King Coal

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"I wanted to work while I was young," said he, "but now I'm cured, an'
fer good." The world had come to seem to him a place especially
constructed for the purpose of making him work, and every faculty he
possessed was devoted to foiling this plot. Sitting by a camp-fire near
the stream which ran down the valley, Hal had a merry time pointing out
to "Dutch Mike" how he worked harder at dodging work than other men
worked at working. The hobo did not seem to mind that, however--it was a
matter of principle with him, and he was willing to make sacrifices for
his convictions. Even when they had sent him to the work-house, he had
refused to work; he had been shut in a dungeon, and had nearly died on a
diet of bread and water, rather than work. If everybody would do the
same, he said, they would soon "bust things."

Hal took a fancy to this spontaneous revolutionist, and travelled with
him for a couple of days, in the course of which he pumped him as to
details of the life of a miner. Most of the companies used regular
employment agencies, as the guard had mentioned; but the trouble was,
these agencies got something from your pay for a long time--the bosses
were "in cahoots" with them. When Hal wondered if this were not against
the law, "Cut it out, Bo!" said his companion. "When you've had a job
for a while, you'll know that the law in a coal-camp is what your boss
tells you." The hobo went on to register his conviction that when one
man has the giving of jobs, and other men have to scramble for them, the
law would never have much to say in the deal. Hal judged this a profound
observation, and wished that it might be communicated to the professor
of political economy at Harrigan.

On the second night of his acquaintance with "Dutch Mike," their
"jungle" was raided by a constable with half a dozen deputies; for a
determined effort was being made just then to drive vagrants from the
neighbourhood--or to get them to work in the mines. Hal's friend, who
slept with one eye open, made a break in the darkness, and Hal followed
him, getting under the guard of the raiders by a foot-ball trick. They
left their food and blankets behind them, but "Dutch Mike" made light of
this, and lifted a chicken from a roost to keep them cheerful through
the night hours, and stole a change of underclothing off a clothes-line
the next day. Hal ate the chicken, and wore the underclothing, thus
beginning his career in crime.

Parting from "Dutch Mike," he went back to Pedro. The hobo had told him
that saloon-keepers nearly always had friends in the coal-camps, and
could help a fellow to a job. So Hal began enquiring, and the second one
replied, Yes, he would give him a letter to a man at North Valley, and
if he got the job, the friend would deduct a dollar a month from his
pay. Hal agreed, and set out upon another tramp up another canyon, upon
the strength of a sandwich "bummed" from a ranch-house at the entrance
to the valley. At another stockaded gate of the General Fuel Company he
presented his letter, addressed to a person named O'Callahan, who turned
out also to be a saloon-keeper.

The guard did not even open the letter, but passed Hal in at sight of
it, and he sought out his man and applied for work. The man said he
would help him, but would have to deduct a dollar a month for himself,
as well as a dollar for his friend in Pedro. Hal kicked at this, and
they bartered back and forth; finally, when Hal turned away and
threatened to appeal directly to the "super," the saloon-keeper
compromised on a dollar and a half.

"You know mine-work?" he asked.

"Brought up at it," said Hal, made wise, now, in the ways of the world.

"Where did you work?"

Hal named several mines, concerning which he had learned something from
the hoboes. He was going by the name of "Joe Smith," which he judged
likely to be found on the payroll of any mine. He had more than a week's
growth of beard to disguise him, and had picked up some profanity as
well.

The saloon-keeper took him to interview Mr. Alec Stone, pit-boss in
Number Two mine, who inquired promptly: "You know anything about mules?"

"I worked in a stable," said Hal, "I know about horses."

"Well, mules is different," said the man. "One of my stable-men got the
colic the other day, and I don't know if he'll ever be any good again."

"Give me a chance," said Hal. "I'll manage them."

The boss looked him over. "You look like a bright chap," said he. "I'll
pay you forty-five a month, and if you make good I'll make it fifty."

"All right, sir. When do I start in?"

"You can't start too quick to suit me. Where's your duds?"

