King Coal

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Then he put her on the train, and shook hands with the departing guests.
He was so very sombre and harassed-looking that the young men forbore to
"kid" him as they would otherwise have done. He stood on the
station-platform and saw the train roll away--and felt, to his own
desperate bewilderment, that he hated these friends of his boyhood and
youth. His reason protested against it; he told himself there was
nothing they could do, no reason on earth for them to stay--and yet he
hated them. They were hurrying off to dance and flirt at the country
club--while he was going back to the pit-mouth, to try to get Mrs.
Zamboni the right to inspect the pieces of her "man"!

BOOK FOUR

THE WILL OF KING COAL

SECTION 1.

The pit of death was giving up its secrets. The hoist was busy, and
cage-load after cage-load came up, with bodies dead and bodies living
and bodies only to be classified after machines had pumped air into them
for a while. Hal stood in the rain and watched the crowd and thought
that he had never witnessed a scene so compelling to pity and terror.
The silence that would fall when any one appeared who might have news to
tell! The sudden shriek of anguish from some woman whose hopes were
struck dead! The moans of sympathy that ran through the crowd,
alternating with cheers at some good tidings, shaking the souls of the
multitude as a storm of wind shakes a reed-field!

And the stories that ran through the camp--brought up from the
underground world--stories of incredible sufferings, and of still more
incredible heroisms! Men who had been four days without food or water,
yet had resisted being carried out of the mine, proposing to stay and
help rescue others! Men who had lain together in the darkness and
silence, keeping themselves alive by the water which seeped from the
rocks overhead, taking turns lying face upwards where the drops fell, or
wetting pieces of their clothing and sucking out the moisture! Members
of the rescue parties would tell how they knocked upon the barriers, and
heard the faint answering signals of the imprisoned men; how madly they
toiled to cut through, and how, when at last a little hole appeared,
they heard the cries of joy, and saw the eyes of men shining from the
darkness, while they waited, gasping, for the hole to grow bigger, so
that water and food might be passed in!

In some places they were fighting the fire. Long lines of hose had been
sent down, and men were moving forward foot by foot, as the smoke and
steam were sucked out ahead of them by the fan. Those who did this work
were taking their lives in their hands, yet they went without
hesitation. There was always hope of finding men in barricaded rooms
beyond.

Hal sought out Jeff Cotton at the entrance to the tipple-room, which had
been turned into a temporary hospital. It was the first time the two had
met since the revelation in Percy's car, and the camp-marshal's face
took on a rather sheepish grin. "Well, Mr. Warner, you win," he
remarked; and after a little arguing he agreed to permit a couple of
women to go into the tipple-room and make a list of the injured, and go
out and give the news to the crowd. Hal went to the Minettis to ask Mary
Burke to attend to this; but Rosa said that Mary had gone out after he
and Miss Arthur had left, and no one knew where she was. So Hal went to
Mrs. David, who consented to get a couple of friends, and do the work
without being called a "committee." "I won't have any damned
committees!" the camp-marshal had declared.

So the night passed, and part of another day. A clerk from the office
came to Hal with a sealed envelope, containing a telegram, addressed in
care of Cartwright. "I most urgently beg of you to come home at once. It
will be distressing to Dad if he hears what has happened, and it will
not be possible to keep the matter from him for long."

As Hal read, he frowned; evidently the Harrigans had got busy without
delay! He went to the office and telephoned his answer. "Am planning to
leave in a day or two. Trust you will make an effort to spare Dad until
you have heard my story."

This message troubled Hal. It started in his mind long arguments with
his brother, and explanations and apologies to his father. He loved the
old man tenderly. What a shame if some emissary of the Harrigans were to
get to him to upset him with misrepresentations!

Also these ideas had a tendency to make Hal homesick; they brought more
vividly to his thoughts the outside world, with its physical
allurements--there being a limit to the amount of unwholesome meals and
dirty beds and repulsive sights a man of refinement can force himself to
endure. Hal found himself obsessed by a vision of a club dining-room,
with odours of grilled steaks and hot rolls, and the colours of salads
and fresh fruits and cream. The conviction grew suddenly strong in him
that his work in North Valley was nearly done!

Another night passed, and another day. The last of the bodies had been
brought out, and the corpses shipped down to Pedro for one of those big
wholesale funerals which are a feature of mine-life. The fire was out,
and the rescue-crews had given place to a swarm of carpenters and
timbermen, repairing the damage and making the mine safe. The reporters
had gone; Billy Keating having clasped Hal's hand, and promised to meet
him for luncheon at the club. An agent of the "Red Cross" was on hand,
and was feeding the hungry out of Mrs. Curtis's subscription-list. What
more was there for Hal to do--except to bid good-bye to his friends, and
assure them of his help in the future?

First among these friends was Mary Burke, whom he had had no chance to
talk to since the meeting with Jessie. He realised that Mary had been
deliberately avoiding him. She was not in her home, and he went to
inquire at the Rafferties', and stopped for a good-bye chat with the old
woman whose husband he had saved.

