answered: “That’s more than any ant can know. Mary. All they know is to go in. They cling to each other’s bodies, even in death; they make a bridge, and the rest go over.” + 

“I’ll step one side!” she declared, fiercely. “I’ll not throw meself away.” + 

“You may step one side,” answered the other⁠—“but you’ll step back into line again. I know you better than you know yourself, Mary.” + 

There was silence in the little cabin. The winds of an early fall shrilled outside, and life suddenly seemed to Hal a stern and merciless thing. He had thought in his youthful fervour it would be thrilling to be a revolutionist; but to be an ant, one of millions and millions, to perish in a bottomless ditch⁠—that was something a man could hardly bring himself to face! He looked at the bowed figure of this white haired toiler, vague in the feeble lamplight, and found himself thinking of Rembrandt’s painting, the Visit of Emmaus: the ill-lighted room in the dirty tavern, and the two ragged men, struck dumb by the glow of light about the forehead of their table-companion. It was not fantastic to imagine a glow of light about the forehead of this soft-voiced old man! + 

“I never had any hope it would come in my time,” the old man was saying gently. “I did use to hope my boys might see it⁠—but now I’m not sure even of that. But in all my life I never doubted that some day the working-people will cross over to the promised land. They’ll no longer be slaves, and what they make won’t be wasted by idlers. And take it from one who knows, Mary⁠—for a workingman or woman not to have that faith, is to have lost the reason for living.” + 

Hal decided that it would be safe to trust this man, and told him of his check-weighman plan. “We only want your advice,” he explained, remembering Mary’s warning. “Your sick wife⁠—” + 

But the old man answered, sadly, “She’s almost gone, and I’ll soon be following. What little strength I have left might as well be used for the cause.” + 

V + 

This business of conspiracy was grimly real to men whose living came out of coal; but Hal, even at the most serious moments, continued to find in it the thrill of romance. He had read stories of revolutionists, and of the police who hunted them. That such excitements were to be had in Russia, he knew; but if anyone had told him they could be had in his own free America, within a few hours’ journey of his home city and his college-town, he could not have credited the statement. + 

The evening after his visit to Edstrom, Hal was stopped on the street by his boss. Encountering him suddenly, Hal started, like a pickpocket who runs into a policeman. + 

“Hello, kid,” said the pit-boss. + 

“Hello, Mr. Stone,” was the reply. + 

“I want to talk to you,” said the boss. + 

“All right, sir.” And then, under his breath, “He’s got me!” + 

“Come up to my house,” said Stone; and Hal followed, feeling as if handcuffs were already on his wrists. + 

“Say,” said the man, as they walked, “I thought you were going to tell me if you’d heard any talk.” + 

“I haven’t heard any, sir.” + 

“Well,” continued Stone, “you want to get busy; there’s sure to be kickers in every coal-camp.” And deep within, Hal drew a sigh of relief. It was a false alarm! + 

They came to the boss’s house, and he took a chair on the piazza and motioned Hal to take another. They sat in semidarkness, and Stone dropped his voice as he began. “What I want to talk to you about now is something else⁠—this election.” + 

“Election, sir?” + 

“Didn’t you know there was one? The Congressman in this district died, and there’s a special election three weeks from next Tuesday.” + 

“I see, sir.” And Hal chuckled inwardly. He would get the information which Tom Olson had recommended to him! + 

“You ain’t heard any talk about it?” inquired the pit-boss. + 

“Nothing at all, sir. I never pay much attention to politics⁠—it ain’t in my line.” + 

“Well, that’s the way I like to hear a miner talk!” said the pit-boss, with heartiness. “If they all had sense enough to leave politics to the politicians, they’d be a sight better off. What they need is to tend to their own jobs.” + 

“Yes, sir,” agreed Hal, meekly⁠—“like I had to tend to them mules, if I didn’t want to get the colic.” + 

The boss smiled appreciatively. “You’ve got more sense than most of ’em. If you’ll stand by me, there’ll be a chance for you to move up in the world.” + 

“Thank you, Mr. Stone,” said Hal. “Give me a chance.” + 

“Well now, here’s this election. Every year they send us a bunch of campaign money to handle. A bit of it might come your way.” + 

“I could use it, I reckon,” said Hal, brightening visibly. “What is it you want?” + 

There was a pause, while Stone puffed on his pipe. He went on, in a businesslike manner. “What I want is somebody to feel things out a bit, and let me know the situation. I thought it better not to use the men that generally work for me, but somebody that wouldn’t be suspected. Down in Sheridan and Pedro they say the Democrats are making a big stir, and the company’s worried. I suppose you know the ‘G.F.C.’ is Republican.” + 

“I’ve heard so.” + 

“You might think a congressman don’t have much to do with us, way off in Washington; but it has a bad effect to have him campaigning, telling the men the company’s abusing them. So I’d like you just to kind o’ circulate a bit, and start the men on politics, and see if any of them have been listening to this MacDougall talk. (MacDougall’s this here Democrat, you know.) And I want to find out whether they’ve been sending in literature to this camp, or have any agents here. You see, they claim the right to come in and make speeches, and all that sort of thing. North Valley’s an incorporated town, so they’ve got the law on their side, in a way, and if we shut ’em out, they make a howl in the papers, and it looks bad. So we have to get ahead of them in quiet ways. Fortunately there ain’t any hall in the camp for them to meet in, and we’ve made a local ordinance against meetings on the street. If they try to bring in circulars, something has to happen to them before they get distributed. See?” + 

“I see,” said Hal; he thought of Tom Olson’s propaganda literature! + 

“We’ll pass the word out⁠—it’s the Republican the company wants elected; and you be on the lookout and see how they take it in the camp.” + 

“That sounds easy enough,” said Hal. “But tell me, Mr. Stone, why do you bother? Do so many of these wops have votes?” + 

“It ain’t the wops so much. We get them naturalised on purpose⁠—they vote our way for a glass of beer. But the English-speaking men, or the foreigners that’s been here too long, and got too big for their breeches⁠—they’re the ones we got to watch. If they get to talking politics, they don’t stop there; the first thing you know, they’re listening to union agitators, and wanting to run the camp.” + 

“Oh yes, I see!” said Hal, and wondered if his voice sounded right. + 

But the pit-boss was concerned with his own troubles. “As I told Si Adams the other day, what I’m looking for is fellows that talk some new lingo⁠—one that nobody will ever understand! But I suppose that would be too easy. There’s no way to keep them from learning some English!” + 

Hal decided to make use of this opportunity to perfect his education. “Surely, Mr. Stone,” he remarked, “you don’t have to count any votes if you don’t want to!” + 

“Well, I’ll tell you,” replied Stone; “it’s a question of the easiest way to manage things. When I was superintendent over to Happy Gulch, we didn’t waste no time on politics. The company was Democratic at that time, and when election night come, we wrote down four hundred votes for the Democratic candidates. But the first thing we knew, a bunch of fellers was taken into town and got to swear they’d voted the Republican ticket in our camp. The Republican papers were full of it, and some fool judge ordered a recount, and we had to get busy over night and mark up a new lot of ballots. It gave us a lot of bother!” + 

The pit-boss laughed, and Hal joined him discreetly. + 

“So you see, you have to learn to manage. If there’s votes for the wrong candidate in your camp, the fact gets out, and if the returns is too one-sided, there’s a lot of grumbling. There’s plenty of bosses that don’t care, but I learned my lesson that time, and I got my own method⁠—that is not to let any opposition start. See?” + 

“Yes, I see.” + 

“Maybe a mine-boss has got no right to meddle in politics⁠—but there’s one thing he’s got the say about, and that is who works in his mine. It’s the easiest thing to weed out⁠—weed out⁠—” Hal never forgot the motion of beefy hands with which Alec Stone illustrated these words. As he went on, the tones of his voice did not seem so good-natured as usual. “The fellows that don’t want to vote my way can go somewhere else to do their voting. That’s all I got to say on politics!” + 

There was a brief pause, while Stone puffed on his pipe. Then it may have occurred to him that it was not necessary to go into so much detail in breaking in a political recruit. When he resumed, it was in a good-natured tone of dismissal. “That’s what you do, kid. Tomorrow you get a sprained wrist, so you can’t work for a few days, and that’ll give you a chance to bum round and hear what the men are saying. Meantime, I’ll see you get your wages.” + 

“That sounds all right,” said Hal; but showing only a small part of his satisfaction! + 

The pit-boss rose from his chair and knocked the ashes from his pipe. “Mind you⁠—I want the goods. I’ve got other fellows working, and I’m comparing ’em. For all you know, I may have somebody watching you.” + 

“Yes,” said Hal, and grinned cheerfully. “I’ll not fail to bear that in mind.” + 

VI + 

The first thing Hal did was to seek out Tom Olson and narrate this experience. The two of them had a merry time over it. “I’m the favourite of a boss now!” laughed Hal. + 

But the organiser became suddenly serious. “Be careful what you do for that fellow.” + 

“Why?” + 

“He might use it on you later on. One of the things they try to do if you make any trouble for them, is to prove that you took money from them, or tried to.” + 

“But he won’t have any proofs.” + 

“That’s my point⁠—don’t give him any. If Stone says you’ve been playing the political game for him, then some fellow might remember that you did ask him about politics. So don’t have any marked money on you.” + 

Hal laughed. “Money doesn’t stay on me very long these days. But what shall I say if he asks me for a report?” + 

“You’d better put your job right through, Joe⁠—so that he won’t have time to ask for any report.” + 

“All right,” was the reply. “But just the same, I’m going to get all the fun there is, being the favourite of a boss!” + 

And so, early the next morning when Hal went to his work he proceeded to “sprain his wrist.” He walked about in pain, to the great concern of Old Mike; and when finally he decided that he would have to lay off, Mike followed him halfway to the shaft, giving him advice about hot and cold cloths. Leaving the old Slovak to struggle along as best he could alone, Hal went out to bask in the wonderful sunshine of the upper world, and the still more wonderful sunshine of a boss’s favour. + 

First he went to his room at Reminitsky’s, and tied a strip of old shirt about his wrist, and a clean handkerchief on top of that; by this symbol he was entitled to the freedom of the camp and the sympathy of all men, and so he sallied forth. + 

Strolling towards the tipple of Number One, he encountered a wiry, quick-moving little man, with restless black eyes and a lean, intelligent face. He wore a pair of common miner’s “jumpers,” but even so, he was not to be taken for a workingman. Everything about him spoke of authority. + 

“Morning, Mr. Cartwright,” said Hal. + 

“Good morning,” replied the superintendent; then, with a glance at Hal’s bandage, “You hurt?” + 

“Yes, sir. Just a bit of sprain, but I thought I’d better lay off.” + 

“Been to the doctor?” + 

“No, sir. I don’t think it’s that bad.” + 

“You’d better go. You never know how bad a sprain is.” + 

“Right, sir,” said Hal. Then, as the superintendent was passing, “Do you think, Mr. Cartwright, that MacDougall stands any chance of being elected?” + 

“I don’t know,” replied the other, surprised. “I hope not. You aren’t going to vote for him, are you?” + 

“Oh, no. I’m a Republican⁠—born that way. But I wondered if you’d heard any MacDougall talk.” + 

“Well, I’m hardly the one that would hear it. You take an interest in politics?” + 

“Yes, sir⁠—in a way. In fact, that’s how I came to get this wrist.” + 

“How’s that? In a fight?” + 

“No, sir; but you see, Mr. Stone wanted me to feel out sentiment in the camp, and he told me I’d better sprain my wrist and lay off.” + 

The “super,” after staring at Hal, could not keep from laughing. Then he looked about him. “You want to be careful, talking about such things.” + 

“I thought I could surely trust the superintendent,” said Hal, drily. + 

The other measured him with his keen eyes; and Hal, who was getting the spirit of political democracy, took the liberty of returning the gaze. “You’re a wide-awake young fellow,” said Cartwright, at last. “Learn the ropes here, and make yourself useful, and I’ll see you’re not passed over.” + 

“All right, sir⁠—thank you.” + 

“Maybe you’ll be made an election-clerk this time. That’s worth three dollars a day, you know.” + 

“Very good, sir.” And Hal put on his smile again. “They tell me you’re the mayor of North Valley.” + 

“I am.” + 

“And the justice of the peace is a clerk in your store. Well, Mr. Cartwright, if you need a president of the board of health or a dog catcher, I’m your man⁠—as soon, that is, as my wrist gets well.” + 

And so Hal went on his way. Such “joshing” on the part of a “buddy” was of course absurdly presumptuous; the superintendent stood looking after him with a puzzled frown upon his face. + 

VII + 

Hal did not look back, but turned into the company-store. “North Valley Trading Company” read the sign over the door; within was a Serbian woman pointing out what she wanted to buy, and two little Lithuanian girls watching the weighing of a pound of sugar. Hal strolled up to the person who was doing the weighing, a middle-aged man with a yellow moustache stained with tobacco-juice. “Morning, Judge.” + 

“Huh!” was the reply from Silas Adams, justice of the peace in the town of North Valley. + 

“Judge,” said Hal, “what do you think about the election?” + 

“I don’t think about it,” said the other. “Busy weighin’ sugar.” + 

“Anybody round here going to vote for MacDougall?” + 

“They better not tell me if they are!” + 

“What?” smiled Hal. “In this free American republic?” + 

“In this part of the free American republic a man is free to dig coal, but not to vote for a skunk like MacDougall.” Then, having tied up the sugar, the “J.P.” whittled off a fresh chew from his plug, and turned to Hal. “What’ll you have?” + 

Hal purchased half a pound of dried peaches, so that he might have an excuse to loiter, and be able to keep time with the jaws of the Judge. While the order was being filled, he seated himself upon the counter. “You know,” said he, “I used to work in a grocery.” + 

“That so? Where at?” + 

“Peterson & Co., in American City.” Hal had told this so often that he had begun to believe it. + 

“Pay pretty good up there?” + 

“Yes, pretty fair.” Then, realising that he had no idea what would constitute good pay in a grocery, Hal added, quickly, “Got a bad wrist here!” + 

“That so?” said the other. + 

He did not show much sociability; but Hal persisted, refusing to believe that anyone in a country store would miss an opening to discuss politics, even with a miner’s helper. “Tell me,” said he, “just what is the matter with MacDougall?” + 

“The matter with him,” said the Judge, “is that the company’s against him.” He looked hard at the young miner. “You meddlin’ in politics?” he growled. But the young miner’s gay brown eyes showed only appreciation of the earlier response; so the “J.P.” was tempted into specifying the would-be congressman’s vices. Thus conversation started; and pretty soon the others in the store joined in⁠—“Bob” Johnson, bookkeeper and postmaster, and “Jake” Predovich, the Galician Jew who was a member of the local school-board, and knew the words for staple groceries in fifteen languages. + 

Hal listened to an exposition of the crimes of the political opposition in Pedro County. Their candidate, MacDougall, had come to the state as a “tin-horn gambler,” yet now he was going around making speeches in churches, and talking about the moral sentiment of the community. “And him with a district chairman keeping three families in Pedro!” declared Si Adams. + 

“Well,” ventured Hal, “if what I hear is true, the Republican chairman isn’t a plaster saint. They say he was drunk at the convention⁠—” + 

“Maybe so,” said the “J.P.” “But we ain’t playin’ for the prohibition vote; and we ain’t playin’ for the labour vote⁠—tryin’ to stir up the riffraff in these coal-camps, promisin’ ’em high wages an’ short hours. Don’t he know he can’t get it for ’em? But he figgers he’ll go off to Washington and leave us here to deal with the mess he’s stirred up!” + 

“Don’t you fret,” put in Bob Johnson⁠—“he ain’t goin’ to no Washin’ton.” + 

The other two agreed, and Hal ventured again, “He says you stuff the ballot-boxes.” + 

“What do you suppose his crowd is doin’ in the cities? We got to meet ’em some way, ain’t we?” + 

“Oh, I see,” said Hal, naively. “You stuff them worse!” + 

“Sometimes we stuff the boxes, and sometimes we stuff the voters.” There was an appreciative titter from the others, and the “J.P.” was moved to reminiscence. “Two years ago I was election clerk, over to Sheridan, and we found we’d let ’em get ahead of us⁠—they had carried the whole state. ‘By God,’ said Alf. Raymond, ‘we’ll show ’em a trick from the coal-counties! And there won’t be no recount business either!’ So we held back our returns till the rest had come in, and when we seen how many votes we needed, we wrote ’em down. And that settled it.” + 

“That seems a simple method,” remarked Hal. “They’ll have to get up early to beat Alf.” + 

“You bet you!” said Si, with the complacency of one of the gang. “They call this county the ‘Empire of Raymond.’ ” + 

“It must be a cinch,” said Hal⁠—“being the sheriff, and having the naming of so many deputies as they need in these coal-camps!” + 

“Yes,” agreed the other. “And there’s his wholesale liquor business, too. If you want a license in Pedro county, you not only vote for Alf, but you pay your bills on time!” + 

“Must be a fortune in that!” remarked Hal; and the Judge, the Postmaster and the School-commissioner appeared like children listening to a story of a feast. “You bet you!” + 

“I suppose it takes money to run politics in this county,” Hal added. + 

“Well, Alf don’t put none of it up, you can bet! That’s the company’s job.” + 

This from the Judge; and the School-commissioner added, “De coin in dese camps is beer.” + 

“Oh, I see!” laughed Hal. “The companies buy Alf’s beer, and use it to get him votes!” + 

“Sure thing!” said the Postmaster. + 

At this moment he happened to reach into his pocket for a cigar, and Hal observed a silver shield on the breast of his waistcoat. “That a deputy’s badge?” he inquired, and then turned to examine the School-commissioner’s costume. “Where’s yours?” + 

“I git mine ven election comes,” said Jake, with a grin. + 

“And yours, Judge?” + 

“I’m a justice of the peace, young feller,” said Silas, with dignity. + 

Leaning round, and observing a bulge on the right hip of the School-commissioner, Hal put out his hand towards it. Instinctively the other moved his hand to the spot. + 

