“But I thought you said you were talking about it!”
She answered, “ ’Tis one thing, talkin’ in a friend’s house, and another outside. What’s the good of throwin’ away your job?”
He lowered his voice. “Would you seriously like to have a union here?”
“Seriously?” said she. “Didn’t ye see Mr. Rafferty—what a coward he is? That’s the way they are! No, ’twas just a burst of my temper. I’m a bit crazy tonight—something happened to set me off.”
He thought she was going on, but apparently she changed her mind. Finally he asked, “What happened?”
“Oh, ’twould do no good to talk,” she answered; and they walked a bit farther in silence.
“Tell me about it, won’t you?” he said; and the kindness in his tone made its impression.
“ ’Tis not much ye know of a coal-camp, Joe Smith,” she said. “Can’t ye imagine what it’s like—bein’ a woman in a place like this? And a woman they think good-lookin’!”
“Oh, so it’s that!” said he, and was silent again. “Someone’s been troubling you?” he ventured after a while.
“Sure! Someone’s always troublin’ us women! Always! Never a day but we hear it. Winks and nudges—everywhere ye turn.”
“Who is it?”
“The bosses, the clerks—anybody that has a chance to wear a stiff collar, and thinks he can offer money to a girl. It begins before she’s out of short skirts, and there’s never any peace afterwards.”
“And you can’t make them understand?”
“I’ve made them understand me a bit; now they go after my old man.”
“What?”
“Sure! D’ye suppose they’d not try that? Him that’s so crazy for liquor, and can never get enough of it!”
“And your father?—” But Hal stopped. She would not want that question asked!
She had seen his hesitation, however. “He was a decent man once,” she declared. “ ’Tis the life here, that turns a man into a coward. ’Tis everything ye need, everywhere ye turn—ye have to ask favours from some boss. The room ye work in, the dead work they pile on ye; or maybe ’tis more credit ye need at the store, or maybe the doctor to come when ye’re sick. Just now ’tis our roof that leaks—so bad we can’t find a dry place to sleep when it rains.”
“I see,” said Hal. “Who owns the house?”
“Sure, there’s none but company houses here.”
“Who’s supposed to fix it?”
“Mr. Kosegi, the house-agent. But we gave him up long ago—if he does anything, he raises the rent. Today my father went to Mr. Cotton. He’s supposed to look out for the health of the place, and it seems hardly healthy to keep people wet in their beds.”
“And what did Cotton say?” asked Hal, when she stopped again.
“Well, don’t ye know Jeff Cotton—can’t ye guess what he’d say? ‘That’s a fine girl ye got, Burke! Why don’t ye make her listen to reason?’ And then he laughed, and told me old father he’d better learn to take a hint. ’Twas bad for an old man to sleep in the rain—he might get carried off by pneumonia.”
Hal could no longer keep back the question, “What did your father do?”
“I’d not have ye think hard of my old father,” she said, quickly. “He used to be a fightin’ man, in the days before O’Callahan had his way with him. But now he knows what a camp-marshal can do to a miner!”
XX
Mary Burke had said that the company could stand breaking the bones of its men; and not long after Number Two started up again, Hal had a chance to note the truth of this assertion.
A miner’s life depended upon the proper timbering of the room where he worked. The company undertook to furnish the timbers, but when the miner needed them, he would find none at hand, and would have to make the mile-long trip to the surface. He would select timbers of the proper length, and would mark them—the understanding being that they were to be delivered to his room by some of the labourers. But then someone else would carry them off—here was more graft and favouritism, and the miner might lose a day or two of work, while meantime his account was piling up at the store, and his children might have no shoes to go to school. Sometimes he would give up waiting for timbers, and go on taking out coal; so there would be a fall of rock—and the coroner’s jury would bring in a verdict of “negligence,” and the coal-operators would talk solemnly about the impossibility of teaching caution to miners. Not so very long ago Hal had read an interview which the president of the General Fuel Company had given to a newspaper, in which he set forth the idea that the more experience a miner had the more dangerous it was to employ him, because he thought he knew it all, and would not heed the wise regulations which the company laid down for his safety!
In Number Two mine there were some places being operated by the “room and pillar” method; the coal being taken out as from a series of rooms, the portion corresponding to the walls of the rooms being left to uphold the roof. These walls are the “pillars”; and when the end of the vein is reached, the miner begins to work backwards, “pulling the pillars,” and letting the roof collapse behind him. This is a dangerous task; as he works, the man has to listen to the drumming sounds of the rock above his head, and has to judge just when to make his escape. Sometimes he is too anxious to save a tool; or sometimes the collapse comes without warning. In that case the victim is seldom dug out; for it must be admitted that a man buried under a mountain is as well buried as a company could be expected to arrange it.
In Number Two mine a man was caught in this way. He stumbled as he ran, and the lower half of his body was pinned fast; the