"This is all I've got," said Hal, pointing to the bundle of stolen
underwear in his hand.

"Well, chuck it there in the corner," said the man; then suddenly he
stopped, and looked at Hal, frowning. "You belong to any union?"

"Lord, no!"

"Did you _ever_ belong to any union?"

"No, sir. Never."

The man's gaze seemed to imply that Hal was lying, and that his secret
soul was about to be read. "You have to swear to that, you know, before
you can work here."

"All right," said Hal, "I'm willing."

"I'll see you about it to-morrow," said the other. "I ain't got the
paper with me. By the way, what's your religion?"

"Seventh Day Adventist."

"Holy Christ! What's that?"

"It don't hurt," said Hal. "I ain't supposed to work on Saturdays, but I
do."

"Well, don't you go preachin' it round here. We got our own
preacher--you chip in fifty cents a month for him out of your wages.
Come ahead now, and I'll take you down." And so it was that Hal got his
start in life.

SECTION 5.

The mule is notoriously a profane and godless creature; a blind alley of
Nature, so to speak, a mistake of which she is ashamed, and which she
does not permit to reproduce itself. The thirty mules under Hal's charge
had been brought up in an environment calculated to foster the worst
tendencies of their natures. He soon made the discovery that the "colic"
of his predecessor had been caused by a mule's hind foot in the stomach;
and he realised that he must not let his mind wander for an instant, if
he were to avoid this dangerous disease.

These mules lived their lives in the darkness of the earth's interior;
only when they fell sick were they taken up to see the sunlight and to
roll about in green pastures. There was one of them called "Dago
Charlie," who had learned to chew tobacco, and to rummage in the pockets
of the miners and their "buddies." Not knowing how to spit out the
juice, he would make himself ill, and then he would swear off from
indulgence. But the drivers and the pit-boys knew his failing, and would
tempt "Dago Charlie" until he fell from grace. Hal soon discovered this
moral tragedy, and carried the pain of it in his soul as he went about
his all-day drudgery.

He went down the shaft with the first cage, which was very early in the
morning. He fed and watered his charges, and helped to harness them.
Then, when the last four hoofs had clattered away, he cleaned out the
stalls, and mended harness, and obeyed the orders of any person older
than himself who happened to be about.

Next to the mules, his torment was the "trapper-boys," and other
youngsters with whom he came into contact. He was a newcomer, and so
they hazed him; moreover, he had an inferior job--there seemed to their
minds to be something humiliating and comic about the task of tending
mules. These urchins came from a score of nations of Southern Europe and
Asia; there were flat-faced Tartars and swarthy Greeks and shrewd-eyed
little Japanese. They spoke a compromise language, consisting mainly of
English curse words and obscenities; the filthiness which their minds
had spawned was incredible to one born and raised in the sunlight. They
alleged obscenities of their mothers and their grandmothers; also of the
Virgin Mary, the one mythological character they had heard of. Poor
little creatures of the dark, their souls grimed and smutted even more
quickly and irrevocably than their faces!

Hal had been advised by his boss to inquire for board at "Reminitsky's."
He came up in the last car, at twilight, and was directed to a dimly
lighted building of corrugated iron, where upon inquiry he was met by a
stout Russian, who told him he could be taken care of for twenty-seven
dollars a month, this including a cot in a room with eight other single
men. After deducting a dollar and a half a month for his saloon-keepers,
fifty cents for the company clergyman and a dollar for the company
doctor, fifty cents a month for wash-house privileges and fifty cents
for a sick and accident benefit fund, he had fourteen dollars a month
with which to clothe himself, to found a family, to provide himself with
beer and tobacco, and to patronise the libraries and colleges endowed by
the philanthropic owners of coal mines.

