It happened that Mike Sikoria had been working nearby, and was one of those who helped to get the victim out. Mike’s negro “buddy” had been in too great haste to get some of the rock out of the way, and had got his hand crushed, and would not be able to work for a month or so. Mike told Hal about it, in his broken English. It was a terrible thing to see a man trapped like that, gasping, his eyes almost popping out of his head. Fortunately he was a young fellow, and had no family.
Hal asked what they would do with the body; the answer was they would bury him in the morning. The company had a piece of ground up the canyon.
“But won’t they have an inquest?” he inquired.
“Inques’?” repeated the other. “What’s he?”
“Doesn’t the coroner see the body?”
The old Slovak shrugged his bowed shoulders; if there was a coroner in this part of the world, he had never heard of it; and he had worked in a good many mines, and seen a good many men put under the ground. “Put him in a box and dig a hole,” was the way he described the procedure.
“And doesn’t the priest come?”
“Priest too far away.”
Afterwards Hal made inquiry among the English-speaking men, and learned that the coroner did sometimes come to the camp. He would empanel a jury consisting of Jeff Cotton, the marshal, and Predovich, the Galician Jew who worked in the company store, and a clerk or two from the company’s office, and a couple of Mexican labourers who had no idea what it was all about. This jury would view the corpse, and ask a couple of men what had happened, and then bring in a verdict: “We find that the deceased met his death from a fall of rock caused by his own fault.” (In one case they had added the picturesque detail: “No relatives, and damned few friends!”)
For this service the coroner got a fee, and the company got an official verdict, which would be final in case some foreign consul should threaten a damage suit. So well did they have matters in hand that nobody in North Valley had ever got anything for death or injury; in fact, as Hal found later, there had not been a damage suit filed against any coal-operator in that county for twenty-three years!
This particular, accident was of consequence to Hal, because it got him a chance to see the real work of mining. Old Mike was without a helper, and made the proposition that Hal should take the job. It was better than a stableman’s, for it paid two dollars a day.
“But will the boss let me change?” asked Hal.
“You give him ten dollar, he change you,” said Mike.
“Sorry,” said Hal, “I haven’t got ten dollars.”
“You give him ten dollar credit,” said the other.
And Hal laughed. “They take scrip for graft, do they?”
“Sure they take him,” said Mike.
“Suppose I treat my mules bad?” continued the other. “So I can make him change me for nothing!”
“He change you to hell!” replied Mike. “You get him cross, he put us in bad room, cost us ten dollar a week. No, sir—you give him drink, say fine feller, make him feel good. You talk American—give him jolly!”
XXI
Hal was glad of this opportunity to get better acquainted with his pit-boss. Alec Stone was six feet high, and built in proportion, with arms like hams—soft with fat, yet possessed of enormous strength. He had learned his manner of handling men on a sugar-plantation in Louisiana—a fact which, when Hal heard it, explained much. Like a stage-manager who does not heed the real names of his actors, but calls them by their character-names, Stone had the habit of addressing his men by their nationalities: “You, Polack, get that rock into the car! Hey, Jap, bring them tools over here! Shut your mouth, now, Dago, and get to work, or I’ll kick the breeches off you, sure as you’re alive!”
Hal had witnessed one occasion when there was a dispute as to whose duty it was to move timbers. There was a great two-handled crosscut saw lying on the ground, and Stone seized it and began to wave it, like a mighty broadsword, in the face of a little Bohemian miner. “Load them timbers, Hunkie, or I’ll carve you into bits!” And as the terrified man shrunk back, he followed, until his victim was flat against a wall, the weapon swinging to and fro under his nose after the fashion of “The Pit and the Pendulum.” “Carve you into pieces, Hunkie! Carve you into stew-meat!” When at last the boss stepped back, the little Bohemian leaped to load the timbers.
The curious part about it to Hal was that Stone seemed to be reasonably good-natured about such proceedings. Hardly one time in a thousand did he carry out his bloodthirsty threats, and like as not he would laugh when he had finished his tirade, and the object of it would grin in turn—but without slackening his frightened efforts. After the broadsword waving episode, seeing that Hal had been watching, the boss remarked, “That’s the way you have to manage them wops.” Hal took this remark as a tribute to his American blood, and was duly flattered.
He sought out the boss that evening, and found him with his feet upon the railing of his home. “Mr. Stone,” said he, “I’ve something I’d like to ask you.”
“Fire away, kid,” said the