Hal turned to the Postmaster. “Yours?” he asked. + 

“Mine’s under the counter,” grinned Bob. + 

“And yours, Judge?” + 

“Mine’s in the desk,” said the Judge. + 

Hal drew a breath. “Gee!” said he. “It’s like a steel trap!” He managed to keep the laugh on his face, but within he was conscious of other feelings than those of amusement. He was losing that “first fine careless rapture” with which he had set out to run with the hare and the hounds in North Valley! + 

VIII + 

Two days after this beginning of Hal’s political career, it was arranged that the workers who were to make a demand for a check-weighman should meet in the home of Mrs. David. When Mike Sikoria came up from the pit that day, Hal took him aside and told him of the gathering. A look of delight came upon the old Slovak’s face as he listened; he grabbed his buddy by the shoulders, crying, “You mean it?” + 

“Sure meant it,” said Hal. “You want to be on the committee to go and see the boss?” + 

“Pluha biedna!” cried Mike⁠—which is something dreadful in his own language. “By Judas, I pack up my old box again!” + 

Hal felt a guilty pang. Should he let this old man into the thing? “You think you’ll have to move out of camp?” he asked. + 

“Move out of state this time! Move back to old country, maybe!” And Hal realised that he could not stop him now, even if he wanted to. The old fellow was so much excited that he hardly ate any supper, and his buddy was afraid to leave him alone, for fear he might blurt out the news. + 

It had been agreed that those who attended the meeting should come one by one, and by different routes. Hal was one of the first to arrive, and he saw that the shades of the house had been drawn, and the lamps turned low. He entered by the back door, where “Big Jack” David stood on guard. “Big Jack,” who had been a member of the South Wales Federation at home, made sure of Hal’s identity, and then passed him in without a word. + 

Inside was Mike⁠—the first on hand. Mrs. David, a little black-eyed woman with a never-ceasing tongue, was bustling about, putting things in order; she was so nervous that she could not sit still. This couple had come from their birthplace only a year or so ago, and had brought all their wedding presents to their new home⁠—pictures and bric-a-brac and linen. It was the prettiest home Hal had so far been in, and Mrs. David was risking it deliberately, because of her indignation that her husband had had to foreswear his union in order to get work in America. + 

The young Italian, Rovetta, came, then old John Edstrom. There being not chairs enough in the house, Mrs. David had set some boxes against the wall, covering them with cloth; and Hal noticed that each person took one of these boxes, leaving the chairs for the later comers. Each one as he came in would nod to the others, and then silence would fall again. + 

When Mary Burke entered, Hal divined from her aspect and manner that she had sunk back into her old mood of pessimism. He felt a momentary resentment. He was so thrilled with this adventure; he wanted everybody else to be thrilled⁠—especially Mary! Like everyone who has not suffered much, he was repelled by a condition of perpetual suffering in another. Of course Mary had good reasons for her black moods⁠—but she herself considered it necessary to apologise for what she called her “complainin’ ”! She knew that he wanted her to help encourage the others; but here she was, putting herself in a corner and watching this wonderful proceeding, as if she had said: “I’m an ant, and I stay in line⁠—but I’ll not pretend I have any hope in it!” + 

Rosa and Jerry had insisted on coming, in spite of Hal’s offer to spare them. After them came the Bulgarian, Wresmak; then the Polacks, Klowoski and Zamierowski. Hal found these difficult names to remember, but the Polacks were not at all sensitive about this; they would grin good-naturedly while he practised, nor would they mind if he gave it up and called them Tony and Pete. They were humble men, accustomed all their lives to being driven about. Hal looked from one to another of their bowed forms and toil-worn faces, appearing more than ever sombre and mournful in the dim light; he wondered if the cruel persecution which had driven them to protest would suffice to hold them in line. + 

Once a newcomer, having misunderstood the orders, came to the front door and knocked; and Hal noted that everyone started, and some rose to their feet in alarm. Again he recognised the atmosphere of novels of Russian revolutionary life. He had to remind himself that these men and women, gathered here like criminals, were merely planning to ask for a right guaranteed them by the law! + 

The last to come was an Austrian miner named Huszar, with whom Olson had got into touch. Then, it being time to begin, everybody looked uneasily at everybody else. Few of them had conspired before, and they did not know quite how to set about it. Olson, the one who would naturally have been their leader, had deliberately stayed away. They must run this check-weighman affair for themselves! + 

“Somebody talk,” said Mrs. David at last; and then, as the silence continued, she turned to Hal. “You’re going to be the check-weighman. You talk.” + 

“I’m the youngest man here,” said Hal, with a smile. “Some older fellow talk.” + 

But nobody else smiled. “Go on!” exclaimed old Mike; and so at last Hal stood up. It was something he was to experience many times in the future; because he was an American, and educated, he was forced into a position of leadership. + 

“As I understand it, you people want a check-weighman. Now, they tell me the pay for a check-weighman should be three dollars a day, but we’ve got only seven miners among us, and that’s not enough. I will offer to take the job for twenty-five cents a day from each man, which will make a dollar-seventy-five, less than what I’m getting now as a buddy. If we get thirty men to come in, then I’ll take ten cents a day from each, and make the full three dollars. Does that seem fair?” + 

“Sure!” said Mike; and the others added their assent by word or nod. + 

“All right. Now, there’s nobody that works in this mine but knows the men don’t get their weight. It would cost the company several hundred dollars a day to give us our weight, and nobody should be so foolish as to imagine they’ll do it without a struggle. We’ve got to make up our minds to stand together.” + 

“Sure, stand together!” cried Mike. + 

“No get check-weighman!” exclaimed Jerry, pessimistically. + 

“Not unless we try, Jerry,” said Hal. + 

And Mike thumped his knee. “Sure try! And get him too!” + 

“Right!” cried “Big Jack.” But his little wife was not satisfied with the response of the others. She gave Hal his first lesson in the drilling of these polyglot masses. + 

“Talk to them. Make them understand you!” And she pointed them out one by one with her finger: “You! You! Wresmak, here, and you, Klowoski, and you, Zam⁠—you other Polish fellow. Want check-weighman. Want to get all weight. Get all our money. Understand?” + 

“Yes, yes!” + 

“Get committee, go see super! Want check-weighman. Understand? Got to have check-weighman! No back down, no scare.” + 

“No⁠—no scare!” Klowoski, who understood some English, explained rapidly to Zamierowski; and Zamierowski, whose head was still plastered where Jeff Cotton’s revolver had hit it, nodded eagerly in assent. In spite of his bruises, he would stand by the others, and face the boss. + 

This suggested another question. “Who’s going to do the talking to the boss?” + 

“You do that,” said Mrs. David, to Hal. + 

“But I’m the one that’s to be paid. It’s not for me to talk.” + 

“No one else can do it right,” declared the woman. + 

“Sure⁠—got to be American feller!” said Mike. + 

But Hal insisted. If he did the talking, it would look as if the check-weighman had been the source of the movement, and was engaged in making a good paying job for himself. + 

There was discussion back and forth, until finally John Edstrom spoke up. “Put me on the committee.” + 

“You?” said Hal. “But you’ll be thrown out! And what will your wife do?” + 

“I think my wife is going to die tonight,” said Edstrom, simply. + 

He sat with his lips set tightly, looking straight before him. After a pause he went on: “If it isn’t tonight, it will be tomorrow, the doctor says; and after that, nothing will matter. I shall have to go down to Pedro to bury her, and if I have to stay, it will make little difference to me, so I might as well do what I can for the rest of you. I’ve been a miner all my life, and Mr. Cartwright knows it; that might have some weight with him. Let Joe Smith and Sikoria and myself be the ones to go and see him, and the rest of you wait, and don’t give up your jobs unless you have to.” + 

IX + 

Having settled the matter of the committee, Hal told the assembly how Alec Stone had asked him to spy upon the men. He thought they should know about it; the bosses might try to use it against him, as Olson had warned. “They may tell you I’m a traitor,” he said. “You must trust me.” + 

“We trust you!” exclaimed Mike, with fervour; and the others nodded their agreement. + 

“All right,” Hal answered. “You can rest sure of this one thing⁠—if I get onto that tipple, you’re going to get your weights!” + 

“Hear, hear!” cried “Big Jack,” in English fashion. And a murmur ran about the room. They did not dare make much noise, but they made clear that that was what they wanted. + 

Hal sat down, and began to unroll the bandage from his wrist. “I guess I’m through with this,” he said, and explained how he had come to wear it. + 

“What?” cried Old Mike. “You fool me like that?” And he caught the wrist, and when he had made sure there was no sign of swelling upon it, he shook it so that he almost sprained it really, laughing until the tears ran down his cheeks. “You old son-of-a-gun!” he exclaimed. Meantime Klowoski was telling the story to Zamierowski, and Jerry Minetti was explaining it to Wresmak, in the sort of pidgin-English which does duty in the camps. Hal had never seen such real laughter since coming to North Valley. + 

But conspirators cannot lend themselves long to merriment. They came back to business again. It was agreed that the hour for the committee’s visit to the superintendent should be quitting-time on the morrow. And then John Edstrom spoke, suggesting that they should agree upon their course of action in case they were offered violence. + 

“You think there’s much chance of that?” said someone. + 

“Sure there be!” cried Mike Sikoria. “One time in Cedar Mountain we go see boss, say air-course blocked. What you think he do them fellers? He hit them one lick in nose, he kick them three times in behind, he run them out!” + 

“Well,” said Hal, “if there’s going to be anything like that, we must be ready.” + 

“What you do?” demanded Jerry. + 

It was time for Hal’s leadership. “If he hits me one lick in the nose,” he declared, “I’ll hit him one lick in the nose, that’s all.” + 

There was a bit of applause at this. That was the way to talk! Hal tasted the joys of his leadership. But then his fine self-confidence met with a sudden check⁠—a “lick in the nose” of his pride, so to speak. There came a woman’s voice from the corner, low and grim: “Yes! And get ye’self killed for all your trouble!” + 

He looked towards Mary Burke, and saw her vivid face, flushed and frowning. “What do you mean?” he asked. “Would you have us turn and run away?” + 

“I would that!” said she. “Rather than have ye killed, I would! What’ll ye do if he pulls his gun on ye?” + 

“Would he pull his gun on a committee?” + 

Old Mike broke in again. “One time in Barela⁠—ain’t I told you how I lose my cars? I tell weigh-boss somebody steal my cars, and he pull gun on me, and he say, ‘Get the hell off that tipple, you old billy-goat, I shoot you full of holes!’ ” + 

Among his classmates at college, Hal had been wont to argue that the proper way to handle a burglar was to call out to him, saying, “Go ahead, old chap, and help yourself; there’s nothing here I’m willing to get shot for.” What was the value of anything a burglar could steal, in comparison with a man’s own life? And surely, one would have thought, this was a good time to apply the plausible theory. But for some reason Hal failed even to remember it. He was going ahead, precisely as if a ton of coal per day was the one thing of consequence in life! + 

“What shall we do?” he asked. “We don’t want to back out.” + 

But even while he asked the question, Hal was realising that Mary was right. His was the attitude of the leisure-class person, used to having his own way; but Mary, though she had a temper too, was pointing the lesson of self-control. It was the second time tonight that she had injured his pride. But now he forgave her in his admiration; he had always known that Mary had a mind and could help him! His admiration was increased by what John Edstrom was saying⁠—they must do nothing that would injure the cause of the “big union,” and so they must resolve to offer no physical resistance, no matter what might be done to them. + 

There was vehement argument on the other side. “We fight! We fight!” declared Old Mike, and cried out suddenly, as if in anticipation of the pain in his injured nose. “You say me stand that?” + 

“If you fight back,” said Edstrom, “we’ll all get the worst of it. The company will say we started the trouble, and put us in the wrong. We’ve got to make up our mind to rely on moral force.” + 

So, after more discussion, it was agreed; every man would keep his temper⁠—that is, if he could! So they shook hands all round, pledging themselves to stand firm. But, when the meeting was declared adjourned, and they stole out one by one into the night, they were a very sober and anxious lot of conspirators. + 

X + 

Hal slept but little that night. Amid the sounds of the snoring of eight of Reminitsky’s other boarders, he lay going over in his mind various things which might happen on the morrow. Some of them were far from pleasant things; he tried to picture himself with a broken nose, or with tar and feathers on him. He recalled his theory as to the handling of burglars. The “G.F.C.” was a burglar of gigantic and terrible proportions; surely this was a time to call out, “Help yourself!” But instead of doing it, Hal thought about Edstrom’s ants, and wondered at the power which made them stay in line. + 

When morning came, he went up into the mountains, where a man may wander and renew his moral force. When the sun had descended behind the mountaintops, he descended also, and met Edstrom and Sikoria in front of the company office. + 

They nodded a greeting, and Edstrom told Hal that his wife had died during the day. There being no undertaker in North Valley, he had arranged for a woman friend to take the body down to Pedro, so that he might be free for the interview with Cartwright. Hal put his hand on the old man’s shoulder, but attempted no word of condolence; he saw that Edstrom had faced the trouble and was ready for duty. + 

“Come ahead,” said the old man, and the three went into the office. While a clerk took their message to the inner office, they stood for a couple of minutes, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other, and turning their caps in their hands in the familiar manner of the lowly. + 

At last Mr. Cartwright appeared in the doorway, his small sparely-built figure eloquent of sharp authority. “Well, what’s this?” he inquired. + 

“If you please,” said Edstrom, “we’d like to speak to you. We’ve decided, sir, that we want to have a check-weighman.” + 

“What?” The word came like the snap of a whip. + 

“We’d like to have a check-weighman, sir.” + 

There was a moment’s silence. “Come in here.” They filed into the inner office, and he shut the door. + 

“Now. What’s this?” + 

Edstrom repeated his words again. + 

“What put that notion into your heads?” + 

“Nothing, sir; only we thought we’d be better satisfied.” + 

“You think you’re not getting your weight?” + 

“Well, sir, you see⁠—some of the men⁠—we think it would be better if we had the check-weighman. We’re willing to pay for him.” + 

“Who’s this check-weighman to be?” + 

“Joe Smith, here.” + 

Hal braced himself to meet the other’s stare. “Oh! So it’s you!” Then, after a moment, “So that’s why you were feeling so gay!” + 

Hal was not feeling in the least gay at the moment; but he forebore to say so. There was a silence. + 

“Now, why do you fellows want to throw away your money?” The superintendent started to argue with them, showing the absurdity of the notion that they could gain anything by such a course. The mine had been running for years on its present system, and there had never been any complaint. The idea that a company as big and as responsible as the “G.F.C.” would stoop to cheat its workers out of a few tons of coal! And so on, for several minutes. + 

“Mr. Cartwright,” said Edstrom, when the other had finished, “you know I’ve worked all my life in mines, and most of it in this district. I am telling you something I know when I say there is general dissatisfaction throughout these camps because the men feel they are not getting their weight. You say there has been no public complaint; you understand the reason for this⁠—” + 

“What is the reason?” + 

“Well,” said Edstrom, gently, “maybe you don’t know the reason⁠—but anyway we’ve decided that we want a check-weighman.” + 

It was evident that the superintendent had been taken by surprise, and was uncertain how to meet the issue. “You can imagine,” he said, at last, “the company doesn’t relish hearing that its men believe it’s cheating them⁠—” + 

“We don’t say the company knows anything about it, Mr. Cartwright. It’s possible that some people may be taking advantage of us, without either the company or yourself having anything to do with it. It’s for your protection as well as ours that a check-weighman is needed.” + 

“Thank you,” said the other, drily. His tone revealed that he was holding himself in by an effort. “Very well,” he added, at last. “That’s enough about the matter, if your minds are made up. I’ll give you my decision later.” + 

This was a dismissal, and Mike Sikoria turned humbly, and started to the door. But Edstrom was one of the ants that did not readily “step one side”; and Mike took a glance at him, and then stepped back into line in a hurry, as if hoping his delinquency had not been noted. + 

“If you please, Mr. Cartwright,” said Edstrom, “we’d like your decision, so as to have the check-weighman start in the morning.” + 

“What? You’re in such a hurry?” + 

“There’s no reason for delay, sir. We’ve selected our man, and we’re ready to pay him.” + 

“Who are the men who are ready to pay him? Just you two?” + 

“I am not at liberty to name the other men, sir.” + 

“Oh! So it’s a secret movement!” + 

“In a way⁠—yes, sir.” + 

“Indeed!” said the superintendent, ominously. “And you don’t care what the company thinks about it!” + 

“It’s not that, Mr. Cartwright, but we don’t see anything for the company to object to. It’s a simple business arrangement⁠—” + 

“Well, if it seems simple to you, it doesn’t to me,” snapped the other. And then, getting himself in hand, “Understand me, the company would not have the least objection to the men making sure of their weights, if they really think it’s necessary. The company has always been willing to do the right thing. But it’s not a matter that can be settled off hand. I will let you know later.” + 

Again they were dismissed, and again Old Mike turned, and Edstrom also. But now another ant sprang into the ditch. “Just when will you be prepared to let the check-weighman begin work, Mr. Cartwright?” asked Hal. + 

The superintendent gave him a sharp look, and again it could be seen that he made a strong effort to keep his temper. “I’m not prepared to say,” he replied. “I will let you know, as soon as convenient to me. That’s all now.” And as he spoke he opened the door, putting something into the action that was a command. + 

“Mr. Cartwright,” said Hal, “there’s no law against our having a check-weighman, is there?” + 

The look which these words drew from the superintendent showed that he knew full well what the law was. Hal accepted this look as an answer, and continued, “I have been selected by a committee of the men to act as their check-weighman, and this committee has duly notified the company. That makes me a check-weighman, I believe, Mr. Cartwright, and so all I have to do is to assume my duties.” Without waiting for the superintendent’s answer, he walked to the door, followed by his somewhat shocked companions. + 