Supper was nearly over at Reminitsky's when he arrived; the floor looked
like the scene of a cannibal picnic, and what food was left was cold. It
was always to be this way with him, he found, and he had to make the
best of it. The dining-room of this boarding-house, owned and managed by
the G. F. C., brought to his mind the state prison, which he had once
visited--with its rows of men sitting in silence, eating starch and
grease out of tin-plates. The plates here were of crockery half an inch
thick, but the starch and grease never failed; the formula of
Reminitsky's cook seemed to be, When in doubt add grease, and boil it
in. Even ravenous as Hal was after his long tramp and his labour below
ground, he could hardly swallow this food. On Sundays, the only time he
ate by daylight, the flies swarmed over everything, and he remembered
having heard a physician say that an enlightened man should be more
afraid of a fly than of a Bengal tiger. The boarding-house provided him
with a cot and a supply of vermin, but with no blanket, which was a
necessity in the mountain regions. So after supper he had to seek out
his boss, and arrange to get credit at the company-store. They were
willing to give a certain amount of credit, he found, as this would
enable the camp-marshal to keep him from straying. There was no law to
hold a man for debt--but Hal knew by this time how much a camp-marshal
cared for law.

SECTION 6.

For three days Hal toiled in the bowels of the mine, and ate and pursued
vermin at Reminitsky's. Then came a blessed Sunday, and he had a couple
of free hours to see the sunlight and to get a look at the North Valley
camp. It was a village straggling along more than a mile of the mountain
canyon. In the centre were the great breaker-buildings, the shaft-house,
and the power-house with its tall chimneys; nearby were the
company-store and a couple of saloons. There were several
boarding-houses like Reminitsky's, and long rows of board cabins
containing from two to four rooms each, some of them occupied by several
families. A little way up a slope stood a school-house, and another
small one-room building which served as a church; the clergyman
belonging to the General Fuel Company denomination. He was given the use
of the building, by way of start over the saloons, which had to pay a
heavy rental to the company; it seemed a proof of the innate perversity
of human nature that even in spite of this advantage, heaven was losing
out in the struggle against hell in the coal-camp.

As one walked through this village, the first impression was of
desolation. The mountains towered, barren and lonely, scarred with the
wounds of geologic ages. In these canyons the sun set early in the
afternoon, the snow came early in the fall; everywhere Nature's hand
seemed against man, and man had succumbed to her power. Inside the camps
one felt a still more cruel desolation--that of sordidness and
animalism. There were a few pitiful attempts at vegetable-gardens, but
the cinders and smoke killed everything, and the prevailing colour was
of grime. The landscape was strewn with ash-heaps, old wire and
tomato-cans, and smudged and smutty children playing.

There was a part of the camp called "shanty-town," where, amid miniature
mountains of slag, some of the lowest of the newly-arrived foreigners
had been permitted to build themselves shacks out of old boards, tin,
and sheets of tar-paper. These homes were beneath the dignity of
chicken-houses, yet in some of them a dozen people were crowded, men and
women sleeping on old rags and blankets on a cinder floor. Here the
babies swarmed like maggots. They wore for the most part a single ragged
smock, and their bare buttocks were shamelessly upturned to the heavens.
It was so the children of the cave-men must have played, thought Hal;
and waves of repulsion swept over him. He had come with love and
curiosity, but both motives failed here. How could a man of sensitive
nerves, aware of the refinements and graces of life, learn to love these
people, who were an affront to his every sense--a stench to his
nostrils, a jabbering to his ear, a procession of deformities to his
eye? What had civilisation done for them? What could it do? After all,
what were they fit for, but the dirty work they were penned up to do? So
spoke the haughty race-consciousness of the Anglo-Saxon, contemplating
these Mediterranean hordes, the very shape of whose heads was
objectionable.

But Hal stuck it out; and little by little new vision came to him. First
of all, it was the fascination of the mines. They were old mines--veritable
cities tunnelled out beneath the mountains, the main passages running
for miles. One day Hal stole off from his job, and took a trip with a
"rope-rider," and got through his physical senses a realisation of the
vastness and strangeness and loneliness of this labyrinth of night. In
Number Two mine the vein ran up at a slope of perhaps five degrees; in
part of it the empty cars were hauled in long trains by an endless rope,
but coming back loaded, they came of their own gravity. This involved
much work for the "spraggers," or boys who did the braking; it sometimes
meant run-away cars, and fresh perils added to the everyday perils of
coal-mining.

