VIII
Hal asked the name of his new acquaintance, and she told him it was Mary Burke. “Ye’ve not been here long, I take it,” she said, “or ye’d have heard of ‘Red Mary.’ ’Tis along of this hair.”
“I’ve not been here long,” he answered, “but I shall hope to stay now—along of this hair! May I come to see you some time, Miss Burke?”
She did not reply, but glanced at the house where she lived. It was an unpainted, three room cabin, more dilapidated than the average, with bare dirt and cinders about it, and what had once been a picket-fence, now falling apart and being used for stove-wood. The windows were cracked and broken, and upon the roof were signs of leaks that had been crudely patched.
“May I come?” he made haste to ask again—so that he would not seem to look too critically at her home.
“Perhaps ye may,” said the girl, as she picked up the clothes basket. He stepped forward, offering to carry it, but she did not give it up. Holding it tight, and looking him defiantly in the face, she said, “Ye may come, but ye’ll not find it a happy place to visit, Mr. Smith. Ye’ll hear soon enough from the neighbours.”
“I don’t think I know any of your neighbours,” said he.
There was sympathy in his voice; but her look was no less defiant. “Ye’ll hear about it, Mr. Smith; but ye’ll hear also that I hold me head up. And ’tis not so easy to do that in North Valley.”
“You don’t like the place?” he asked; and he was amazed by the effect of this question, which was merely polite. It was as if a storm cloud had swept over the girl’s face. “I hate it! ’Tis a place of fear and devils!”
He hesitated a moment; then, “Will you tell me what you mean by that when I come?”
But “Red Mary” was winsome again. “When ye come, Mr. Smith, I’ll not be entertaining ye with troubles. I’ll put on me company manner, and we’ll go out for a nice walk, if ye please.”
All the way as he walked back to Reminitsky’s to supper, Hal thought about this girl; not merely her pleasantness to the eye, so unexpected in this place of desolation, but her personality, which baffled him—the pain that seemed always just beneath the surface of her thoughts, the fierce pride which flashed out at the slightest suggestion of sympathy, the way she had of brightening when he spoke the language of metaphor, however trite. How had she come to know about poetry-books? He wanted to know more about this miracle of Nature—this wild rose blooming on a bare mountainside!
IX
There was one of Mary Burke’s remarks upon which Hal soon got light—her statement that North Valley was a place of fear. He listened to the tales of these underworld men, until it came so that he shuddered with dread each time that he went down in the cage.
There was a wire-haired and almond eyed Korean, named Cho, a “rope-rider” in Hal’s part of the mine. He was one of those who had charge of the long trains of cars, called “trips,” which were hauled through the main passageways; the name “rope-rider” came from the fact that he sat on the heavy iron ring to which the rope was attached. He invited Hal to a seat with him, and Hal accepted, at peril of his job as well as of his limbs. Cho had picked up what he fondly thought was English, and now and then one could understand a word. He pointed upon the ground, and shouted above the rattle of the cars: “Big dust!” Hal saw that the ground was covered with six inches of coal-dust, while on the old disused walls one could write his name in it. “Much blowup!” said the rope-rider; and when the last empty cars had been shunted off into the working-rooms, and he was waiting to make up a return “trip,” he laboured with gestures to explain what he meant. “Load cars. Bang! Bust like hell!”
Hal knew that the mountain air in this region was famous for its dryness; he learned now that the quality which meant life to invalids from every part of the world meant death to those who toiled to keep the invalids warm. Driven through the mines by great fans, this air took out every particle of moisture, and left coal dust so thick and dry that there were fatal explosions from the mere friction of loading-shovels. So it happened that these mines were killing several times as many men as other mines throughout the country.
Was there no remedy for this, Hal asked, talking with one of his mule-drivers, Tim Rafferty, the evening after his ride with Cho. There was a remedy, said Tim—the law required sprinkling the mines with “adobe-dust”; and once in Tim’s life, he remembered this law’s being obeyed. There had come some “big fellows” inspecting things, and previous to their visit there had been an elaborate campaign of sprinkling. But that had been several years ago, and now the apparatus was stored away, nobody knew where, and one heard nothing about sprinkling.
It was the same with precautions against gas. The North Valley mines were especially “gassy,” it appeared. In these old rambling passages one smelt a stink as of all the rotten eggs in all the barnyards of the world; and this sulphuretted hydrogen was the least dangerous of the gases against which a miner had to contend. There was the dreaded “chokedamp,” which was odourless, and heavier than air. Striking into soft, greasy coal, one would open a pocket of this gas, a deposit laid up for countless ages, awaiting its predestined victim. A man might sink to sleep as he