XI + 

At the meeting on the night before it had been agreed to spread the news of the check-weighman movement, for the sake of its propaganda value. So now when the three men came out from the office, there was a crowd waiting to know what had happened; men clamoured questions, and each one who got the story would be surrounded by others eager to hear. Hal made his way to the boardinghouse, and when he had finished his supper, he set out from place to place in the camp, telling the men about the check-weighman plan and explaining that it was a legal right they were demanding. All this while Old Mike stayed on one side of him, and Edstrom on the other; for Tom Olson had insisted strenuously that Hal should not be left alone for a moment. Evidently the bosses had given the same order; for when Hal came out from Reminitsky’s, there was “Jake” Predovich, the store-clerk, on the fringe of the crowd, and he followed wherever Hal went, doubtless making note of everyone he spoke to. + 

They consulted as to where they were to spend the night. Old Mike was nervous, taking the activities of the spy to mean that they were to be thugged in the darkness. He told horrible stories of that sort of thing. What could be an easier way for the company to settle the matter? They would fix up some story; the world outside would believe they had been killed in a drunken row, perhaps over some woman. This last suggestion especially troubled Hal; he thought of the people at home. No, he must not sleep in the village! And on the other hand he could not go down the canyon, for if he once passed the gate, he might not be allowed to repass it. + 

An idea occurred to him. Why not go up the canyon? There was no stockade at the upper end of the village⁠—nothing but wilderness and rocks, without even a road. + 

“But where we sleep?” demanded Old Mike, aghast. + 

“Outdoors,” said Hal. + 

“Pluha biedna! And get the night air into my bones?” + 

“You think you keep the day air in your bones when you sleep inside?” laughed Hal. + 

“Why don’t I, when I shut them windows tight, and cover up my bones?” + 

“Well, risk the night air once,” said Hal. “It’s better than having somebody let it into you with a knife.” + 

“But that fellow Predovich⁠—he follow us up canyon too!” + 

“Yes, but he’s only one man, and we don’t have to fear him. If he went back for others, he’d never be able to find us in the darkness.” + 

Edstrom, whose notions of anatomy were not so crude as Mike’s, gave his support to this suggestion; so they got their blankets and stumbled up the canyon in the still, starlit night. For a while they heard the spy behind them, but finally his footsteps died away, and after they had moved on for some distance, they believed they were safe till daylight. Hal had slept out many a night as a hunter, but it was a new adventure to sleep out as the game! + 

At dawn they rose, and shook the dew from their blankets, and wiped it from their eyes. Hal was young, and saw the glory of the morning, while poor Mike Sikoria groaned and grumbled over his stiff and aged joints. He thought he had ruined himself forever, but he took courage at Edstrom’s mention of coffee, and they hurried down to breakfast at their boardinghouse. + 

Now came a critical time, when Hal had to be left by himself. Edstrom was obliged to go down to see to his wife’s funeral; and it was obvious that if Mike Sikoria were to lay off work, he would be providing the boss with an excuse for firing him. The law which provided for a check-weighman had failed to provide for a check-weighman’s bodyguard! + 

Hal had announced his programme in that flash of defiance in Cartwright’s office. As soon as work started up, he went to the tipple. “Mr. Peters,” he said, to the tipple-boss, “I’ve come to act as check-weighman.” + 

The tipple-boss was a man with a big black moustache, which made him look like the pictures of Nietzsche. He stared at Hal, frankly dumbfounded. “What the devil?” said he. + 

“Some of the men have chosen me check-weighman,” explained Hal, in a businesslike manner. “When their cars come up, I’ll see to their weights.” + 

“You keep off this tipple, young fellow!” said Peters. His manner was equally businesslike. + 

So the would-be check-weighman came out and sat on the steps to wait. The tipple was a fairly public place, and he judged he was as safe there as anywhere. Some of the men grinned and winked at him as they went about their work; several found a chance to whisper words of encouragement. And all morning he sat, like a protestant at the palace-gates of a mandarin in China. It was tedious work, but he believed that he would be able to stand it longer than the company. + 

XII + 

In the middle of the morning a man came up to him⁠—“Bud” Adams, a younger brother of the “J.P.,” and Jeff Cotton’s assistant. Bud was stocky, red-faced, and reputed to be handy with his fists. So Hal rose up warily when he saw him. + 

“Hey, you,” said Bud. “There’s a telegram at the office for you.” + 

“For me?” + 

“Your name’s Joe Smith, ain’t it?” + 

“Yes.” + 

“Well, that’s what it says.” + 

Hal considered for a moment. There was no one to be telegraphing Joe Smith. It was only a ruse to get him away. + 

“What’s in the telegram?” he asked. + 

“How do I know?” said Bud. + 

“Where is it from?” + 

“I dunno that.” + 

“Well,” said Hal, “you might bring it to me here.” + 

The other’s eyes flew open. This was not a revolt, it was a revolution! “Who the hell’s messenger boy do you think I am?” he demanded. + 

“Don’t the company deliver telegrams?” countered Hal, politely. And Bud stood struggling with his human impulses, while Hal watched him cautiously. But apparently those who had sent the messenger had given him precise instructions; for he controlled his wrath, and turned and strode away. + 

Hal continued his vigil. He had his lunch with him; and was prepared to eat alone⁠—understanding the risk that a man would be running who showed sympathy with him. He was surprised, therefore, when Johannson, the giant Swede, came and sat down by his side. There also came a young Mexican labourer, and a Greek miner. The revolution was spreading! + 

Hal felt sure the company would not let this go on. And sure enough, towards the middle of the afternoon, the tipple-boss came out and beckoned to him. “Come here, you!” And Hal went in. + 

The “weigh-room” was a fairly open place; but at one side was a door into an office. “This way,” said the man. + 

But Hal stopped where he was. + 

“This is where the check-weighman belongs, Mr. Peters.” + 

“But I want to talk to you.” + 

“I can hear you, sir.” Hal was in sight of the men, and he knew that was his only protection. + 

The tipple-boss went back into the office; and a minute later Hal saw what had been intended. The door opened and Alec Stone came out. + 

He stood for a moment looking at his political henchman. Then he came up. “Kid,” he said, in a low voice, “you’re overdoing this. I didn’t intend you to go so far.” + 

“This is not what you intended, Mr. Stone,” answered Hal. + 

The pit-boss came closer yet. “What you looking for, kid? What you expect to get out of this?” + 

Hal’s gaze was unwavering. “Experience,” he replied. + 

“You’re feeling smart, sonny. But you’d better stop and realise what you’re up against. You ain’t going to get away with it, you know; get that through your head⁠—you ain’t going to get away with it. You’d better come in and have a talk with me.” + 

There was a silence. + 

“Don’t you know how it’ll be, Smith? These little fires start up⁠—but we put ’em out. We know how to do it, we’ve got the machinery. It’ll all be forgotten in a week or two, and then where’ll you be at? Can’t you see?” + 

As Hal still made no reply, the other’s voice dropped lower. “I understand your position. Just give me a nod, and it’ll be all right. You tell the men that you’ve watched the weights, and that they’re all right. They’ll be satisfied, and you and me can fix it up later.” + 

“Mr. Stone,” said Hal, with intense gravity, “am I correct in the impression that you are offering me a bribe?” + 

In a flash, the man’s self-control vanished. He thrust his huge fist within an inch of Hal’s nose, and uttered a foul oath. But Hal did not remove his nose from the danger-zone, and over the fist a pair of angry brown eyes gazed at the pit-boss. “Mr. Stone, you had better realise this situation. I am in dead earnest about this matter, and I don’t think it will be safe for you to offer me violence.” + 

For a moment or two the man continued to glare at Hal; but it appeared that he, like Bud Adams, had been given instructions. He turned abruptly and strode back into the office. + 

Hal stood for a bit, until he had made sure of his composure. After which he strolled over towards the scales. A difficulty had occurred to him for the first time⁠—that he did not know anything about the working of coal-scales. + 

But he was given no time to learn. The tipple-boss reappeared. “Get out of here, fellow!” said he. + 

“But you invited me in,” remarked Hal, mildly. + 

“Well, now I invite you out again.” + 

And so the protestant resumed his vigil at the mandarin’s palace-gates. + 

XIII + 

When the quitting-whistle blew, Mike Sikoria came quickly to join Hal and hear what had happened. Mike was exultant, for several new men had come up to him and offered to join the check-weighman movement. The old fellow was not sure whether this was owing to his own eloquence as a propagandist, or to the fine young American buddy he had; but in either case he was equally proud. He gave Hal a note which had been slipped into his hand, and which Hal recognised as coming from Tom Olson. The organiser reported that everyone in the camp was talking check-weighman, and so from a propaganda standpoint they could count their move a success, no matter what the bosses might do. He added that Hal should have a number of men stay with him that night, so as to have witnesses if the company tried to “pull off anything.” “And be careful of the new men,” he added; “one or two of them are sure to be spies.” + 

Hal and Mike discussed their programme for the second night. Neither of them were keen for sleeping out again⁠—the old Slovak because of his bones, and Hal because he saw there were now several spies following them about. At Reminitsky’s, he spoke to some of those who had offered their support, and asked them if they would be willing to spend the night with him in Edstrom’s cabin. Not one shrank from this test of sincerity; they all got their blankets, and repaired to the place, where Hal lighted the lamp and held an impromptu check-weighman meeting⁠—and incidentally entertained himself with a spy-hunt! + 

One of the newcomers was a Pole named Wojecicowski; this, on top of Zamierowski, caused Hal to give up all effort to call the Poles by their names. “Woji” was an earnest little man, with a pathetic, tired face. He explained his presence by the statement that he was sick of being robbed; he would pay his share for a check-weighman, and if they fired him, all right, he would move on, and to hell with them. After which declaration he rolled up in a blanket and went to snoring on the floor of the cabin. That did not seem to be exactly the conduct of a spy. + 

Another was an Italian, named Farenzena; a dark-browed and sinister-looking fellow, who might have served as a villain in any melodrama. He sat against the wall and talked in guttural tones, and Hal regarded him with deep suspicion. It was not easy to understand his English, but finally Hal managed to make out the story he was telling⁠—that he was in love with a “fanciulla,” and that the “fanciulla” was playing with him. He had about made up his mind that she was a coquette, and not worth bothering with, so he did not care any curses if they sent him down the canyon. “Don’t fight for fanciulla, fight for check-weighman!” he concluded, with a growl. + 

Another volunteer was a Greek labourer, a talkative young chap who had sat with Hal at lunchtime, and had given his name as Apostolikas. He entered into fluent conversation with Hal, explaining how much interested he was in the check-weighman plan; he wanted to know just what they were going to do, what chance of success they thought they had, who had started the movement and who was in it. Hal’s replies took the form of little sermons on working-class solidarity. Each time the man would start to “pump” him, Hal would explain the importance of the present issue to the miners, how they must stand by one another and make sacrifices for the good of all. After he had talked abstract theories for half an hour, Apostolikas gave up and moved on to Mike Sikoria, who, having been given a wink by Hal, talked about “scabs,” and the dreadful things that honest workingmen would do to them. When finally the Greek grew tired again, and lay down on the floor, Hal moved over to Old Mike and whispered that the first name of Apostolikas must be Judas! + 

XIV + 

Old Mike went to sleep quickly; but Hal had not worked for several days, and had exciting thoughts to keep him awake. He had been lying quiet for a couple of hours, when he became aware that someone was moving in the room. There was a lamp burning dimly, and through half-closed eyes he made out one of the men lifting himself to a sitting position. At first he could not be sure which one it was, but finally he recognised the Greek. + 

Hal lay motionless, and after a minute or so he stole another look and saw the man crouching and listening, his hands still on the floor. Through half opened eyelids Hal continued to steal glimpses, while the other rose and tiptoed towards him, stepping carefully over the sleeping forms. + 

Hal did his best to simulate the breathing of sleep: no easy matter, with the man stooping over him, and a knife-thrust as one of the possibilities of the situation. He took the chance, however; and after what seemed an age, he felt the man’s fingers lightly touch his side. They moved down to his coat-pocket. + 

“Going to search me!” thought Hal; and waited, expecting the hand to travel to other pockets. But after what seemed an interminable period, he realised that Apostolikas had risen again, and was stepping back to his place. In a minute more he had lain down, and all was still in the cabin. + 

Hal’s hand moved to the pocket, and his fingers slid inside. They touched something, which he recognised instantly as a roll of bills. + 

“I see!” thought he. “A frame-up!” And he laughed to himself, his mind going back to early boyhood⁠—to a dilapidated trunk in the attic of his home, containing storybooks that his father had owned. He could see them now, with their worn brown covers and crude pictures: “The Luck and Pluck Series,” by Horatio Alger; “Live or Die,” “Rough and Ready,” etc. How he had thrilled over the story of the country-boy who comes to the city, and meets the villain who robs his employer’s cash-drawer and drops the key of it into the hero’s pocket! Evidently someone connected with the General Fuel Company had read Horatio Alger! + 

Hal realised that he could not be too quick about getting those bills out of his pocket. He thought of returning them to “Judas,” but decided that he would save them for Edstrom, who was likely to need money before long. He gave the Greek half an hour to go to sleep, then with his pocketknife he gently picked out a hole in the cinders of the floor and buried the money as best he could. After which he wormed his way to another place, and lay thinking. + 

XV + 

Would they wait until morning, or would they come soon? He was inclined to the latter guess, so he was only slightly startled when, an hour or two later, he heard the knob of the cabin-door turned. A moment later came a crash and the door was burst open, with the shoulder of a heavy man behind it. + 

The room was in confusion in a second. Men sprang to their feet, crying out; others sat up bewildered, still half asleep. The room was bright from an electric torch in the hands of one of the invaders. “There’s the fellow!” cried a voice, which Hal instantly recognised as belonging to Jeff Cotton, the camp-marshal. “Stick ’em up, there! You, Joe Smith!” Hal did not wait to see the glint of the marshal’s revolver. + 

There followed a silence. As this drama was being staged for the benefit of the other men, it was necessary to give them time to get thoroughly awake, and to get their eyes used to the light. Meantime Hal stood, his hands in the air. Behind the torch he could make out the faces of the marshal, Bud Adams, Alec Stone, Jake Predovich, and two or three others. + 

“Now, men,” said Cotton, at last, “you are some of the fellows that want a check-weighman. And this is the man you chose. Is that right?” + 

There was no answer. + 

“I’m going to show you the kind of fellow he is. He came to Mr. Stone here and offered to sell you out.” + 

“It’s a lie, men,” said Hal, quietly. + 

“He took some money from Mr. Stone to sell you out!” insisted the marshal. + 

“It’s a lie,” said Hal, again. + 

“He’s got that money now!” cried the other. + 

And Hal cried, in turn, “They are trying to frame something on me, boys! Don’t let them fool you!” + 

“Shut up,” commanded the marshal; then, to the men, “I’ll show you. I think he’s got that money on him now. Jake, search him.” + 

The store-clerk advanced. + 

“Watch out, boys!” exclaimed Hal. “They will put something in my pockets.” And then to Old Mike, who had started angrily forward, “It’s all right, Mike! Let them alone!” + 

“Jake, take off your coat,” ordered Cotton. “Roll up your sleeves. Show your hands.” + 

It was for all the world like the performance of a prestidigitator. The little Jew took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves above his elbows. He exhibited his hands to the audience, turning them this way and that; then, keeping them out in front of him, he came slowly towards Hal, like a hypnotist about to put him to sleep. + 

“Watch him!” said Cotton. “He’s got that money on him, I know.” + 

“Look sharp!” cried Hal. “If it isn’t there, they’ll put it there.” + 

“Keep your hands up, young fellow,” commanded the marshal. “Keep back from him there!” This last to Mike Sikoria and the other spectators, who were pressing nearer, peering over one another’s shoulders. + 

It was all very serious at the time, but afterwards, when Hal recalled the scene, he laughed over the grotesque figure of Predovich searching his pockets while keeping as far away from him as possible, so that everyone might know that the money had actually come out of Hal’s pocket. The searcher put his hands first in the inside pockets, then in the pockets of Hal’s shirt. Time was needed to build up this climax! + 

“Turn around,” commanded Cotton; and Hal turned, and the Jew went through his trouser-pockets. He took out in turn Hal’s watch, his comb and mirror, his handkerchief; after examining them and holding them up, he dropped them onto the floor. There was a breathless hush when he came to Hal’s purse, and proceeded to open it. Thanks to the greed of the company, there was nothing in the purse but some small change. Predovich closed it and dropped it to the floor. + 

“Wait now! He’s not through!” cried the master of ceremonies. “He’s got that money somewhere, boys! Did you look in his side-pockets, Jake?” + 

“Not yet,” said Jake. + 

“Look sharp!” cried the marshal; and everyone craned forward eagerly, while Predovich stooped down on one knee, and put his hand into one coat pocket and then into the other. + 

He took his hand out again, and the look of dismay upon his face was so obvious that Hal could hardly keep from laughing. “It ain’t dere!” he declared. + 

“What?” cried Cotton, and they stared at each other. “By God, he’s got rid of it!” + 

“There’s no money on me, boys!” proclaimed Hal. “It’s a job they are trying to put over on us.” + 

“He’s hid it!” shouted the marshal. “Find it, Jake!” + 

Then Predovich began to search again, swiftly, and with less circumstance. He was not thinking so much about the spectators now, as about all that good money gone for nothing! He made Hal take off his coat, and ripped open the lining; he unbuttoned the trousers and felt inside; he thrust his fingers down inside Hal’s shoes. + 

But there was no money, and the searchers were at a standstill. “He took twenty-five dollars from Mr. Stone to sell you out!” declared the marshal. “He’s managed to get rid of it somehow.” + 

“Boys,” cried Hal, “they sent a spy in here, and told him to put money on me.” He was looking at Apostolikas as he spoke; he saw the man start and shrink back. + 

“That’s him! He’s a scab!” cried Old Mike. “He’s got the money on him, I bet!” And he made a move towards the Greek. + 

So the camp-marshal realised suddenly that it was time to ring down the curtain on this drama. “That’s enough of this foolishness,” he declared. “Bring that fellow along here!” And in a flash a couple of the party had seized Hal’s wrists, and a third had grabbed him by the collar of his shirt. Before the miners had time to realise what was happening, they had rushed their prisoner out of the cabin. + 

