The immediate duties of this office in North Valley devolved upon Jeff Cotton, the camp-marshal. He was not at all what one would have expected from a person of his trade—lean and rather distinguished-looking, a man who in evening clothes might have passed for a diplomat. But his mouth would become ugly when he was displeased, and he carried a gun with six notches upon it; also he wore a deputy-sheriff’s badge, to give him immunity for other notches he might wish to add. When Jeff Cotton came near, any man who was explosive went off to be explosive by himself. So there was “order” in North Valley, and it was only on Saturday and Sunday nights, when the drunks had to be suppressed, or on Monday mornings when they had to be haled forth and kicked to their work, that one realised upon what basis this “order” rested.
Besides Jeff Cotton, and his assistant, “Bud” Adams, who wore badges, and were known, there were other assistants who wore no badges, and were not supposed to be known. Coming up in the cage one evening, Hal made some remark to the Croatian mule-driver, Madvik, about the high price of company-store merchandise, and was surprised to get a sharp kick on the ankle. Afterwards, as they were on their way to supper, Madvik gave him the reason. “Red-faced feller, Gus. Look out for him—company spotter.”
“Is that so?” said Hal, with interest. “How do you know?”
“I know. Everybody know.”
“He don’t look like he had much sense,” said Hal—who had got his idea of detectives from Sherlock Holmes.
“No take much sense. Go pit-boss, say, ‘Joe feller talk too much. Say store rob him.’ Any damn fool do that. Hey?”
“To be sure,” admitted Hal. “And the company pays him for it?”
“Pit-boss pay him. Maybe give him drink, maybe two bits. Then pit-boss come to you: ‘You shoot your mouth off too much, feller. Git the hell out of here!’ See?”
Hal saw.
“So you go down canyon. Then maybe you go ’nother mine. Boss say, ‘Where you work?’ You say ‘North Valley.’ He say, ‘What your name?’ You say, ‘Joe Smith.’ He say, ‘Wait.’ He go in, look at paper; he come out, say, ‘No job!’ You say, ‘Why not?’ He say, ‘Shoot off your mouth too much, feller. Git the hell out of here!’ See?”
“You mean a blacklist,” said Hal.
“Sure, blacklist. Maybe telephone, find out all about you. You do anything bad, like talk union”—Madvik had dropped his voice and whispered the word “union”—“they send your picture—don’t get job nowhere in state. How you like that?”
XI
Before long Hal had a chance to see this system of espionage at work, and he began to understand something of the force which kept these silent and patient armies at their tasks. On a Sunday morning he was strolling with his mule-driver friend Tim Rafferty, a kindly lad with a pair of dreamy blue eyes in his coal-smutted face. They came to Tim’s home, and he invited Hal to come in and meet his family. The father was a bowed and toil-worn man, but with tremendous strength in his solid frame, the product of many generations of labour in coal-mines. He was known as “Old Rafferty,” despite the fact that he was well under fifty. He had been a pit-boy at the age of nine, and he showed Hal a faded leather album with pictures of his ancestors in the “oul’ country”—men with sad, deeply lined faces, sitting very stiff and solemn to have their presentments made permanent for posterity.
The mother of the family was a gaunt, grey-haired woman, with no teeth, but with a warm heart. Hal took to her, because her home was clean; he sat on the family doorstep, amid a crowd of little Rafferties with newly-washed Sunday faces, and fascinated them with tales of adventures cribbed from Clark Russell and Captain Mayne Reid. As a reward he was invited to stay for dinner, and had a clean knife and fork, and a clean plate of steaming hot potatoes, with two slices of salt pork on the side. It was so wonderful that he forthwith inquired if he might forsake his company boardinghouse and come and board with them.
Mrs. Rafferty opened wide her eyes. “Sure,” exclaimed she, “do you think you’d be let?”
“Why not?” asked Hal.
“Sure, ’t would be a bad example for the others.”
“Do you mean I have to board at Reminitsky’s?”
“There be six company boardin’-houses,” said the woman.
“And what would they do if I came to you?”
“First you’d get a hint, and then you’d go down the canyon, and maybe us after ye.”
“But there’s lots of people have boarders in shantytown,” objected Hal.
“Oh! Them wops! Nobody counts them—they live any way they happen to fall. But you started at Reminitsky’s, and ’t would not be healthy for them that took ye away.”
“I see,” laughed Hal. “There seem to be a lot of unhealthy things hereabouts.”
“Sure there be! They sent down Nick Ammons because his wife bought milk down the canyon. They had a sick baby, and it’s not much you get in this thin stuff at the store. They put chalk in it, I think; anyway, you can see somethin’ white in the bottom.”
“So you have to trade at the store, too!”
“I thought ye said ye’d worked in coal-mines,” put in Old Rafferty,