Rafferty was going to pull through. His wife had been allowed in to see
him, and tears rolled down her shrunken cheeks as she told about it. He
had been four days and nights blocked up in a little tunnel, with no
food or water, save for a few drops of coffee which he had shared with
other men. He could still not speak, he could hardly move a hand; but
there was life in his eyes, and his look had been a greeting from the
soul she had loved and served these thirty years and more. Mrs. Rafferty
sang praises to the Rafferty God, who had brought him safely through
these perils; it seemed obvious that He must be more efficient than the
Protestant God of Johannson, the giant Swede, who had lain by Rafferty's
side and given up the ghost.

But the doctor had stated that the old Irishman would never be good to
work again; and Hal saw a shadow of terror cross the sunshine of Mrs.
Rafferty's rejoicing. How could a doctor say a thing like that? Rafferty
was old, to be sure; but he was tough--and could any doctor imagine how
hard a man would try who had a family looking to him? Sure, he was not
the one to give up for a bit of pain now and then! Besides him, there
was only Tim who was earning; and though Tim was a good lad, and worked
steady, any doctor ought to know that a big family could not be kept
going on the wages of one eighteen-year-old pit-boy. As for the other
lads, there was a law that said they were too young to work. Mrs.
Rafferty thought there should be some one to put a little sense into the
heads of them that made the laws--for if they wanted to forbid children
to work in coal-mines, they should surely provide some other way to feed
the children.

Hal listened, agreeing sympathetically, and meantime watching her, and
learning more from her actions than from her words. She had been
obedient to the teachings of her religion, to be fruitful and multiply;
she had fed three grown sons into the maw of industry, and had still
eight children and a man to care for. Hal wondered if she had ever
rested a single minute of daylight in all her fifty-four years.
Certainly not while he had been in her house! Even now, while praising
the Rafferty God and blaming the capitalist law-makers, she was getting
a supper, moving swiftly, silently, like a machine. She was lean as an
old horse that has toiled across a desert; the skin over her cheek-bones
was tight as stretched rubber, and cords stood out in her wrists like
piano-wires.

And now she was cringing before the spectre of destitution. He asked
what she would do about it, and saw the shadow of terror cross her face
again. There was one recourse from starvation, it seemed--to have her
children taken from her, and put in some institution! At the mention of
this, one of the special nightmares of the poor, the old woman began to
sob and cry again that the doctor was wrong; he would see, and Hal would
see--Old Rafferty would be back at his job in a week or two!

SECTION 2.

Hal went out on the street again. It was the hour which would have been
sunset in a level region; the tops of the mountains were touched with a
purple light, and the air was fresh and chill with early fall. Down the
darkening streets he saw a gathering of men; there was shouting, and
people running towards the place, so he hurried up, with the thought in
his mind, "What's the matter now?" There were perhaps a hundred men
crying out, their voices mingling like the sound of waves on the sea. He
could make out words: "Go on! Go on! We've had enough of it! Hurrah!"

"What's happened?" he asked, of some one on the outskirts; and the man,
recognising him, raised a cry which ran through the throng: "Joe Smith!
He's the boy for us! Come in here, Joe! Give us a speech!"

But even while Hal was asking questions, trying to get the situation
clear, other shouts had drowned out his name. "We've had enough of them
walking over us!" And somebody cried, more loudly, "Tell us about it!
Tell it again! Go on!"

A man was standing upon the steps of a building at one side. Hal stared
in amazement; it was Tim Rafferty. Of all people in the world--Tim, the
light-hearted and simple, Tim of the laughing face and the merry Irish
blue eyes! Now his sandy hair was tousled and his features distorted
with rage. "Him near dead!" he yelled. "Him with his voice gone, and
couldn't move his hand! Eleven years he's slaved for them, and near
killed in an accident that's their own fault--every man in this crowd
knows it's their own fault, by God!"

"Sure thing! You're right!" cried a chorus of voices "Tell it all!"

"They give him twenty-five dollars and his hospital expenses--and
what'll his hospital expenses be? They'll have him out on the street
again before he's able to stand. You know that--they done it to Pete
Cullen!"

"You bet they did!"

"Them damned lawyers in there--gettin' 'em to sign papers when they
don't know what they're doin'. An' me that might help him can't get
near! By Christ, I say it's too much! Are we slaves, or are we dogs,
that we have to stand such things?"

"We'll stand no more of it!" shouted one. "We'll go in there and see to
it ourselves!"

"Come on!" shouted another. "To hell with their gunmen!"

Hal pushed his way into the crowd. "Tim!" he cried. "How do you know
this?"

"There's a fellow in there seen it."

"Who?"

"I can't tell you--they'd fire him; but it's somebody you know as well
as me. He come and told me. They're beatin' me old father out of
damages!"

"They do it all the time!" shouted Wauchope, an English miner at Hal's
side. "That's why they won't let us in there."

"They done the same thing to my father!" put in another voice. Hal
recognised Andy, the Greek boy.

"And they want to start Number Two in the mornin'!" yelled Tim. "Who'll
go down there again? And with Alec Stone, him that damns the men and
saves the mules!"

"We'll not go back in them mines till they're safe!" shouted Wauchope.
"Let them sprinkle them--or I'm done with the whole business."