The quarter of an hour which followed was an uncomfortable one for the would-be check-weighman. Outside, in the darkness, the camp-marshal was free to give vent to his rage, and so was Alec Stone. They poured out curses upon him, and kicked him and cuffed him as they went along. One of the men who held his wrists twisted his arm, until he cried out with pain; then they cursed him harder, and bade him hold his mouth. Down the dark and silent street they went swiftly, and into the camp-marshal’s office, and upstairs to the room which served as the North Valley jail. Hal was glad enough when they left him here, slamming the iron door behind them. + 

XVI + 

It had been a crude and stupid plot, yet Hal realised that it was adapted to the intelligence of the men for whom it was intended. But for the accident that he had stayed awake, they would have found the money on him, and next morning the whole camp would have heard that he had sold out. Of course his immediate friends, the members of the committee, would not have believed it; but the mass of the workers would have believed it, and so the purpose of Tom Olson’s visit to North Valley would have been balked. Throughout the experiences which were to come to him, Hal retained his vivid impression of that adventure; it served to him as a symbol of many things. Just as the bosses had tried to bedevil him, to destroy his influence with his followers, so later on he saw them trying to bedevil the labour-movement, to confuse the intelligence of the whole country. + 

Now Hal was in jail. He went to the window and tried the bars⁠—but found that they had been made for such trials. Then he groped his way about in the darkness, examining his prison, which proved to be a steel cage built inside the walls of an ordinary room. In one corner was a bench, and in another corner another bench, somewhat broader, with a mattress upon it. Hal had read a little about jails⁠—enough to cause him to avoid this mattress. He sat upon the bare bench, and began to think. + 

It is a fact that there is a peculiar psychology incidental to being in jail; just as there is a peculiar psychology incidental to straining your back and breaking your hands loading coal-cars in a five foot vein; and another, and quite different psychology, produced by living at ease off the labours of coal-miners. In a jail, you have first of all the sense of being an animal; the animal side of your being is emphasised, the animal passions of hatred and fear are called into prominence, and if you are to escape being dominated by them, it can only be by intense and concentrated effort of the mind. So, if you are a thinking man, you do a great deal of thinking in a jail; the days are long, and the nights still longer⁠—you have time for all the thoughts you can have. + 

The bench was hard, and seemed to grow harder. There was no position in which it could be made to grow soft. Hal got up and paced about, then he lay down for a while, then got up and walked again; and all the while he thought, and all the while the jail-psychology was being impressed upon his mind. + 

First, he thought about his immediate problem. What were they going to do to him? The obvious thing would be to put him out of camp, and so be done with him; but would they rest content with that, in their irritation at the trick he had played? Hal had heard vaguely of that native American institution, the “third degree,” but had never had occasion to think of it as a possibility in his own life. What a difference it made, to think of it in that way! + 

Hal had told Tom Olson that he would not pledge himself to organise a union, but that he would pledge himself to get a check-weighman; and Olson had laughed, and seemed quite content⁠—apparently assuming that it would come to the same thing. And now, it rather seemed that Olson had known what he was talking about. For Hal found his thoughts no longer troubled with fears of labour union domination and walking delegate tyranny; on the contrary, he became suddenly willing for the people of North Valley to have a union, and to be as tyrannical as they knew how! And in this change, though Hal had no idea of it, he was repeating an experience common among reformers; many of whom begin as mild and benevolent advocates of some obvious bit of justice, and under the operation of the jail-psychology are made into blazing and determined revolutionists. “Eternal spirit of the chainless mind,” says Byron. “Greatest in dungeons Liberty thou art!” + 

The poet goes on to add that “When thy sons to fetters are confined⁠—” then “Freedom’s fame finds wings on every wind.” And just as it was in Chillon, so it seemed to be in North Valley. Dawn came, and Hal stood at the window of his cell, and heard the whistle blow and saw the workers going to their tasks, the toil-bent, pallid faced creatures of the underworld, like a file of baboons in the half-light. He waved his hand to them, and they stopped and stared, and then waved back; he realised that every one of those men must be thinking about his imprisonment, and the reason for it⁠—and so the jail-psychology was being communicated to them. If any of them cherished distrust of unions, or doubt of the need of organisation in North Valley⁠—that distrust and that doubt were being dissipated! + 

—There was only one thing discouraging about the matter, as Hal thought it over. Why should the bosses have left him here in plain sight, when they might so easily have put him into an automobile, and whisked him down to Pedro before daylight? Was it a sign of the contempt they felt for their slaves? Did they count upon the sight of the prisoner in the window to produce fear instead of resentment? And might it not be that they understood their workers better than the would-be check-weighman? He recalled Mary Burke’s pessimism about them, and anxiety gnawed at his soul; and⁠—such is the operation of the jail-psychology⁠—he fought against this anxiety. He hated the company for its cynicism, he clenched his hands and set his teeth, desiring to teach the bosses a lesson, to prove to them that their workers were not slaves, but men! + 

XVII + 

Toward the middle of the morning, Hal heard footsteps in the corridor outside, and a man whom he did not know opened the barred door and set down a pitcher of water and a tin plate with a hunk of bread on it. When he started to leave, Hal spoke: “Just a minute, please.” + 

The other frowned at him. + 

“Can you give me any idea how long I am to stay in here?” + 

“I cannot,” said the man. + 

“If I’m to be locked up,” said Hal, “I’ve certainly a right to know what is the charge against me.” + 

“Go to blazes!” said the other, and slammed the door and went down the corridor. + 

Hal went to the window again, and passed the time watching the people who went by. Groups of ragged children gathered, looking up at him, grinning and making signs⁠—until someone appeared below and ordered them away. + 

As time passed, Hal became hungry. The taste of bread, eaten alone, becomes speedily monotonous, and the taste of water does not relieve it; nevertheless, Hal munched the bread, and drank the water, and wished for more. + 

The day dragged by; and late in the afternoon the keeper came again, with another hunk of bread and another pitcher of water. “Listen a moment,” said Hal, as the man was turning away. + 

“I got nothin’ to say to you,” said the other. + 

“I have something to say to you,” pleaded Hal. “I have read in a book⁠—I forget where, but it was written by some doctor⁠—that white bread does not contain the elements necessary to the sustaining of the human body.” + 

“Go on!” growled the jailer. “What yer givin’ us?” + 

“I mean,” explained Hal, “a diet of bread and water is not what I’d choose to live on.” + 

“What would yer choose?” + 

The tone suggested that the question was a rhetorical one; but Hal took it in good faith. “If I could have some beefsteak and mashed potatoes⁠—” + 

The door of the cell closed with a slam whose echoes drowned out the rest of that imaginary menu. And so once more Hal sat on the hard bench, and munched his hunk of bread, and thought jail-thoughts. + 

When the quitting-whistle blew, he stood at the window, and saw the groups of his friends once again, and got their covert signals of encouragement. Then darkness fell, and another long vigil began. + 

It was late; Hal had no means of telling how late, save that all the lights in the camps were out. He made up his mind that he was in for the night, and had settled himself on the floor with his arm for a pillow, and had dozed off to sleep, when suddenly there came a scraping sound against the bars of his window. He sat up with a start, and heard another sound, unmistakably the rustling of paper. He sprang to the window, where by the faint light of the stars he could make out something dangling. He caught at it; it seemed to be an ordinary notebook, such as stenographers use, tied on the end of a pole. + 

Hal looked out, but could see no one. He caught hold of the pole and jerked it, as a signal; and then he heard a whisper which he recognised instantly as Rovetta’s. “Hello! Listen. Write your name hundred times in book. I come back. Understand?” + 

The command was a sufficiently puzzling one, but Hal realised that this was no time for explanations. He answered, “Yes,” and broke the string and took the notebook. There was a pencil attached, with a piece of cloth wrapped round the point to protect it. + 

The pole was withdrawn, and Hal sat on the bench, and began to write, three or four times on a page, “Joe Smith⁠—Joe Smith⁠—Joe Smith.” It is not hard to write “Joe Smith,” even in darkness, and so, while his hand moved, Hal’s mind was busy with this mystery. It was fairly to be assumed that his committee did not want his autograph to distribute for a souvenir; they must want it for some vital purpose, to meet some new move of the bosses. The answer to this riddle was not slow in coming: having failed in their effort to find money on him, the bosses had framed up a letter, which they were exhibiting as having been written by the would-be check-weigh-man. His friends wanted his signature to disprove the authenticity of the letter. + 

Hal wrote a free and rapid hand, with a generous flourish; he felt sure it would be different from Alec Stone’s idea of a working-boy’s scrawl. His pencil flew on and on⁠—“Joe Smith⁠—Joe Smith⁠—” page after page, until he was sure that he had written a signature for every miner in the camp, and was beginning on the buddies. Then, hearing a whistle outside, he stopped and sprang to the window. + 

“Throw it!” whispered a voice; and Hal threw it. He saw a form vanish up the street, after which all was quiet again. He listened for a while, to see if he had roused his jailer; then he lay down on the bench⁠—and thought more jail-thoughts! + 

XVIII + 

Morning came, and the mine-whistle blew, and Hal stood at the window again. This time he noticed that some of the miners on their way to work had little strips of paper in their hands, which strips they waved conspicuously for him to see. Old Mike Sikoria came along, having a whole bunch of strips in his hands, which he was distributing to all who would take them. Doubtless he had been warned to proceed secretly, but the excitement of the occasion had been too much for him; he capered about like a young spring lamb, and waved the strips at Hal in plain sight of all the world. + 

Such indiscreet behaviour met the return it invited. As Hal watched, he saw a stocky figure come striding round the corner, confronting the startled old Slovak. It was Bud Adams, the mine-guard, and his hard fists were clenched, and his whole body gathered for a blow. Mike saw him, and was as if suddenly struck with paralysis; his toil-bent shoulders sunk together, and his hands fell to his sides⁠—his fingers opening, and his precious strips of paper fluttering to the ground. Mike stared at Bud like a fascinated rabbit, making no move to protect himself. + 

Hal clutched the bars, with an impulse to leap to his friend’s defence. But the expected blow did not fall; the mine-guard contented himself with glaring ferociously, and giving an order to the old man. Mike stooped and picked up the papers⁠—the process taking him some time, as he was unable or unwilling to take his eyes off the mine-guard’s. When he got them all in his hands, there came another order, and he gave them up to Bud. After which he fell back a step, and the other followed, his fists still clenched, and a blow seeming about to leap from him every moment. Mike receded another step, and then another⁠—so the two of them backed out of sight around the corner. Men who had been witnesses of this little drama turned and slunk off, and Hal was given no clue as to its outcome. + 

A couple of hours afterwards, Hal’s jailer came up, this time without any bread and water. He opened the door and commanded the prisoner to “come along.” Hal went downstairs, and entered Jeff Cotton’s office. + 

The camp-marshal sat at his desk with a cigar between his teeth. He was writing, and he went on writing until the jailer had gone out and closed the door. Then he turned his revolving chair and crossed his legs, leaning back and looking at the young miner in his dirty blue overalls, his hair tousled and his face pale from his period of confinement. The camp-marshal’s aristocratic face wore a smile. “Well, young fellow,” said he, “you’ve been having a lot of fun in this camp.” + 

“Pretty fair, thank you,” answered Hal. + 

“Beat us out all along the line, hey?” Then, after a pause, “Now, tell me, what do you think you’re going to get out of it?” + 

“That’s what Alec Stone asked me,” replied Hal. “I don’t think it would do much good to explain. I doubt if you believe in altruism any more than Stone does.” + 

The camp-marshal took his cigar from his mouth, and flicked off the ashes. His face became serious, and there was a silence, while he studied Hal. “You a union organiser?” he asked, at last. + 

“No,” said Hal. + 

“You’re an educated man; you’re no labourer, that I know. Who’s paying you?” + 

“There you are! You don’t believe in altruism.” + 

The other blew a ring of smoke across the room. “Just want to put the company in the hole, hey? Some kind of agitator?” + 

“I am a miner who wants to be a check-weighman.” + 

“Socialist?” + 

“That depends upon developments here.” + 

“Well,” said the marshal, “you’re an intelligent chap, that I can see. So I’ll lay my hand on the table and you can study it. You’re not going to serve as check-weighman in North Valley, nor any other place that the ‘G.F.C.’ has anything to do with. Nor are you going to have the satisfaction of putting the company in a hole. We’re not even going to beat you up and make a martyr of you. I was tempted to do that the other night, but I changed my mind.” + 

“You might change the bruises on my arm,” suggested Hal, in a pleasant voice. + 

“We’re going to offer you the choice of two things,” continued the marshal, without heeding this mild sarcasm. “Either you will sign a paper admitting that you took the twenty-five dollars from Alec Stone, in which case we will fire you and call it square; or else we will prove that you took it, in which case we will send you to the pen for five or ten years. Do you get that?” + 

Now when Hal had applied for the job of check-weighman, he had been expecting to be thrown out of the camp, and had intended to go, counting his education complete. But here, as he sat and gazed into the marshal’s menacing eyes, he decided suddenly that he did not want to leave North Valley. He wanted to stay and take the measure of this gigantic “burglar,” the General Fuel Company. + 

“That’s a serious threat, Mr. Cotton,” he remarked. “Do you often do things like that?” + 

“We do them when we have to,” was the reply. + 

“Well, it’s a novel proposition. Tell me more about it. What will the charge be?” + 

“I’m not sure about that⁠—we’ll put it up to our lawyers. Maybe they’ll call it conspiracy, maybe blackmail. They’ll make it whatever carries a long enough sentence.” + 

“And before I enter my plea, would you mind letting me see the letter I’m supposed to have written.” + 

“Oh, you’ve heard about the letter, have you?” said the camp-marshal, lifting his eyebrows in mild surprise. He took from his desk a sheet of paper and handed it to Hal, who read: + 

“Dere mister Stone, You don’t need worry about the check-wayman. Pay me twenty five dollars, and I will fix it right. Yours try, Joe Smith.” + 

Having taken in the words of the letter, Hal examined the paper, and perceived that his enemies had taken the trouble, not merely to forge a letter in his name, but to have it photographed, to have a cut made of the photograph, and to have it printed. Beyond doubt they had distributed it broadcast in the camp. And all this in a few hours! It was as Olson had said⁠—a regular system to keep the men bedevilled. + 

XIX + 

Hal took a minute or so to ponder the situation. “Mr. Cotton,” he said, at last. “I know how to spell better than that. Also my handwriting is a bit more fluent.” + 

There was a trace of a smile about the marshal’s cruel lips. “I know,” he replied. “I’ve not failed to compare them.” + 

“You have a good secret-service department!” said Hal. + 

“Before you get through, young fellow, you’ll discover that our legal department is equally efficient.” + 

“Well,” said Hal, “they’ll need to be; for I don’t see how you can get round the fact that I’m a check-weighman, chosen according to the law, and with a group of the men behind me.” + 

“If that’s what you’re counting on,” retorted Cotton, “you may as well forget it. You’ve got no group any more.” + 

“Oh! You’ve got rid of them?” + 

“We’ve got rid of the ringleaders.” + 

“Of whom?” + 

“That old billy-goat, Sikoria, for one.” + 

“You’ve shipped him?” + 

“We have.” + 

“I saw the beginning of that. Where have you sent him?” + 

“That,” smiled the marshal, “is a job for your secret-service department!” + 

“And who else?” + 

“John Edstrom has gone down to bury his wife. It’s not the first time that dough-faced old preacher has made trouble for us, but it’ll be the last. You’ll find him in Pedro⁠—probably in the poorhouse.” + 

“No,” responded Hal, quickly⁠—and there came just a touch of elation in his voice⁠—“he won’t have to go to the poorhouse at once. You see, I’ve just sent twenty-five dollars to him.” + 

The camp-marshal frowned. “Really!” Then, after a pause, “You did have that money on you! I thought that lousy Greek had got away with it!” + 

“No. Your knave was honest. But so was I. I knew Edstrom had been getting short weight for years, so he was the one person with any right to the money.” + 

This story was untrue, of course; the money was still buried in Edstrom’s cabin. But Hal meant for the old miner to have it in the end, and meantime he wanted to throw Cotton off the track. + 

“A clever trick, young man!” said the marshal. “But you’ll repent it before you’re through. It only makes me more determined to put you where you can’t do us any harm.” + 

“You mean in the pen? You understand, of course, it will mean a jury trial. You can get a jury to do what you want?” + 

“They tell me you’ve been taking an interest in politics in Pedro County. Haven’t you looked into our jury-system?” + 

“No, I haven’t got that far.” + 

The marshal began blowing rings of smoke again. + 

“Well, there are some three hundred men on our jury-list, and we know them all. You’ll find yourself facing a box with Jake Predovich as foreman, three company-clerks, two of Alf Raymond’s saloon-keepers, a ranchman with a mortgage held by the company-bank, and five Mexicans who have no idea what it’s all about, but would stick a knife into your back for a drink of whiskey. The District Attorney is a politician who favours the miners in his speeches, and favours us in his acts; while Judge Denton, of the district court, is the law partner of Vagleman, our chief-counsel. Do you get all that?” + 

“Yes,” said Hal. “I’ve heard of the ‘Empire of Raymond’; I’m interested to see the machinery. You’re quite open about it!” + 

“Well,” replied the marshal, “I want you to know what you’re up against. We didn’t start this fight, and we’re perfectly willing to end it without trouble. All we ask is that you make amends for the mischief you’ve done us.” + 

“By ‘making amends,’ you mean I’m to disgrace myself⁠—to tell the men I’m a traitor?” + 

“Precisely,” said the marshal. + 

“I think I’ll have a seat while I consider the matter,” said Hal; and he took a chair, and stretched out his legs, and made himself elaborately comfortable. “That bench upstairs is frightfully hard,” said he, and smiled mockingly upon the camp-marshal. + 

XX + 

When this conversation was continued, it was upon a new and unexpected line. “Cotton,” remarked the prisoner, “I perceive that you are a man of education. It occurs to me that once upon a time you must have been what the world calls a gentleman.” + 

The blood started into the camp-marshal’s face. “You go to hell!” said he. + 

“I did not intend to ask questions,” continued Hal. “I can well understand that you mightn’t care to answer them. My point is that, being an ex-gentleman, you may appreciate certain aspects of this case which would be beyond the understanding of a nigger-driver like Stone, or an efficiency expert like Cartwright. One gentleman can recognise another, even in a miner’s costume. Isn’t that so?” + 

