“Won’t you come up to the saloon and have a drink?”
“Want to get something out of me, hey? You can’t work me, kid!” But nevertheless he slung down his feet from the railing, and knocked the ashes out of his pipe and strolled up the street with Hal.
“Mr. Stone,” said Hal, “I want to make a change.”
“What’s that? Got a grouch on them mules?”
“No, sir, but I got a better job in sight. Mike Sikoria’s buddy is laid up, and I’d like to take his place, if you’re willing.”
“Why, that’s a nigger’s place, kid. Ain’t you scared to take a nigger’s place?”
“Why, sir?”
“Don’t you know about hoodoos?”
“What I want,” said Hal, “is the nigger’s pay.”
“No,” said the boss, abruptly, “you stick by them mules. I got a good stableman, and I don’t want to spoil him. You stick, and by and by I’ll give you a raise. You go into them pits, the first thing you know you’ll get a fall of rock on your head, and the nigger’s pay won’t be no good to you.”
They came to the saloon and entered. Hal noted that a silence fell within, and everyone nodded and watched. It was pleasant to be seen going out with one’s boss.
O’Callahan, the proprietor, came forward with his best society smile and joined them, and at Hal’s invitation they ordered whiskies. “No, you stick to your job,” continued the pit-boss. “You stay by it, and when you’ve learned to manage mules, I’ll make a boss out of you, and let you manage men.”
Some of the bystanders tittered. The pit-boss poured down his whiskey, and set the glass on the bar. “That’s no joke,” said he, in a tone that everyone could hear. “I learned that long ago about niggers. They’d say to me, ‘For God’s sake, don’t talk to our niggers like that. Some night you’ll have your house set afire.’ But I said, ‘Pet a nigger, and you’ve got a spoiled nigger.’ I’d say, ‘Nigger, don’t you give me any of your imp, or I’ll kick the breeches off you.’ And they knew I was a gentleman, and they stepped lively.”
“Have another drink,” said Hal.
The pit-boss drank, and becoming more sociable, told nigger stories. On the sugar-plantations there was a rush season, when the rule was twenty hours’ work a day; when some of the niggers tried to shirk it, they would arrest them for swearing or crap-shooting, and work them as convicts, without pay. The pit-boss told how one “buck” had been brought before the justice of the peace, and the charge read, “being cross-eyed”; for which offence he had been sentenced to sixty days’ hard labour. This anecdote was enjoyed by the men in the saloon—whose race-feelings seemed to be stronger than their class-feelings.
When the pair went out again, it was late, and the boss was cordial. “Mr. Stone,” began Hal, “I don’t want to bother you, but I’d like first rate to get more pay. If you could see your way to let me have that buddy’s job, I’d be more than glad to divide with you.”
“Divide with me?” said Stone. “How d’ye mean?” Hal waited with some apprehension—for if Mike had not assured him so positively, he would have expected a swing from the pit-boss’s mighty arm.
“It’s worth about fifteen a month more to me. I haven’t any cash, but if you’d be willing to charge off ten dollars from my store-account, it would be well worth my while.”
They walked for a short way in silence. “Well, I’ll tell you,” said the boss, at last; “that old Slovak is a kicker—one of these fellows that thinks he could run the mine if he had a chance. And if you get to listenin’ to him, and think you can come to me and grumble, by God—”
“That’s all right, sir,” put in Hal, quickly. “I’ll manage that for you—I’ll shut him up. If you’d like me to, I’ll see what fellows he talks with, and if any of them are trying to make trouble, I’ll tip you off.”
“Now that’s the talk,” said the boss, promptly. “You do that, and I’ll keep my eye on you and give you a chance. Not that I’m afraid of the old fellow—I told him last time that if I heard from him again, I’d kick the breeches off him. But when you got half a thousand of this foreign scum, some of them Anarchists, and some of them Bulgars and Montynegroes that’s been fightin’ each other at home—”
“I understand,” said Hal. “You have to watch ’em.”
“That’s it,” said the pit-boss. “And by the way, when you tell the store-clerk about that fifteen dollars, just say you lost it at poker.”
“I said ten dollars,” put in Hal, quickly.
“Yes, I know,” responded the other. “But I said fifteen!”
XXII
Hal told himself with satisfaction that he was now to do the real work of coal-mining. His imagination had been occupied with it for a long time; but as so often happens in the life of man, the first contact with reality killed the results of many years’ imagining. It killed all imagining, in fact; Hal found that his entire stock of energy, both mental and physical, was consumed in enduring torment. If anyone had told him the horror of attempting to work in a room five feet high, he would not have believed it. It was like some of the dreadful devices of torture which one saw in European castles, the “iron maiden” and the “spiked collar.” Hal’s back burned as if hot irons were being run up and down it; every separate joint and muscle cried aloud. It seemed as if he could never learn the lesson of the jagged ceiling above his head—he bumped it and continued to bump it, until his scalp was a mass of cuts and bruises, and his head ached till he was nearly blind, and he would have to throw himself flat on the ground.
Then old Mike Sikoria would grin. “I