The vein varied from four to five feet in thickness; a cruelty of nature
which made it necessary that the men at the "working face"--the place
where new coal was being cut--should learn to shorten their stature.
After Hal had squatted for a while and watched them at their tasks, he
understood why they walked with head and shoulders bent over and arms
hanging down, so that, seeing them coming out of the shaft in the
gloaming, one thought of a file of baboons. The method of getting out
the coal was to "undercut" it with a pick, and then blow it loose with a
charge of powder. This meant that the miner had to lie on his side while
working, and accounted for other physical peculiarities.

Thus, as always, when one understood the lives of men, one came to pity
instead of despising. Here was a separate race of creatures,
subterranean, gnomes, pent up by society for purposes of its own.
Outside in the sunshine-flooded canyon, long lines of cars rolled down
with their freight of soft-coal; coal which would go to the ends of the
earth, to places the miner never heard of, turning the wheels of
industry whose products the miner would never see. It would make
precious silks for fine ladies, it would cut precious jewels for their
adornment; it would carry long trains of softly upholstered cars across
deserts and over mountains; it would drive palatial steamships out of
wintry tempests into gleaming tropic seas. And the fine ladies in their
precious silks and jewels would eat and sleep and laugh and lie at
ease--and would know no more of the stunted creatures of the dark than
the stunted creatures knew of them. Hal reflected upon this, and subdued
his Anglo-Saxon pride, finding forgiveness for what was repulsive in
these people--their barbarous, jabbering speech, their vermin-ridden
homes, their bare-bottomed babies.

SECTION 7.

It chanced before many days that Hal got a holiday, relieving the
monotony of his labours as stableman: an accidental holiday, not
provided for in his bargain with the pit-boss. Something went wrong with
the ventilating-course in Number Two, and he began to notice a headache,
and heard the men grumbling that their lamps were burning low. Then, as
matters began to get serious, orders came to get the mules to the
surface.

Which meant an amusing adventure. The delight of Hal's pets at seeing
the sunlight was irresistibly comic. They could not be kept from lying
down and rolling on their backs in the cinder-strewn street; and when
they were corralled in a distant part of the camp where actual grass
grew, they abandoned themselves to rapture like a horde of school
children at a picnic.

So Hal had a few free hours; and being still young and not cured of idle
curiosities, he climbed the canyon wall to see the mountains. As he was
sliding down again, toward evening, a vivid spot of colour was painted
into his picture of mine-life; he found himself in somebody's back yard,
and being observed by somebody's daughter, who was taking in the family
wash. It was a splendid figure of a lass, tall and vigorous, with the
sort of hair that in polite circles is called auburn, and that flaming
colour in the cheeks which is Nature's recompense to people who live
where it rains all the time. She was the first beautiful sight Hal had
seen since he had come up the canyon, and it was only natural that he
should be interested. It seemed to him that, so long as the girl stared,
he had a right to stare back. It did not occur to him that he too was a
pleasing sight--that the mountain air had given colour to his cheeks and
a shine to his gay brown eyes, while the mountain winds had blown his
wavy brown hair.

"Hello," said she, at last, in a warm voice, unmistakably Irish.

"Hello yourself," said Hal, in the accepted dialect; then he added, with
more elegance, "Pardon me for trespassing on your wash."

Her grey eyes opened wider. "Go on!" she said.

"I'd rather stay," said Hal. "It's a beautiful sunset."

"I'll move, so ye can see it better." She carried her armful of clothes
over and dropped them into the basket.

"No," said Hal, "it's not so fine now. The colours have faded."

She turned and gazed at him again. "Go on wid ye! I been teased about my
hair since before I could talk."