Hal paused for an answer, and the marshal gave him a wary look. “I suppose so,” he said. + 

“Well, to begin with, one gentleman does not smoke without inviting another to join him.” + 

The man gave another look. Hal thought he was going to consign him to hades once more; but instead he took a cigar from his vest-pocket and held it out. + 

“No, thank you,” said Hal, quietly. “I do not smoke. But I like to be invited.” + 

There was a pause, while the two men measured each other. + 

“Now, Cotton,” began the prisoner, “you pictured the scene at my trial. Let me carry on the story for you. You have your case all framed up, your hand-picked jury in the box, and your hand-picked judge on the bench, your hand-picked prosecuting-attorney putting through the job; you are ready to send your victim to prison, for an example to the rest of your employees. But suppose that, at the climax of the proceedings, you should make the discovery that your victim is a person who cannot be sent to prison?” + 

“Cannot be sent to prison?” repeated the other. His tone was thoughtful. “You’ll have to explain.” + 

“Surely not to a man of your intelligence! Don’t you know, Cotton, there are people who cannot be sent to prison?” + 

The camp-marshal smoked his cigar for a bit. “There are some in this county,” said he. “But I thought I knew them all.” + 

“Well,” said Hal, “has it never occurred to you that there might be some in this state?” + 

There followed a long silence. The two men were gazing into each other’s eyes; and the more they gazed, the more plainly Hal read uncertainty in the face of the marshal. + 

“Think how embarrassing it would be!” he continued. “You have your drama all staged⁠—as you did the night before last⁠—only on a larger stage, before a more important audience; and at the dénouement you find that, instead of vindicating yourself before the workers in North Valley, you have convicted yourself before the public of the state. You have shown the whole community that you are lawbreakers; worse than that⁠—you have shown that you are jackasses!” + 

This time the camp-marshal gazed so long that his cigar went out. And meantime Hal was lounging in his chair, smiling at him strangely. It was as if a transformation was taking place before the marshal’s eyes; the miner’s “jumpers” fell away from Hal’s figure, and there was a suit of evening-clothes in their place! + 

“Who the devil are you?” cried the man. + 

“Well now!” laughed Hal. “You boast of the efficiency of your secret service department! Put them at work upon this problem. A young man, age twenty-one, height five feet ten inches, weight one hundred and fifty-two pounds, eyes brown, hair chestnut and rather wavy, manner genial, a favourite with the ladies⁠—at least that’s what the society notes say⁠—missing since early in June, supposed to be hunting mountain-goats in Mexico. As you know, Cotton, there’s only one city in the state that has any ‘society,’ and in that city there are only twenty-five or thirty families that count. For a secret service department like that of the ‘G.F.C.,’ that is really too easy.” + 

Again there was a silence, until Hal broke it. “Your distress is a tribute to your insight. The company is lucky in the fact that one of its camp-marshals happens to be an ex-gentleman.” + 

Again the other flushed. “Well, by God!” he said, half to himself; and then, making a last effort to hold his bluff⁠—“You’re kidding me!” + 

“ ‘Kidding,’ as you call it, is one of the favourite occupations of society, Cotton. A good part of our intercourse consists of it⁠—at least among the younger set.” + 

Suddenly the marshal rose. “Say,” he demanded, “would you mind going back upstairs for a few minutes?” + 

Hal could not restrain his laughter at this. “I should mind it very much,” he said. “I have been on a bread and water diet for thirty-six hours, and I should like very much to get out and have a breath of fresh air.” + 

“But,” said the other, lamely, “I’ve got to send you up there.” + 

“That’s another matter,” replied Hal. “If you send me, I’ll go, but it’s your lookout. You’ve kept me here without legal authority, with no charge against me, and without giving me an opportunity to see counsel. Unless I’m very much mistaken, you are liable criminally for that, and the company is liable civilly. That is your own affair, of course. I only want to make clear my position⁠—when you ask me would I mind stepping upstairs, I, answer that I would mind very much indeed.” + 

The camp-marshal stood for a bit, chewing nervously on his extinct cigar. Then he went to the door. “Hey, Gus!” he called. Hal’s jailer appeared, and Cotton whispered to him, and he went away again. “I’m telling him to get you some food, and you can sit and eat it here. Will that suit you better?” + 

“It depends,” said Hal, making the most of the situation. “Are you inviting me as your prisoner, or as your guest?” + 

“Oh, come off!” said the other. + 

“But I have to know my legal status. It will be of importance to my lawyers.” + 

“Be my guest,” said the camp-marshal. + 

“But when a guest has eaten, he is free to go out, if he wishes to!” + 

“I will let you know about that before you get through.” + 

“Well, be quick. I’m a rapid eater.” + 

“You’ll promise you won’t go away before that?” + 

“If I do,” was Hal’s laughing reply, “it will be only to my place of business. You can look for me at the tipple, Cotton!” + 

XXI + 

The marshal went out, and a few moments later the jailer came back, with a meal which presented a surprising contrast to the ones he had previously served. There was a tray containing cold ham, a couple of soft boiled eggs, some potato salad, and a cup of coffee with rolls and butter. + 

“Well, well!” said Hal, condescendingly. “That’s even nicer than beefsteak and mashed potatoes!” He sat and watched, not offering to help, while the other made room for the tray on the table in front of him. Then the man stalked out, and Hal began to eat. + 

Before he had finished, the camp-marshal returned. He seated himself in his revolving chair, and appeared to be meditative. Between bites, Hal would look up and smile at him. + 

“Cotton,” said he, “you know there is no more certain test of breeding than table-manners. You will observe that I have not tucked my napkin in my neck, as Alec Stone would have done.” + 

“I’m getting you,” replied the marshal. + 

Hal set his knife and fork side by side on his plate. “Your man has overlooked the finger-bowl,” he remarked. “However, don’t bother. You might ring for him now, and let him take the tray.” + 

The camp-marshal used his voice for a bell, and the jailer came. “Unfortunately,” said Hal, “when your people were searching me, night before last, they dropped my purse, so I have no tip for the waiter.” + 

The “waiter” glared at Hal as if he would like to bite him; but the camp-marshal grinned. “Clear out, Gus, and shut the door,” said he. + 

Then Hal stretched his legs and made himself comfortable again. “I must say I like being your guest better than being your prisoner!” + 

There was a pause. + 

“I’ve been talking it over with Mr. Cartwright,” began the marshal. “I’ve got no way of telling how much of this is bluff that you’ve been giving me, but it’s evident enough that you’re no miner. You may be some newfangled kind of agitator, but I’m damned if I ever saw an agitator that had tea-party manners. I suppose you’ve been brought up to money; but if that’s so, why you want to do this kind of thing is more than I can imagine.” + 

“Tell me, Cotton,” said Hal, “did you never hear of ennui?” + 

“Yes,” replied the other, “but aren’t you rather young to be troubled with that complaint?” + 

“Suppose I’ve seen others suffering from it, and wanted to try a different way of living from theirs?” + 

“If you’re what you say, you ought to be still in college.” + 

“I go back for my senior year this fall.” + 

“What college?” + 

“You doubt me still, I see!” said Hal, and smiled. Then, unexpectedly, with a spirit which only moonlit campuses and privilege could beget, he chanted: + 

“Old King Coal was a merry old soul, + 

And a merry old soul was he; + 

He made him a college, all full of knowledge⁠— + 

Hurrah for you and me!” + 

“What college is that?” asked the marshal. And Hal sang again: + 

“Oh, Liza-Ann, come out with me, + 

The moon is a-shinin’ in the monkey-puzzle tree! + 

Oh, Liza-Ann, I have began + 

To sing you the song of Harrigan!” + 

“Well, well!” commented the marshal, when the concert was over. “Are there many more like you at Harrigan?” + 

“A little group⁠—enough to leaven the lump.” + 

“And this is your idea of a vacation?” + 

“No, it isn’t a vacation; it’s a summer-course in practical sociology.” + 

“Oh, I see!” said the marshal; and he smiled in spite of himself. + 

“All last year we let the professors of political economy hand out their theories to us. But somehow the theories didn’t seem to correspond with the facts. I said to myself, ‘I’ve got to check them up.’ You know the phrases, perhaps⁠—individualism, laissez faire, freedom of contract, the right of every man to work for whom he pleases. And here you see how the theories work out⁠—a camp-marshal with a cruel smile on his face and a gun on his hip, breaking the laws faster than a governor can sign them.” + 

The camp-marshal decided suddenly that he had had enough of this “tea-party.” He rose to his feet to cut matters short. “If you don’t mind, young man,” said he, “we’ll get down to business!” + 

XXII + 

He took a turn about the room, then he came and stopped in front of Hal. He stood with his hands thrust into his pockets, with a certain jaunty grace that was out of keeping with his occupation. He was a handsome devil, Hal thought⁠—in spite of his dangerous mouth, and the marks of dissipation on him. + 

“Young man,” he began, with another effort at geniality. “I don’t know who you are, but you’re wide awake; you’ve got your nerve with you, and I admire you. So I’m willing to call the thing off, and let you go back and finish that course at college.” + 

Hal had been studying the other’s careful smile. “Cotton,” he said, at last, “let me get the proposition clear. I don’t have to say I took that money?” + 

“No, we’ll let you off from that.” + 

“And you won’t send me to the pen?” + 

“No. I never meant to do that, of course. I was only trying to bluff you. All I ask is that you clear out, and give our people a chance to forget.” + 

“But what’s there in that for me, Cotton? If I had wanted to run away, I could have done it any time during the last eight or ten weeks.” + 

“Yes, of course, but now it’s different. Now it’s a matter of my consideration.” + 

“Cut out the consideration!” exclaimed Hal. “You want to get rid of me, and you’d like to do it without trouble. But you can’t⁠—so forget it.” + 

The other was staring, puzzled. “You mean you expect to stay here?” + 

“I mean just that.” + 

“Young man, I’ve had enough of this! I’ve got no more time to play. I don’t care who you are, I don’t care about your threats. I’m the marshal of this camp, and I have the job of keeping order in it. I say you’re going to get out!” + 

“But, Cotton,” said Hal, “this is an incorporated town! I have a right to walk on the streets⁠—exactly as much right as you.” + 

“I’m not going to waste time arguing. I’m going to put you into an automobile and take you down to Pedro!” + 

“And suppose I go to the District Attorney and demand that he prosecute you?” + 

“He’ll laugh at you.” + 

“And suppose I go to the Governor of the state?” + 

“He’ll laugh still louder.” + 

“All right, Cotton; maybe you know what you’re doing; but I wonder⁠—I wonder just how sure you feel. Has it never occurred to you that your superiors might not care to have you take these high-handed steps?” + 

“My superiors? Who do you mean?” + 

“There’s one man in the state you must respect⁠—even though you despise the District Attorney and the Governor. That is Peter Harrigan.” + 

“Peter Harrigan?” echoed the other; and then he burst into a laugh. “Well, you are a merry lad!” + 

Hal continued to study him, unmoved. “I wonder if you’re sure! He’ll stand for everything you’ve done.” + 

“He will!” said the other. + 

“For the way you treat the workers? He knows you are giving short weights.” + 

“Oh hell!” said the other. “Where do you suppose he got the money for your college?” + 

There was a pause; at last the marshal asked, defiantly, “Have you got what you want?” + 

“Yes,” replied Hal. “Of course, I thought it all along, but it’s hard to convince other people. Old Peter’s not like most of these Western wolves, you know; he’s a pious high-church man.” + 

The marshal smiled grimly. “So long as there are sheep,” said he, “there’ll be wolves in sheep’s clothing.” + 

“I see,” said Hal. “And you leave them to feed on the lambs!” + 

“If any lamb is silly enough to be fooled by that old worn-out skin,” remarked the marshal, “it deserves to be eaten.” + 

Hal was studying the cynical face in front of him. “Cotton,” he said, “the shepherds are asleep; but the watchdogs are barking. Haven’t you heard them?” + 

“I hadn’t noticed.” + 

“They are barking, barking! They are going to wake the shepherds! They are going to save the sheep!” + 

“Religion don’t interest me,” said the other, looking bored; “your kind any more than Old Peter’s.” + 

And suddenly Hal rose to his feet. “Cotton,” said he, “my place is with the flock! I’m going back to my job at the tipple!” And he started towards the door. + 

XXIII + 

Jeff Cotton sprang forward. “Stop!” he cried. + 

But Hal did not stop. + 

“See here, young man!” cried the marshal. “Don’t carry this joke too far!” And he sprang to the door, just ahead of his prisoner. His hand moved toward his hip. + 

“Draw your gun, Cotton,” said Hal; and, as the marshal obeyed, “Now I will stop. If I obey you in future, it will be at the point of your revolver.” + 

The marshal’s mouth was dangerous-looking. “You may find that in this country there’s not so much between the drawing of a gun and the firing of it!” + 

“I’ve explained my attitude,” replied Hal. “What are your orders?” + 

“Come back and sit in this chair.” + 

So Hal sat, and the marshal went to his desk, and took up the telephone. “Number seven,” he said, and waited a moment. “That you, Tom? Bring the car right away.” + 

He hung up the receiver, and there followed a silence; finally Hal inquired, “I’m going to Pedro?” + 

There was no reply. + 

“I see I’ve got on your nerves,” said Hal. “But I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that you deprived me of my money last night. Also, I’ve an account with the company, some money coming to me for my work? What about that?” + 

The marshal took up the receiver and gave another number. “Hello, Simpson. This is Cotton. Will you figure out the time of Joe Smith, buddy in Number Two, and send over the cash. Get his account at the store; and be quick, we’re waiting for it. He’s going out in a hurry.” Again he hung up the receiver. + 

“Tell me,” said Hal, “did you take that trouble for Mike Sikoria?” + 

There was silence. + 

“Let me suggest that when you get my time, you give me part of it in scrip. I want it for a souvenir.” + 

Still there was silence. + 

“You know,” persisted the prisoner, tormentingly, “there’s a law against paying wages in scrip.” + 

The marshal was goaded to speech. “We don’t pay in scrip.” + 

“But you do, man! You know you do!” + 

“We give it when they ask their money ahead.” + 

“The law requires you to pay them twice a month, and you don’t do it. You pay them once a month, and meantime, if they need money, you give them this imitation money!” + 

“Well, if it satisfies them, where’s your kick?” + 

“If it doesn’t satisfy them, you put them on the train and ship them out?” + 

The marshal sat in silence, tapping impatiently with his fingers on the desk. + 

“Cotton,” Hal began, again, “I’m out for education, and there’s something I’d like you to explain to me⁠—a problem in human psychology. When a man puts through a deal like this, what does he tell himself about it?” + 

“Young man,” said the marshal, “if you’ll pardon me, you are getting to be a bore.” + 

“Oh, but we’ve got an automobile ride before us! Surely we can’t sit in silence all the way!” After a moment he added, in a coaxing tone, “I really want to learn, you know. You might be able to win me over.” + 

“No!” said Cotton, promptly. “I’ll not go in for anything like that!” + 

“But why not?” + 

“Because, I’m no match for you in long-windedness. I’ve heard you agitators before, you’re all alike: you think the world is run by talk⁠—but it isn’t.” + 

Hal had come to realise that he was not getting anywhere in his duel with the camp-marshal. He had made every effort to get somewhere; he had argued, threatened, bluffed, he had even sung songs for the marshal! But the marshal was going to ship him out, that was all there was to it. + 

Hal had gone on with the quarrel, simply because he had to wait for the automobile, and because he had endured indignities and had to vent his anger and disappointment. But now he stopped quarrelling suddenly. His attention was caught by the marshal’s words, “You think the world is run by talk!” Those were the words Hal’s brother always used! And also, the marshal had said, “You agitators!” For years it had been one of the taunts Hal had heard from his brother, “You will turn into one of these agitators!” Hal had answered, with boyish obstinacy, “I don’t care if I do!” And now, here the marshal was calling him an agitator, seriously, without an apology, without the license of blood relationship. He repeated the words, “That’s what gets me about you agitators⁠—you come in here trying to stir these people up⁠—” + 

So that was the way Hal seemed to the “G.F.C.”! He had come here intending to be a spectator, to stand on the deck of the steamer and look down into the ocean of social misery. He had considered every step so carefully before he took it! He had merely tried to be a check-weighman, nothing more! He had told Tom Olson he would not go in for unionism; he had had a distrust of union organisers, of agitators of all sorts⁠—blind, irresponsible persons who went about stirring up dangerous passions. He had come to admire Tom Olson⁠—but that had only partly removed his prejudices; Olson was only one agitator, not the whole lot of them! + 

But all his consideration for the company had counted for nothing; likewise all his efforts to convince the marshal that he was a leisure-class person. In spite of all Hal’s “tea-party manners,” the marshal had said, “You agitators!” What was he judging by, Hal wondered. Had he, Hal Warner, come to look like one of these blind, irresponsible persons? It was time that he took stock of himself! + 

Had two months of “dirty work” in the bowels of the earth changed him so? The idea was bound to be disconcerting to one who had been a favourite of the ladies! Did he talk like it?⁠—he who had been “kissing the Blarney-stone!” The marshal had said he was “long-winded!” Well, to be sure, he had talked a lot; but what could the man expect⁠—having shut him up in jail for two nights and a day, with only his grievances to brood over! Was that the way real agitators were made⁠—being shut up with grievances to brood over? + 

Hal recalled his broodings in the jail. He had been embittered; he had not cared whether North Valley was dominated by labour unions. But that had all been a mood, the same as his answer to his brother; that was jail psychology, a part of his summer course in practical sociology. He had put it aside; but apparently it had made a deeper impression upon him than he had realised. It had changed his physical aspect! It had made him look and talk like an agitator! It had made him “irresponsible,” “blind!” + 

Yes, that was it! All this dirt, ignorance, disease, this knavery and oppression, this maiming of men in body and soul in the coal-camps of America⁠—all this did not exist⁠—it was the hallucination of an “irresponsible” brain! There was the evidence of Hal’s brother and the camp-marshal to prove it; there was the evidence of the whole world to prove it! The camp-marshal and his brother and the whole world could not be “blind!” And if you talked to them about these conditions, they shrugged their shoulders, they called you a “dreamer,” a “crank,” they said you were “off your trolley”; or else they became angry and bitter, they called you names; they said, “You agitators!” + 

XXIV + 

The camp-marshal of North Valley had been “agitated” to such an extent that he could not stay in his chair. All the harassments of his troubled career had come pouring into his mind. He had begun pacing the floor, and was talking away, regardless of whether Hal listened or not. + 

“A campful of lousy wops! They can’t understand any civilised language, they’ve only one idea in the world⁠—to shirk every lick of work they can, to fill up their cars with slate and rock and blame it on some other fellow, and go off to fill themselves with booze. They won’t work fair, they won’t fight fair⁠—they fight with a knife in the back! And you agitators with your sympathy for them⁠—why the hell do they come to this country, unless they like it better than their own?” + 

Hal had heard this question before; but they had to wait for the automobile⁠—and being sure that he was an agitator now, he would make all the trouble he could! “The reason is obvious enough,” he said. “Isn’t it true that the ‘G.F.C.’ employs agents abroad to tell them of the wonderful pay they get in America?” + 

“Well, they get it, don’t they? Three times what they ever got at home!” + 

“Yes, but it doesn’t do them any good. There’s another fact which the ‘G.F.C.’ doesn’t mention⁠—that the cost of living is even higher than the wages. Then, too, they’re led to think of America as a land of liberty; they come, hoping for a better chance for themselves and their children; but they find a camp-marshal who’s off in his geography⁠—who thinks the Rocky Mountains are somewhere in Russia!” + 

“I know that line of talk!” exclaimed the other. “I learned to wave the starry flag when I was a kid. But I tell you, you’ve got to get coal mined, and it isn’t the same thing as running a Fourth of July celebration. Some church people make a law they shan’t work on Sunday⁠—and what comes of that? They have thirty-six hours to get soused in, and so they can’t work on Monday!” + 

“Surely there’s a remedy, Cotton! Suppose the company refused to rent buildings to saloon-keepers?” + 

“Good God! You think we haven’t tried it? They go down to Pedro for the stuff, and bring back all they can carry⁠—inside them and out. And if we stop that⁠—then our hands move to some other camps, where they can spend their money as they please. No, young man, when you have such cattle, you have to drive them! And it takes a strong hand to do it⁠—a man like Peter Harrigan. If there’s to be any coal, if industry’s to go on, if there’s to be any progress⁠—” + 

“We have that in our song!” laughed Hal, breaking into the camp-marshal’s discourse⁠— + 

“He keeps them a-roll, that merry old soul⁠— + 

The wheels of industree; + 

A-roll and a-roll, for his pipe and his bowl + 

And his college facultee!” + 

“Yes,” growled the marshal. “It’s easy enough for you smart young chaps to make verses, while you’re living at ease on the old man’s bounty. But that don’t answer any argument. Are you college boys ready to take over his job? Or these Democrat politicians that come in here, talking fool-talk about liberty, making labour laws for these wops⁠—” + 

“I begin to understand,” said Hal. “You object to the politicians who pass the laws, you doubt their motives⁠—and so you refuse to obey. But why didn’t you tell me sooner you were an anarchist?” + 

“Anarchist?” cried the marshal. “Me an anarchist?” + 

“That’s what an anarchist is, isn’t it?” + 

“Good God! If that isn’t the limit! You come here, stirring up the men⁠—a union agitator, or whatever you are⁠—and you know that the first idea of these people, when they do break loose, is to put dynamite in the shafts and set fire to the buildings!” + 

“Do they do that?” There was surprise in Hal’s tone. + 

“Haven’t you read what they did in the last big strike? That dough-faced old preacher, John Edstrom, could tell you. He was one of the bunch.” + 

“No,” said Hal, “you’re mistaken. Edstrom has a different philosophy. But others did, I’ve no doubt. And since I’ve been here, I can understand their point of view entirely. When they set fire to the buildings, it was because they thought you and Alec Stone might be inside.” + 

The marshal did not smile. + 

“They want to destroy the properties,” continued Hal, “because that’s the only way they can think of to punish the tyranny and greed of the owners. But, Cotton, suppose someone were to put a new idea into their heads; suppose someone were to say to them, ‘Don’t destroy the properties⁠—take them!’ ” + 

The other stared. “Take them! So that’s your idea of morality!” + 

“It would be more moral than the method by which Peter got them in the beginning.” + 

“What method is that?” demanded the marshal, with some appearance of indignation. “He paid the market-price for them, didn’t he?” + 

“He paid the market-price for politicians. Up in Western City I happen to know a lady who was a school-commissioner when he was buying school-lands from the state⁠—lands that were known to contain coal. He was paying three dollars an acre, and everybody knew they were worth three thousand.” + 

“Well,” said Cotton, “if you don’t buy the politicians, you wake up some fine morning and find that somebody else has bought them. If you have property, you have to protect it.” + 

“Cotton,” said Hal, “you sell Old Peter your time⁠—but surely you might keep part of your brains! Enough to look at your monthly paycheck and realise that you too are a wage-slave, not much better than the miners you despise.” + 

The other smiled. “My check might be bigger, I admit; but I’ve figured over it, and I think I have an easier time than you agitators. I’m top-dog, and I expect to stay on top.” + 

“Well, Cotton, on that view of life, I don’t wonder you get drunk now and then. A dogfight, with no faith or humanity anywhere! Don’t think I’m sneering at you⁠—I’m talking out of my heart to you. I’m not so young, nor such a fool, that I haven’t had the dogfight aspect of things brought to my attention. But there’s something in a fellow that insists he isn’t all dog; he has at least a possibility of something better. Take these poor underdogs sweating inside the mountain, risking their lives every hour of the day and night to provide you and me with coal to keep us warm⁠—to ‘keep the wheels of industry a-roll’⁠—” + 

XXV + 

These were the last words Hal spoke. They were obvious enough words, yet when he looked back upon the coincidence, it seemed to him a singular one. For while he was sitting there chatting, it happened that the poor underdogs inside the mountain were in the midst of one of those experiences which make the romance and terror of coal-mining. One of the boys who were employed underground, in violation of the child labour law, was in the act of bungling his task. He was a “spragger,” whose duty it was to thrust a stick into the wheel of a loaded car to hold it; and he was a little chap, and the car was in motion when he made the attempt. It knocked him against the wall⁠—and so there was a load of coal rolling down grade, pursued too late by half a dozen men. Gathering momentum, it whirled round a curve and flew from the track, crashing into timbers and knocking them loose. With the timbers came a shower of coal-dust, accumulated for decades in these old workings; and at the same time came an electric light wire, which, as it touched the car, produced a spark. + 

And so it was that Hal, chatting with the marshal, suddenly felt, rather than heard, a deafening roar; he felt the air about him turn into a living thing which struck him a mighty blow, hurling him flat upon the floor. The windows of the room crashed inward upon him in a shower of glass, and the plaster of the ceiling came down on his head in another shower. + 

When he raised himself, half stunned, he saw the marshal, also on the floor; these two conversationalists stared at each other with horrified eyes. Even as they crouched, there came a crash above their heads, and half the ceiling of the room came toward them, with a great piece of timber sticking through. All about them were other crashes, as if the end of the world had come. + 

They struggled to their feet, and rushing to the door, flung it open, just as a jagged piece of timber shattered the sidewalk in front of them. They sprang back again, “Into the cellar!” cried the marshal, leading the way to the backstairs. + 

But before they had started down these stairs, they realised that the crashing had ceased. “What is it?” gasped Hal, as they stood. + 

“Mine-explosion,” said the other; and after a few seconds they ran to the door again. + 

The first thing they saw was a vast pillar of dust and smoke, rising into the sky above them. It spread before their dazed eyes, until it made night of everything about them. There was still a rain of lighter debris pattering down over the village; as they stared, and got their wits about them, remembering how things had looked before this, they realised that the shaft-house of Number One had disappeared. + 

“Blown up, by God!” cried the marshal; and the two ran out into the street, and looking up, saw that a portion of the wrecked building had fallen through the roof of the jail above their heads. + 

The rain of debris had now ceased, but there were clouds of dust which covered the two men black; the clouds grew worse, until they could hardly see their way at all. And with the darkness there fell silence, which, after the sound of the explosion and the crashing of debris, seemed the silence of death. + 

For a few moments Hal stood dazed. He saw a stream of men and boys pouring from the breaker; while from every street there appeared a stream of women; women old, women young⁠—leaving their cooking on the stove, their babies in the crib, with their older children screaming at their skirts, they gathered in swarms about the pit-mouth, which was like the steaming crater of a volcano. + 

Cartwright, the superintendent, appeared, running toward the fan-house. Cotton joined him, and Hal followed. The fan-house was a wreck, the giant fan lying on the ground a hundred feet away, its blades smashed. Hal was too inexperienced in mine-matters to get the full significance of this; but he saw the marshal and the superintendent stare blankly at each other, and heard the former’s exclamation, “That does for us!” Cartwright said not a word; but his thin lips were pressed together, and there was fear in his eyes. + 

Back to the smoking pit-mouth the two men hurried, with Hal following. Here were a hundred, two hundred women crowded, clamouring questions all at once. They swarmed about the marshal, the superintendent, the other bosses⁠—even about Hal, crying hysterically in Polish and Bohemian and Greek. When Hal shook his head, indicating that he did not understand them, they moaned in anguish, or shrieked aloud. Some continued to stare into the smoking pit-mouth; others covered the sight from their eyes, or sank down upon their knees, sobbing, praying with uplifted hands. + 

Little by little Hal began to realise the full horror of a mine-disaster. It was not noise and smoke and darkness, nor frantic, wailing women; it was not anything above ground, but what was below in the smoking black pit! It was men! Men whom Hal knew, whom he had worked with and joked with, whose smiles he had shared; whose daily life he had come to know! Scores, possibly hundreds of them, they were down here under his feet⁠—some dead, others injured, maimed. What would they do? What would those on the surface do for them? Hal tried to get to Cotton, to ask him questions; but the camp-marshal was surrounded, besieged. He was pushing the women back, exclaiming, “Go away! Go home!” + 

What? Go home? they cried. When their men were in the mine? They crowded about him closer, imploring, shrieking. + 

“Get out!” he kept exclaiming. “There’s nothing you can do! There’s nothing anybody can do yet! Go home! Go home!” He had to beat them back by force, to keep them from pushing one another into the pit-mouth. + 

Everywhere Hal looked were women in attitudes of grief: standing rigid, staring ahead of them as if in a trance; sitting down, rocking to and fro; on their knees with faces uplifted in prayer; clutching their terrified children about their skirts. He saw an Austrian woman, a pitiful, pale young thing with a ragged grey shawl about her head, stretching out her hands and crying: “Mein Mann! Mein Mann!” Presently she covered her face, and her voice died into a wail of despair: “O, mein Mann! O, mein Mann!” She turned away, staggering about like some creature that has received a death wound. Hal’s eyes followed her; her cry, repeated over and over incessantly, became the leitmotif of this symphony of horror. + 

He had read about mine-disasters in his morning newspaper; but here a mine-disaster became a thing of human flesh and blood. The unendurable part of it was the utter impotence of himself and of all the world. This impotence became clearer to him each moment⁠—from the exclamations of Cotton and of the men he questioned. It was monstrous, incredible⁠—but it was so! They must send for a new fan, they must wait for it to be brought in, they must set it up and get it into operation; they must wait for hours after that while smoke and gas were cleared out of the main passages of the mine; and until this had been done, there was nothing they could do⁠—absolutely nothing! The men inside the mine would stay. Those who had not been killed outright would make their way into the remoter chambers, and barricade themselves against the deadly “after damp.” They would wait, without food or water, with air of doubtful quality⁠—they would wait and wait, until the rescue-crew could get to them! + 

XXVI + 

At moments in the midst of this confusion, Hal found himself trying to recall who had worked in Number One, among the people he knew. He himself had been employed in Number Two, so he had naturally come to know more men in that mine. But he had known some from the other mine⁠—Old Rafferty for one, and Mary Burke’s father for another, and at least one of the members of his check-weighman group⁠—Zamierowski. Hal saw in a sudden vision the face of this patient little man, who smiled so good-naturedly while Americans were trying to say his name. And Old Rafferty, with all his little Rafferties, and his piteous efforts to keep the favour of his employers! And poor Patrick Burke, whom Hal had never seen sober; doubtless he was sober now, if he was still alive! + 

Then in the crowd Hal encountered Jerry Minetti, and learned that another man who had been down was Farenzena, the Italian whose “fanciulla” had played with him; and yet another was Judas Apostolikas⁠—having taken his thirty pieces of silver with him into the deathtrap! + 

People were making up lists, just as Hal was doing, by asking questions of others. These lists were subject to revision⁠—sometimes under dramatic circumstances. You saw a woman weeping, with her apron to her eyes; suddenly she would look up, give a piercing cry, and fling her arms about the neck of some man. As for Hal, he felt as if he were encountering a ghost when suddenly he recognised Patrick Burke, standing in the midst of a group of people. He went over and heard the old man’s story⁠—how there was a Dago fellow who had stolen his timbers, and he had come up to the surface for more; so his life had been saved, while the timber-thief was down there still⁠—a judgment of Providence upon mine-miscreants! + 

Presently Hal asked if Burke had been to tell his family. He had run home, he said, but there was nobody there. So Hal began pushing his way through the throngs, looking for Mary, or her sister Jennie, or her brother Tommie. He persisted in this search, although it occurred to him to wonder whether the family of a hopeless drunkard would appreciate the interposition of Providence in his behalf. + 

He encountered Olson, who had had a narrow escape, being employed as a surface-man near the hoist. All this was an old story to the organiser, who had worked in mines since he was eight years old, and had seen many kinds of disaster. He began to explain things to Hal, in a matter of fact way. The law required a certain number of openings to every mine, also an escape-way with ladders by which men could come out; but it cost good money to dig holes in the ground. + 

At this time the immediate cause of the explosion was unknown, but they could tell it was a “dust explosion” by the clouds of coke-dust, and no one who had been into the mine and seen its dry condition would doubt what they would find when they went down and traced out the “force” and its effects. They were supposed to do regular sprinkling, but in such matters the bosses used their own judgment. + 

Hal was only half listening to these explanations. The thing was too raw and too horrible to him. What difference did it make whose fault it was? The accident had happened, and the question was now how to meet the emergency! Underneath Olson’s sentences he heard the cry of men and boys being asphyxiated in dark dungeons⁠—he heard the wailing of women, like a surf beating on a distant shore, or the faint, persistent accompaniment of muted strings: “O, mein Mann! O, mein Mann!” + 

They came upon Jeff Cotton again. With half a dozen men to help him, he was pushing back the crowd from the pit-mouth, and stretching barbed wired to hold them back. He was none too gentle about it, Hal thought; but doubtless women are provoking when they are hysterical. He was answering their frenzied questions, “Yes, yes! We’re getting a new fan. We’re doing everything we can, I tell you. We’ll get them out. Go home and wait.” + 

But of course no one would go home. How could a woman sit in her house, or go about her ordinary tasks of cooking or washing, while her man might be suffering asphyxiation under the ground? The least she could do was to stand at the pit-mouth⁠—as near to him as she could get! Some of them stood motionless, hour after hour, while others wandered through the village streets, asking the same people, over and over again, if they had seen their loved ones. Several had turned up, like Patrick Burke; there seemed always a chance for one more. + 

XXVII + 

In the course of the afternoon Hal came upon Mary Burke on the street. She had long ago found her father, and seen him off to O’Callahan’s to celebrate the favours of Providence. Now Mary was concerned with a graver matter. Number Two Mine was in danger! The explosion in Number One had been so violent that the gearing of the fan of the other mine, nearly a mile up the canyon, had been thrown out of order. So the fan had stopped; and when someone had gone to Alec Stone, asking that he bring out the men, Stone had refused. “What do ye think he said?” cried Mary. “What do ye think? ‘Damn the men! Save the mules!’ ” + 

Hal had all but lost sight of the fact that there was a second mine in the village, in which hundreds of men and boys were still at work. “Wouldn’t they know about the explosion?” he asked. + 

“They might have heard the noise,” said Mary. “But they’d not know what it was; and the bosses won’t tell them till they’ve got out the mules.” + 

For all that he had seen in North Valley, Hal could hardly credit that story. “How do you know it, Mary?” + 

“Young Rovetta just told me. He was there, and heard it with his own ears.” + 

He was staring at her. “Let’s go and make sure,” he said, and they started up the main street of the village. On the way they were joined by others⁠—for already the news of this fresh trouble had begun to spread. Jeff Cotton went past them in an automobile, and Mary exclaimed, “I told ye so! When ye see him goin’, ye know there’s dirty work to be done!” + 

They came to the shaft-house of Number Two, and found a swarm of people, almost a riot. Women and children were shrieking and gesticulating, threatening to break into the office and use the mine-telephone to warn the men themselves. And here was the camp-marshal driving them back. Hal and Mary arrived in time to see Mrs. David, whose husband was at work in Number Two, shaking her fist in the marshal’s face and screaming at him like a wildcat. He drew his revolver upon her; and at this Hal started forward. A blind fury seized him⁠—he would have thrown himself upon the marshal. + 

But Mary Burke stopped him, flinging her arms about him, and pinning him by main force. “No, no!” she cried. “Stay back, man! D’ye want to get killed?” + 

He was amazed at her strength. He was amazed also at the vehemence of her emotion. She was calling him a crazy fool, and names even more harsh. “Have ye no more sense than a woman? Running into the mouth of a revolver like that!” + 

The crisis passed in a moment, for Mrs. David fell back, and then the marshal put up his weapon. But Mary continued scolding Hal, trying to drag him away. “Come on now! Come out of here!” + 

“But, Mary! We must do something!” + 

“Ye can do nothin’, I tell ye! Ye’d ought to have sense enough to know it. I’ll not let ye get yeself murdered! Come away now!” And half by force and half by cajoling, she got him farther down the street. + 