"'Tis envy," said Hal, dropping into her way of speech; and he came a
few steps nearer, so that he could inspect the hair more closely. It lay
above her brow in undulations which were agreeable to the decorative
instinct, and a tight heavy braid of it fell over her shoulders and
swung to her waist-line. He observed the shoulders, which were sturdy,
obviously accustomed to hard labour; not conforming to accepted romantic
standards of femininity, yet having an athletic grace of their own. They
were covered with a faded blue calico dress, unfortunately not entirely
clean; also, the young man noticed, there was a rent in one shoulder
through which a patch of skin was visible. The girl's eyes, which had
been following his, became defiant; she tossed a piece of her washing
over the shoulder, where it stayed through the balance of the interview.

"Who are ye?" she demanded, suddenly.

"My name's Joe Smith. I'm a stableman in Number Two."

"And what were ye doin' up there, if a body might ask?" She lifted her
grey eyes to the bare mountainside, down which he had come sliding in a
shower of loose stones and dirt.

"I've been surveying my empire," said he.

"Your what?"

"My empire. The land belongs to the company, but the landscape belongs
to him who cares for it."

She tossed her head a little. "Where did ye learn to talk like ye do?"

"In another life," said he--"before I became a stableman. Not in entire
forgetfulness, but trailing clouds of glory did I come."

For a moment she wrestled with this. Then a smile broke upon her face.
"Sure, 'tis like a poetry-book! Say some more!"

"_O, singe fort, so suess und fein_!" quoted Hal--and saw her look
puzzled.

"Aren't you American?" she inquired; and he laughed. To speak a foreign
language in North Valley was not a mark of culture!

"I've been listening to the crowd at Reminitsky's," he said,
apologetically.

"Oh! You eat there?"

"I go there three times a day. I can't say I eat very much. Could you
live on greasy beans?"

"Sure," laughed the girl, "the good old pertaties is good enough for
me."

"I should have said you lived on rose leaves!" he observed.

"Go on wid ye! 'Tis the blarney-stone ye been kissin'!"

"'Tis no stone I'd be wastin' my kisses on."

"Ye're gettin' bold, Mister Smith. I'll not listen to ye." And she
turned away, and began industriously taking her clothes from the line.
But Hal did not want to be dismissed. He came a step closer.

"Coming down the mountain-side," he said, "I found something wonderful.
It's bare and grim up there, but I came on a sheltered corner where the
sun shone, and there was a wild rose. Only one! I thought to myself, 'So
roses grow, even in the loneliest parts of the world!'"

"Sure, 'tis a poetry-book again!" she cried. "Why didn't ye bring the
rose?"

"There is a poetry-book that tells us to 'leave the wild-rose on its
stalk.' It will go on blooming there; but if one were to pluck it, it
would wither in a few hours."

He had meant nothing more by this than to keep the conversation going.
But her answer turned the tide of their acquaintance.

"Ye can never be sure, lad. Perhaps to-night a storm may come and blow
it to pieces. Perhaps if ye'd pulled it and been happy, 'twould 'a been
what the rose was for."

Whatever of unconscious patronage there had been in the poet's attitude
was lost now in the eternal mystery. Whether the girl knew it--or
cared--she had won the woman's first victory. She had caught the man's
mind and pinned it with curiosity. What did this wild rose of the mining
camps mean?

The wild rose, apparently unconscious that she had said anything
epoch-making, was busy with the wash; and meantime Hal Warner studied
her features and pondered her words. From a lady of sophistication they
would have meant only one thing, an invitation; but in this girl's clear
grey eyes was nothing of wantonness, only pain. But what was this pain
in the face and words of one so young, so eager and alive? Was it the
melancholy of her race, the thing one got in old folk-songs? Or was it a
new and special kind of melancholy, engendered in mining-camps in the
far West of America?

The girl's countenance was as intriguing as her words. Her grey eyes
were set under sharply defined dark brows, which did not match her hair.
Her lips also were sharply defined, and straight, almost without curves,
so that it seemed as if her mouth had been painted in carmine upon her
face. These features gave her, when she stared at you, an aspect vivid
and startling, bold, with a touch of defiance. But when she smiled, the
red lips would curve into gentler lines, and the grey eyes would become
wistful, and seemingly darker in colour. Winsome indeed, but not simple,
was this Irish lass!

SECTION 8.

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 mountain-side!

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