He was trying to think out the situation. Were the men in Number Two really in danger? Could it be possible that the bosses would take such a chance in cold blood? And right at this moment, with the disaster in the other mine before their eyes! He could not believe it; and meantime Mary, at his side, was declaring that the men were in no real danger⁠—it was only Alec Stone’s brutal words that had set her crazy. + 

“Don’t ye remember the time when the air-course was blocked before, and ye helped to get up the mules yeself? Ye thought nothin’ of it then, and ’tis the same now. They’ll get everybody out in time!” + 

She was concealing her real feelings in order to keep him safe; he let her lead him on, while he tried to think of something else to do. He would think of the men in Number Two; they were his best friends, Jack David, Tim Rafferty, Wresmak, Androkulos, Klowoski. He would think of them, in their remote dungeons⁠—breathing bad air, becoming sick and faint⁠—in order that mules might be saved! He would stop in his tracks, and Mary would drag him on, repeating over and over, “Ye can do nothin’! Nothin’!” And then he would think, What could he do? He had put up his best bluff to Jeff Cotton a few hours earlier, and the answer had been the muzzle of the marshal’s revolver in his face. All he could accomplish now would be to bring himself to Cotton’s attention, and be thrust out of camp forthwith. + 

XXVIII + 

They came to Mary’s home; and next door was the home of the Slav woman, Mrs. Zamboni, about whom in the past she had told him so many funny stories. Mrs. Zamboni had had a new baby every year for sixteen years, and eleven of these babies were still alive. Now her husband was trapped in Number One, and she was distracted, wandering about the streets with the greater part of her brood at her heels. At intervals she would emit a howl like a tortured animal, and her brood would take it up in various timbres. Hal stopped to listen to the sounds, but Mary put her fingers into her ears and fled into the house. Hal followed her, and saw her fling herself into a chair and burst into hysterical weeping. And suddenly Hal realised what a strain this terrible affair had been upon Mary. It had been bad enough to him⁠—but he was a man, and more able to contemplate sights of horror. Men went to their deaths in industry and war, and other men saw them go and inured themselves to the spectacle. But women were the mothers of these men; it was women who bore them in pain, nursed them and reared them with endless patience⁠—women could never become inured to the spectacle! Then too, the women’s fate was worse. If the men were dead, that was the end of them; but the women must face the future, with its bitter memories, its lonely and desolate struggle for existence. The women must see the children suffering, dying by slow stages of deprivation. + 

Hal’s pity for all suffering women became concentrated upon the girl beside him. He knew how tenderhearted she was. She had no man in the mine, but some day she would have, and she was suffering the pangs of that inexorable future. He looked at her, huddled in her chair, wiping away her tears with the hem of her old blue calico. She seemed unspeakably pathetic⁠—like a child that has been hurt. She was sobbing out sentences now and then, as if to herself: “Oh, the poor women, the poor women! Did ye see the face of Mrs. Jonotch? She’d jumped into the smoking pit-mouth if they’d let her!” + 

“Don’t suffer so, Mary!” pleaded Hal⁠—as if he thought she could stop. + 

“Let me alone!” she cried. “Let me have it out!” And Hal, who had had no experience with hysteria, stood helplessly by. + 

“There’s more misery than I ever knew there was!” she went on. “ ’Tis everywhere ye turn, a woman with her eyes burnin’ with suffering wondering if she’ll ever see her man again! Or some mother whose lad may be dying and she can do nothin’ for him!” + 

“And neither can you do anything, Mary,” Hal pleaded again. “You’re only sorrowing yourself to death.” + 

“Ye say that to me?” she cried. “And when ye were ready to let Jeff Cotton shoot ye, because you were so sorry for Mrs. David! No, the sights here nobody can stand.” + 

He could think of nothing to answer. He drew up a chair and sat by her in silence, and after a while she began to grow calmer, and wiped away her tears, and sat gazing dully through the doorway into the dirty little street. + 

Hal’s eyes followed hers. There were the ash-heaps and tomato-cans, there were two of Mrs. Zamboni’s bedraggled brood, poking with sticks into a dump-heap⁠—looking for something to eat, perhaps, or for something to play with. There was the dry, waste grass of the roadside, grimy with coal-dust, as was everything else in the village. What a scene!⁠—And this girl’s eyes had never a sight of anything more inspiring than this. Day in and day out, all her life long, she looked at this scene! Had he ever for a moment reproached her for her “black moods”? With such an environment could men or women be cheerful⁠—could they dream of beauty, aspire to heights of nobility and courage, to happy service of their fellows? There was a miasma of despair over this place; it was not a real place⁠—it was a dream-place⁠—a horrible, distorted nightmare! It was like the black hole in the ground which haunted Hal’s imagination, with men and boys at the bottom of it, dying of asphyxiation! + 

Suddenly it came to Hal⁠—he wanted to get away from North Valley! To get away at all costs! The place had worn down his courage; slowly, day after day, the sight of misery and want, of dirt and disease, of hunger, oppression, despair, had eaten the soul out of him, had undermined his fine structure of altruistic theories. Yes, he wanted to escape⁠—to a place where the sun shone, where the grass grew green, where human beings stood erect and laughed and were free. He wanted to shut from his eyes the dust and smoke of this nasty little village; to stop his ears to that tormenting sound of women wailing: “O, mein Mann! O, mein Mann!” + 

He looked at the girl, who sat staring before her, bent forward, her arms hanging limply over her knees. + 

“Mary,” he said, “you must go away from here! It’s no place for a tenderhearted girl to be. It’s no place for anyone!” + 

She gazed at him dully for a moment. “It was me that was tellin’ you to go away,” she said, at last. “Ever since ye came here I been sayin’ it! Now I guess ye know what I mean.” + 

“Yes,” he said, “I do, and I want to go. But I want you to go too.” + 

“D’ye think ’twould do me any good, Joe?” she asked. “D’ye think ’twould do me any good to get away? Could I ever forget the sights I’ve seen this day? Could I ever have any real, honest happiness anywhere after this?” + 

He tried to reassure her, but he was far from reassured himself. How would it be with him? Would he ever feel that he had a right to happiness after this? Could he take any satisfaction in a pleasant and comfortable world, knowing that it was based upon such hideous misery? His thoughts went to that world, where careless, pleasure-loving people sought gratification of their desires. It came to him suddenly that what he wanted more than to get away was to bring those people here, if only for a day, for an hour, that they might hear this chorus of wailing women! + 

XXIX + 

Mary made Hal swear that he would not get into a fight with Cotton; then they went to Number Two. They found the mules coming up, and the bosses promising that in a short while the men would be coming. Everything was all right⁠—there was not a bit of danger! But Mary was afraid to trust Hal, in spite of his promise, so she lured him back to Number One. + 

They found that a rescue-car had just arrived from Pedro, bringing doctors and nurses, also several “helmets.” These “helmets” were strange looking contrivances, fastened over the head and shoulders, airtight, and provided with oxygen sufficient to last for an hour or more. The men who wore them sat in a big bucket which was let down the shaft with a windlass, and every now and then they pulled on a signal-cord to let those on the surface know they were alive. When the first of them came back, he reported that there were bodies near the foot of the shaft, but apparently all dead. There was heavy black smoke, indicating a fire somewhere in the mine; so nothing more could be done until the fan had been set up. By reversing the fan, they could draw out the smoke and gases and clear the shaft. + 

The state mine-inspector had been notified, but was ill at home, and was sending one of his deputies. Under the law this official would have charge of all the rescue work, but Hal found that the miners took no interest in his presence. It had been his duty to prevent the accident, and he had not done so. When he came, he would do what the company wanted. + 

Some time after dark the workers began to come out of Number Two, and their women, waiting at the pit-mouth, fell upon their necks with cries of thankfulness. Hal observed other women, whose men were in Number One, and would perhaps never come out again, standing and watching these greetings with wistful, tear-filled eyes. Among those who came out was Jack David, and Hal walked home with him and his wife, listening to the latter abuse Jeff Cotton and Alec Stone, which was an education in the vocabulary of class-consciousness. The little Welsh woman repeated the pit-boss’s saying, “Damn the men, save the mules!” She said it again and again⁠—it seemed to delight her like a work of art, it summed up so perfectly the attitude of the bosses to their men! There were many other people repeating that saying, Hal found; it went all over the village, in a few days it went all over the district. It summed up what the district believed to be the attitude of the coal-operators to the workers! + 

Having got over the first shock of the disaster, Hal wanted information, and he questioned Big Jack, a solid and well-read man who had given thought to every aspect of the industry. In his quiet, slow way, he explained to Hal that the frequency of accidents in this district was not due to any special difficulty in operating these mines, the explosiveness of the gases or the dryness of the atmosphere. It was merely the carelessness of those in charge, their disregard of the laws for the protection of the men. There ought to be a law with “teeth” in it⁠—for example, one providing that for every man killed in a coal-mine his heirs should receive a thousand dollars, regardless of who had been to blame for the accident. Then you would see how quickly the operators would get busy and find remedies for the “unusual” dangers! + 

As it was, they knew that no matter how great their culpability, they could get off with slight loss. Already, no doubt, their lawyers were on the spot, and by the time the first bodies were brought out, they would be fixing things up with the families. They would offer a widow a ticket back to the old country; they would offer a whole family of orphaned children, maybe fifty dollars, maybe a hundred dollars⁠—and it would be a case of take it or leave it. You could get nothing from the courts; the case was so hopeless that you could not even find a lawyer to make the attempt. That was one reform in which the companies believed, said “Big Jack,” with sarcasm; they had put the “shyster lawyer” out of business! + 

XXX + 

There followed a night and then another day of torturing suspense. The fan came, but it had to be set up before anything could be done. As volumes of black smoke continued to pour from the shaft, the opening was made tight with a board and canvas cover; it was necessary, the bosses said, but to Hal it seemed the climax of horror. To seal up men and boys in a place of deadly gases! + 

There was something peculiarly torturing in the idea of men caught in a mine; they were directly under one’s feet, yet it was impossible to get to them, to communicate with them in any way! The people on top yearned to them, and they, down below, yearned back. It was impossible to forget them for even a few minutes. People would become abstracted while they talked, and would stand staring into space; suddenly, in the midst of a crowd, a woman would bury her face in her hands and burst into tears, and then all the others would follow suit. + 

Few people slept in North Valley during those two nights. They held mourning parties in their homes or on the streets. Some housework had to be done, of course, but no one did anything that could be left undone. The children would not play; they stood about, silent, pale, like wizened-up grown people, over-mature in knowledge of trouble. The nerves of everyone were on edge, the self-control of everyone balanced upon a fine point. + 

It was a situation bound to be fruitful in imaginings and rumours, stimulated to those inclined to signs and omens⁠—the seers of ghosts, or those who went into trances, or possessed second sight or other mysterious gifts. There were some living in a remote part of the village who declared they had heard explosions under the ground, several blasts in quick succession. The men underground were setting off dynamite by way of signalling! + 

In the course of the second day Hal sat with Mary Burke upon the steps of her home. Old Patrick lay within, having found the secret of oblivion at O’Callahan’s. Now and then came the moaning of Mrs. Zamboni, who was in her cabin with her brood of children. Mary had been in to feed them, because the distracted mother let them starve and cry. Mary was worn out, herself; the wonderful Irish complexion had faded, and there were no curves to the vivid lips. They had been sitting in silence, for there was nothing to talk of but the disaster⁠—and they had said all there was to say about that. But Hal had been thinking while he watched Mary. + 

“Listen, Mary,” he said, at last; “when this thing is over, you must really come away from here. I’ve thought it all out⁠—I have friends in Western City who will give you work, so you can take care of yourself, and of your brother and sister too. Will you go?” + 

But she did not answer. She continued to gaze indifferently into the dirty little street. + 

“Truly, Mary,” he went on. “Life isn’t so terrible everywhere as it is here. Come away! Hard as it is to believe, you’ll forget all this. People suffer, but then they stop suffering; it’s nature’s way⁠—to make them forget.” + 

“Nature’s way has been to beat me dead,” said she. + 

“Yes, Mary. Despair can become a disease, but it hasn’t with you. You’re just tired out. If you’ll try to rouse yourself⁠—” And he reached over and caught her hand with an attempt at playfulness. “Cheer up, Mary! You’re coming away from North Valley.” + 

She turned and looked at him. “Am I?” she asked, impassively; and she went on studying his face. “Who are ye, Joe Smith? What are ye doin’ here?” + 

“Working in a coal-mine,” he laughed, still trying to divert her. + 

But she went on, as gravely as before. “Ye’re no working man, that I know. And ye’re always offering me help! Ye’re always sayin’ what ye can do for me!” She paused and there came some of the old defiance into her face. “Joe, ye can have no idea of the feelin’s that have got hold of me just now. I’m ready to do something desperate; ye’d best be leavin’ me alone, Joe!” + 

“I think I understand, Mary. I would hardly blame you for anything you did.” + 

She took up his words eagerly. “Wouldn’t ye, Joe? Ye’re sure? Then what I want is to get the truth from ye. I want ye to talk it out fair!” + 

“All right, Mary. What is it?” + 

But her defiance had vanished suddenly. Her eyes dropped, and he saw her fingers picking nervously at a fold of her dress. “About us, Joe,” she said. “I’ve thought sometimes ye cared for me. I’ve thought ye liked to be with me⁠—not just because ye were sorry for me, but because of me. I’ve not been sure, but I can’t help thinkin’ it’s so. Is it?” + 

“Yes, it is,” he said, a little uncertainly. “I do care for you.” + 

“Then is it that ye don’t care for that other girl all the time?” + 

“No,” he said, “it’s not that.” + 

“Ye can care for two girls at the same time?” + 

He did not know what to say. “It would seem that I can, Mary.” + 

She raised her eyes again and studied his face. “Ye told me about that other girl, and I been wonderin’, was it only to put me off? Maybe it’s me own fault, but I can’t make meself believe in that other girl, Joe!” + 

“You’re mistaken, Mary,” he answered, quickly. “What I told you was true.” + 

“Well, maybe so,” she said, but there was no conviction in her tone. “Ye come away from her, and ye never go where she is or see her⁠—it’s hard to believe ye’d do that way if ye were very close to her. I just don’t think ye love her as much as ye might. And ye say you do care some for me. So I’ve thought⁠—I’ve wondered⁠—” + 

She stopped, forcing herself to meet his gaze: “I been tryin’ to work it out! I know ye’re too good a man for me, Joe. Ye come from a better place in life, ye’ve a right to expect more in a woman⁠—” + 

“It’s not that, Mary!” + 

But she cut him short. “I know that’s true! Ye’re only tryin’ to save my feelin’s. I know ye’re better than me! I’ve tried hard to hold me head up, I’ve tried a long time not to let meself go to pieces. I’ve even tried to keep cheerful, telling meself I’d not want to be like Mrs. Zamboni, forever complainin’. But ’tis no use tellin’ yourself lies! I been up to the church, and heard the Reverend Spragg tell the people that the rich and poor are the same in the sight of the Lord. And maybe ’tis so, but I’m not the Lord, and I’ll never pretend I’m not ashamed to be livin’ in a place like this.” + 

“I’m sure the Lord has no interest in keeping you here⁠—” he began. + 

But she broke in, “What makes it so hard to bear is knowin’ there’s so many wonderful things in the world, and ye can never have them! ’Tis as if ye had to see them through a pane of glass, like in the window of a store. Just think, Joe Smith⁠—once, in a church in Sheridan, I heard a lady sing beautiful music; once in my whole lifetime! Can ye guess what it meant to me?” + 

“Yes, Mary, I can.” + 

“But I had that all out with meself⁠—years ago. I knew the price a workin’ girl has to pay for such things, and I said, I’ll not let meself think about them. I’ve hated this place, I’ve wanted to get away⁠—but there’s only one way to go, to let some man take ye! So I’ve stayed; I’ve kept straight, Joe. I want ye to believe that.” + 

“Of course, Mary!” + 

“No! It’s not been ‘of course’! It means ye have to fight with temptations. It’s many a time I’ve looked at Jeff Cotton, and thought about the things I need! And I’ve done without! But now comes the thing a woman wants more than all the other things in the world!” + 

She paused, but only for a moment. “They tell ye to love a man of your own class. Me old mother said that to me, before she died. But suppose ye didn’t happen to? Suppose ye’d stopped and thought what it meant, havin’ one baby after another, till ye’re worn out and drop⁠—like me old mother did? Suppose ye knew good manners when ye see them⁠—ye knew interestin’ talk when ye heard it!” She clasped her hands suddenly before her, exclaiming, “Ah, ’tis something different ye are, Joe⁠—so different from anything around here! The way ye talk, the way ye move, the gay look in your eyes! No miner ever had that happy look, Joe; me heart stops beatin’ almost when ye look at me!” She stopped with a sharp catching of her breath, and he saw that she was struggling for self-control. After a moment she exclaimed, defiantly: “But they’d tell ye, be careful, ye daren’t love that kind of man; ye’d only have your heart broken!” + 

There was silence. For this problem the amateur sociologist had no solution at hand⁠—whether for the abstract question, or for its concrete application! + 

XXXI + 

Mary forced herself to go on. “This is how I’ve worked it out, Joe! I said to meself, ‘Ye love this man; and it’s his love ye want⁠—nothin’ else! If he’s got a place in the world, ye’d only hold him back⁠—and ye’d not want to do that. Ye don’t want his name, or his friends, or any of those things⁠—ye want him!’ Have ye ever heard of such a thing as that?” + 

Her cheeks were flaming, but she continued to meet his gaze. “Yes, I’ve heard of it,” he answered, in a low voice. + 

“What would ye say to it? Is it honest? The Reverend Spragg would say ’twas the devil, no doubt; Father O’Gorman, down in Pedro, would call it mortal sin; and maybe they know⁠—but I don’t! I only know I can’t stand it any more!” + 

Tears sprang to her eyes, and she cried out suddenly, “Oh, take me away from here! Take me away and give me a chance, Joe! I’ll ask nothing, I’ll never stand in your way; I’ll work for ye, I’ll cook and wash and do everything for ye, I’ll wear my fingers to the bone! Or I’ll go out and work at some job, and earn my share. And I’ll make ye this promise⁠—if ever ye get tired and want to leave me, ye’ll not hear a word of complaint!” + 

She made no conscious appeal to his senses; she sat gazing at him honestly through her tears, and that made it all the harder to answer her. + 

What could he say? He felt the old dangerous impulse⁠—to take the girl in his arms and comfort her. When finally he spoke it was with an effort to keep his voice calm. “I’d say yes, Mary, if I thought it would work.” + 

“It would work! It would, Joe! Ye can quit when ye want to. I mean it!” + 

“There’s no woman lives who can be happy on such terms, Mary. She wants her man, and she wants him to herself, and she wants him always; she’s only deluding herself if she believes anything else. You’re overwrought now, what you’ve seen in the last few days has made you wild⁠—” + 

“No!” she exclaimed. “ ’Tis not only that! I been thinkin’ about it for weeks.” + 

“I know. You’ve been thinking, but you wouldn’t have spoken if it hadn’t been for this horror.” He paused for a moment, to renew his own self-possession. “It won’t do, Mary,” he declared. “I’ve seen it tried more than once, and I’m not so old either. My own brother tried it once, and ruined himself.” + 

“Ah, ye’re afraid to trust me, Joe!” + 

“No, it’s not that; what I mean is⁠—he ruined his own heart, he made himself selfish. He took everything, and gave nothing. He’s much older than I, so I’ve had a chance to see its effect on him. He’s cold, he has no faith, even in his own nature; when you talk to him about making the world better he tells you you’re a fool.” + 

“It’s another way of bein’ afraid of me,” she insisted. “Afraid you’d ought to marry me!” + 

“But, Mary⁠—there’s the other girl. I really love her, and I’m promised to her. What can I do?” + 

“ ’Tis that I’ve never believed you loved her,” she said, in a whisper. Her eyes fell and she began picking nervously again at the faded blue dress, which was smutted and grease-stained, perhaps from her recent effort with Mrs. Zamboni’s brood. Several times Hal thought she was going to speak, but she shut her lips tightly again; he watched her, his heart aching. + 

When finally she spoke, it was still in a whisper, and there was a note of humility he had never heard from her before. “Ye’ll not be wantin’ to speak to me, Joe, after what I’ve said.” + 

“Oh, Mary!” he exclaimed, and caught her hand, “don’t say I’ve made you more unhappy! I want to help you! Won’t you let me be your friend⁠—your real, true friend? Let me help you to get out of this trap; you’ll have a chance to look about, you’ll find a way to be happy⁠—the whole world will seem different to you then, and you’ll laugh at the idea that you ever wanted me!” + 

XXXII + 

The two of them went back to the pit-mouth. It had been two days since the disaster, and still the fan had not been started, and there was no sign of its being started. The hysteria of the women was growing, and there was a tension in the crowds. Jeff Cotton had brought in a force of men to assist him in keeping order. They had built a fence of barbed wire about the pit-mouth and its approaches, and behind this wire they walked⁠—hard-looking citizens with policemen’s “billies,” and the bulge of revolvers plainly visible on their hips. + 

During this long period of waiting, Hal had talks with members of his check-weighman group. They told what had happened while he was in jail, and this reminded him of something which had been driven from his mind by the explosion. Poor old John Edstrom was down in Pedro, perhaps in dire need. Hal went to the old Swede’s cabin that night, climbed through a window, and dug up the buried money. There were five five-dollar bills, and he put them in an envelope, addressed them in care of General Delivery, Pedro, and had Mary Burke take them to the post office and register them. + 

The hours dragged on, and still there was no sign of the pit-mouth being opened. There began to be secret gatherings of the miners and their wives to complain at the conduct of the company; and it was natural that Hal’s friends who had started the check-weighman movement, should take the lead in these. They were among the most intelligent of the workers, and saw farther into the meaning of events. They thought, not merely of the men who were trapped under ground at this moment, but of thousands of others who would be trapped through years to come. Hal, especially, was pondering how he could accomplish something definite before he left the camp; for of course he would have to leave soon⁠—Jeff Cotton would remember him, and carry out his threat to get rid of him. + 

Newspapers had come in, with accounts of the disaster, and Hal and his friends read these. It was evident that the company had been at pains to have the accounts written from its own point of view. There existed some public sensitiveness on the subject of mine-disasters in this state. The death-rate from accidents was seen to be mounting steadily; the reports of the state mine inspector showed six per thousand in one year, eight and a half in the next, and twenty-one and a half in the next. When fifty or a hundred men were killed in a single accident, and when such accidents kept happening, one on the heels of another, even the most callous public could not help asking questions. So in this case the “G.F.C.” had been careful to minimise the loss of life, and to make excuses. The accident had been owing to no fault of the company’s; the mine had been regularly sprinkled, both with water and adobe dust, and so the cause of the explosion must have been the carelessness of the men in handling powder. + 

In Jack David’s cabin one night there arose a discussion as to the number of men entombed in the mine. The company’s estimate of the number was forty, but Minetti and Olson and David agreed that this was absurd. Any man who went about in the crowds could satisfy himself that there were two or three times as many unaccounted for. And this falsification was deliberate, for the company had a checking system, whereby it knew the name of every man in the mine. But most of these names were unpronounceable Slavish, and the owners of the names had no friends to mention them⁠—at least not in any language understood by American newspaper editors. + 

It was all a part of the system, declared Jack David: its purpose and effect being to enable the company to go on killing men without paying for them, either in money or in prestige. It occurred to Hal that it might be worth while to contradict these false statements⁠—almost as worth while as to save the men who were at this moment entombed. Anyone who came forward to make such a contradiction would of course be giving himself up to the blacklist; but then, Hal regarded himself as a man already condemned to that penalty. + 

Tom Olson spoke up. “What would you do with your contradiction?” + 

“Give it to the papers,” Hal answered. + 

“But what papers would print it?” + 

“There are two rival papers in Pedro, aren’t there?” + 

“One owned by Alf Raymond, the sheriff-emperor, and the other by Vagleman, counsel for the ‘G.F.C.’ Which one would you try?” + 

“Well then, the outside papers⁠—those in Western City. There are reporters here now, and some one of them would surely take it.” + 

Olson answered, declaring that they would not get any but labour and Socialist papers to print such news. But even that was well worth doing. And Jack David, who was strong for unions and all their activities, put in, “The thing to do is to take a regular census, so as to know exactly how many are in the mine.” + 

The suggestion struck fire, and they agreed to set to work that same evening. It would be a relief to do something, to have something in their minds but despair. They passed the word to Mary Burke, to Rovetta, Klowoski, and others; and at eleven o’clock the next morning they met again, and the lists were put together, and it was found that no less than a hundred and seven men and boys were positively known to be inside Number One. + 

XXXIII + 

As it happened, however, discussion of this list and the method of giving it to the world was cut short by a more urgent matter. Jack David came in with news of fresh trouble at the pit-mouth. The new fan was being put in place; but they were slow about it, so slow that some people had become convinced that they did not mean to start the fan at all, but were keeping the mine sealed to prevent the fire from spreading. A group of such malcontents had presumed to go to Mr. Carmichael, the deputy state mine-inspector, to urge him to take some action; and the leader of these protestants, Huszar, the Austrian, who had been one of Hal’s check-weighman group, had been taken into custody and marched at double-quick to the gate of the stockade! + 

Jack David declared furthermore that he knew a carpenter who was working in the fan-house, and who said that no haste whatever was being made. All the men at the fan-house shared that opinion; the mine was sealed, and would stay sealed until the company was sure the fire was out. + 

“But,” argued Hal, “if they were to open it, the fire would spread; and wouldn’t that prevent rescue work?” + 

“Not at all,” declared “Big Jack.” He explained that by reversing the fan they could draw the smoke up through the air-course, which would clear the main passages for a time. “But, you see, some coal might catch fire, and some timbers; there might be falls of rock so they couldn’t work some of the rooms again.” + 

“How long will they keep the mine sealed?” cried Hal, in consternation. + 

“Nobody can say. In a big mine like that, a fire might smoulder for a week.” + 

“Everybody be dead!” cried Rosa Minetti, wringing her hands in a sudden access of grief. + 

Hal turned to Olson. “Would they possibly do such a thing?” + 

“It’s been done⁠—more than once,” was the organiser’s reply. + 

“Did you never hear about Cherry, Illinois?” asked David. “They did it there, and more than three hundred people lost their lives.” He went on to tell that dreadful story, known to every coal-miner. They had sealed the mine, while women fainted and men tore their clothes in frenzy⁠—some going insane. They had kept it sealed for two weeks, and when they opened it, there were twenty-one men still alive! + 

“They did the same thing in Diamondville, Wyoming,” added Olson. “They built up a barrier, and when they took it away they found a heap of dead men, who had crawled to it and torn their fingers to the bone trying to break through.” + 

“My God!” cried Hal, springing to his feet. “And this man Carmichael⁠—would he stand for that?” + 

“He’d tell you they were doing their best,” said “Big Jack.” “And maybe he thinks they are. But you’ll see⁠—something’ll keep happening; they’ll drag on from day to day, and they’ll not start the fan till they’re ready.” + 

“Why, it’s murder!” cried Hal. + 

“It’s business,” said Tom Olson, quietly. + 

Hal looked from one to another of the faces of these working people. Not one but had friends in that trap; not one but might be in the same trap tomorrow! + 

“You have to stand it!” he exclaimed, half to himself. + 

“Don’t you see the guards at the pit-mouth?” answered David. “Don’t you see the guns sticking out of their pockets?” + 

“They bring in more guards this morning,” put in Jerry Minetti. “Rosa, she see them get off.” + 

“They know what they doin’!” said Rosa. “They only fraid we find it out! They told Mrs. Zamboni she keep away or they send her out of camp. And old Mrs. Jonotch⁠—her husband and three sons inside!” + 

“They’re getting rougher and rougher,” declared Mrs. David. “That big fellow they call Pete, that came up from Pedro⁠—the way he’s handling the women is a shame!” + 

“I know him,” put in Olson; “Pete Hanun. They had him in Sheridan when the union first opened headquarters. He smashed one of our organisers in the mouth and broke four of his teeth. They say he has a jail-record.” + 

All through the previous year at college Hal had listened to lectures upon political economy, filled with the praises of a thing called “Private Ownership.” This Private Ownership developed initiative and economy; it kept the wheels of industry a-roll, it kept fat the payrolls of college faculties; it accorded itself with the sacred laws of supply and demand, it was the basis of the progress and prosperity wherewith America had been blessed. And here suddenly Hal found himself face to face with the reality of it; he saw its wolfish eyes glaring into his own, he felt its smoking hot breath in his face, he saw its gleaming fangs and claw-like fingers, dripping with the blood of men and women and children. Private Ownership of coal-mines! Private Ownership of sealed-up entrances and nonexistent escape-ways! Private Ownership of fans which did not start, of sprinklers which did not sprinkle. Private Ownership of clubs and revolvers, and of thugs and ex-convicts to use them, driving away rescuers and shutting up agonised widows and orphans in their homes! Oh, the serene and well-fed priests of Private Ownership, chanting in academic halls the praises of the bloody Demon! + 

Suddenly Hal stopped still. Something had risen in him, the existence of which he had never suspected. There was a new look upon his face, his voice was deep as a strong man’s when he spoke: “I am going to make them open that mine!” + 

They looked at him. They were all of them close to the border of hysteria, but they caught the strange note in his utterance. “I am going to make them open that mine!” + 

“How?” asked Olson. + 

“The public doesn’t know about this thing. If the story got out, there’d be such a clamour, it couldn’t go on!” + 

“But how will you get it out?” + 

“I’ll give it to the newspapers! They can’t suppress such a thing⁠—I don’t care how prejudiced they are!” + 

“But do you think they’d believe what a miner’s buddy tells them?” asked Mrs. David. + 

“I’ll find a way to make them believe me,” said Hal. “I’m going to make them open that mine!” + 

XXXIV + 

In the course of his wanderings about the camp, Hal had observed several wide-awake looking young men with notebooks in their hands. He could see that these young men were being made guests of the company, chatting with the bosses upon friendly terms; nevertheless, he believed that among them he might find one who had a conscience⁠—or at any rate who would yield to the temptation of a “scoop.” So, leaving the gathering at Mrs. David’s, Hal went to the pit-mouth, watching out for one of these reporters; when he found him, he followed him for a while, desiring to get him where no company “spotter” might interfere. At the first chance, he stepped up, and politely asked the reporter to come into a side street, where they might converse undisturbed. + 

The reporter obeyed the request; and Hal, concealing the intensity of his feelings, so as not to repel the other, let it be known that he had worked in North Valley for some months, and could tell much about conditions in the camp. There was the matter of adobe-dust, for example. Explosions in dry mines could be prevented by spraying the walls with this material. Did the reporter happen to know that the company’s claim to have used it was entirely false? + 

No, the reporter answered, he did not know this. He seemed interested, and asked Hal’s name and occupation. Hal told him “Joe Smith,” a “buddy,” who had recently been chosen as check-weighman. The reporter, a lean and keen-faced young man, asked many questions⁠—intelligent questions; incidentally he mentioned that he was the local correspondent of the great press association whose stories of the disaster were sent to every corner of the country. This seemed to Hal an extraordinary piece of good fortune, and he proceeded to tell this Mr. Graham about the census which some of the workers had taken; they were able to give the names of a hundred and seven men and boys who were inside the mine. The list was at Mr. Graham’s disposal if he cared to see it. Mr. Graham seemed more interested than ever, and made notes in his book. + 

Another thing, more important yet, Hal continued; the matter of the delay in getting the fan started. It had been three days since the explosion, but there had been no attempt at entering the mine. Had Mr. Graham seen the disturbance at the pit-mouth that morning? Did he realise that a man had been thrown out of camp merely because he had appealed to the deputy state mine-inspector? Hal told what so many had come to believe⁠—that the company was saving property at the expense of life. He went on to point out the human meaning of this⁠—he told about old Mrs. Rafferty, with her failing health and her eight children; about Mrs. Zamboni, with eleven children; about Mrs. Jonotch, with a husband and three sons in the mine. Led on by the reporter’s interest, Hal began to show some of his feeling. These were human beings, not animals; they loved and suffered, even though they were poor and humble! + 

“Most certainly!” said Mr. Graham. “You’re right, and you may rest assured I’ll look into this.” + 

“There’s one thing more,” said Hal. “If my name is mentioned, I’ll be fired, you know.” + 

“I won’t mention it,” said the other. + 

“Of course, if you can’t publish the story without giving its source⁠—” + 

“I’m the source,” said the reporter, with a smile. “Your name would not add anything.” + 

He spoke with quiet assurance; he seemed to know so completely both the situation and his own duty in regard to it, that Hal felt a thrill of triumph. It was as if a strong wind had come blowing from the outside world, dispelling the miasma which hung over this coal-camp. Yes, this reporter was the outside world! He was the power of public opinion, making itself felt in this place of knavery and fear! He was the voice of truth, the courage and rectitude of a great organisation of publicity, independent of secret influences, lifted above corruption! + 

“I’m indebted to you,” said Mr. Graham, at the end, and Hal’s sense of victory was complete. What an extraordinary chance⁠—that he should have run into the agent of the great press association! The story would go out to the great world of industry, which depended upon coal as its lifeblood. The men in the factories, the wheels of which were turned by coal⁠—the travellers on trains which were moved by coal⁠—they would hear at last of the sufferings of those who toiled in the bowels of the earth for them! Even the ladies, reclining upon the decks of palatial steamships in gleaming tropic seas⁠—so marvellous was the power of modern news-spreading agencies, that these ladies too might hear the cry for help of these toilers, and of their wives and little ones! And from this great world would come an answer, a universal shout of horror, of execration, that would force even old Peter Harrigan to give way! So Hal mused⁠—for he was young, and this was his first crusade. + 

He was so happy that he was able to think of himself again, and to realise that he had not eaten that day. It was noon-time, and he went into Reminitsky’s, and was about half through with the first course of Reminitsky’s two-course banquet, when his cruel disillusioning fell upon him! + 

He looked up and saw Jeff Cotton striding into the dining-room, making straight for him. There was blood in the marshal’s eye, and Hal saw it, and rose, instinctively. + 

“Come!” said Cotton, and took him by the coat-sleeve and marched him out, almost before the rest of the diners had time to catch their breath. + 

Hal had no opportunity now to display his “tea-party manners” to the camp-marshal. As they walked, Cotton expressed his opinion of him, that he was a skunk, a puppy, a person of undesirable ancestry; and when Hal endeavoured to ask a question⁠—which he did quite genuinely, not grasping at once the meaning of what was happening⁠—the marshal bade him “shut his face,” and emphasised the command by a twist at his coat-collar. At the same time two of the huskiest mine-guards, who had been waiting at the dining-room door, took him, one by each arm, and assisted his progress. + 

They went down the street and past Jeff Cotton’s office, not stopping this time. Their destination was the railroad-station, and when Hal got there, he saw a train standing. The three men marched him to it, not releasing him till they had jammed him down into a seat. + 

“Now, young fellow,” said Cotton, “we’ll see who’s running this camp!” + 

By this time Hal had regained a part of his self-possession. “Do I need a ticket?” he asked. + 

“I’ll see to that,” said the marshal. + 

“And do I get my things?” + 

“You save some questions for your college professors,” snapped the marshal. + 

So Hal waited; and a minute or two later a man arrived on the run with his scanty belongings, rolled into a bundle and tied with a piece of twine. Hal noted that this man was big and ugly, and was addressed by the camp-marshal as “Pete.” + 

The conductor shouted, “All aboard!” And at the same time Jeff Cotton leaned over towards Hal and spoke in a menacing whisper: “Take this from me, young fellow; don’t stop in Pedro, move on in a hurry, or something will happen to you on a dark night.” + 

After which he strode down the aisle, and jumped off the moving train. But Hal noticed that Pete Hanun, the breaker of teeth, stayed on the car a few seats behind him. + 