"And let 'em give us our weights!" cried another. "We'll have a
check-weighman, and we'll get what we earn!"

So again came the cry, "Joe Smith! Give us a speech, Joe! Soak it to
'em! You're the boy!"

Hal stood helpless, dismayed. He had counted his fight won--and here was
another beginning! The men were looking to him, calling upon him as the
boldest of the rebels. Only a few of them knew about the sudden change
in his fortunes.

Even while he hesitated, the line of battle had swept past him; the
Englishman, Wauchope, sprang upon the steps and began to address the
throng. He was one of the bowed and stunted men, but in this emergency
he developed sudden lung-power. Hal listened in astonishment; this
silent and dull-looking fellow was the last he would have picked for a
fighter. Tom Olson had sounded him out, and reported that he would hear
nothing, so they had dismissed him from mind. And here he was, shouting
terrible defiance!

"They're a set of robbers and murderers! They rob us everywhere we turn!
For my part, I've had enough of it! Have you?"

There was a roar from every one within reach of his voice. They had all
had enough.

"All right, then--we'll fight them!"

"Hurrah! Hurrah! We'll have our rights!"

Jeff Cotton came up on the run, with "Bud" Adams and two or three of the
gunmen at his heels. The crowd turned upon them, the men on the
outskirts clenching their fists, showing their teeth like angry dogs.
Cotton's face was red with rage, but he saw that he had a serious matter
in hand; he turned and went for more help--and the mob roared with
delight. Already they had begun their fight! Already they had won their
first victory!

SECTION 3.

The crowd moved down the street, shouting and cursing as it went. Some
one started to sing the Marseillaise, and others took it up, and the
words mounted to a frenzy:

"To arms! To arms, ye brave!
March on, march on, all hearts resolved
On victory or death!"

There were the oppressed of many nations in this crowd; they sang in a
score of languages, but it was the same song. They would sing a few
bars, and the yells of others would drown them out. "March on! March on!
All hearts resolved!" Some rushed away in different directions to spread
the news, and very soon the whole population of the village was on the
spot; the men waving their caps, the women lifting up their hands and
shrieking--or standing terrified, realising that babies could not be fed
upon revolutionary singing.

Tim Rafferty was raised up on the shoulders of the crowd and made to
tell his story once more. While he was telling it, his old mother came
running, and her shrieks rang above the clamour: "Tim! Tim! Come down
from there! What's the matter wid ye?" She was twisting her hands
together in an agony of fright; seeing Hal, she rushed up to him. "Get
him out of there, Joe! Sure, the lad's gone crazy! They'll turn us out
of the camp, they'll give us nothin' at all--and what'll become of us?
Mother of God, what's the matter with the b'y?" She called to Tim again;
but Tim paid no attention, if he heard her. Tim was on the march to
Versailles!

Some one shouted that they would go to the hospital to protect the
injured men from the "damned lawyers." Here was something definite, and
the crowd moved in that direction, Hal following with the stragglers,
the women and children, and the less bold among the men. He noticed some
of the clerks and salaried employes of the company; presently he saw
Jeff Cotton again, and heard him ordering these men to the office to get
revolvers.

"Big Jack" David came along with Jerry Minetti, and Hal drew back to
consult with them. Jerry was on fire. It had come--the revolt he had
been looking forward to for years! Why were they not making speeches,
getting control of the men and organising them?

Jack David voiced uncertainty. They had to consider if this outburst
could mean anything permanent.

Jerry answered that it would mean what they chose to make it mean. If
they took charge, they could guide the men and hold them together.
Wasn't that what Tom Olson had wanted?

No, said the big Welshman, Olson had been trying to organise the men
secretly, as preliminary to a revolt in all the camps. That was quite
another thing from an open movement, limited to one camp. Was there any
hope of success for such a movement? If not, they would be foolish to
start, they would only be making sure of their own expulsion.

Jerry turned to Hal. What did he think?

And so at last Hal had to speak. It was hard for him to judge, he said.
He knew so little about labour matters. It was to learn about them that
he had come to North Valley. It was a hard thing to advise men to submit
to such treatment as they had been getting; but on the other hand, any
one could see that a futile outbreak would discourage everybody, and
make it harder than ever to organise them.

So much Hal spoke; but there was more in his mind, which he could not
speak. He could not say to these men, "I am a friend of yours, but I am
also a friend of your enemy, and in this crisis I cannot make up my mind
to which side I owe allegiance. I'm bound by a duty of politeness to the
masters of your lives; also, I'm anxious not to distress the girl I am
to marry!" No, he could not say such things. He felt himself a traitor
for having them in his mind, and he could hardly bring himself to look
these men in the eye. Jerry knew that he was in some way connected with
the Harrigans; probably he had told the rest of Hal's friends, and they
had been discussing it and speculating about the meaning of it. Suppose
they should think he was a spy?

So Hal was relieved when Jack David spoke firmly. They would only be
playing the game of the enemy if they let themselves be drawn in
prematurely. They ought to have the advice of Tom Olson.

Where was Olson? Hal asked; and David explained that on the day when Hal
had been thrown out of camp, Olson had got his "time" and set out for
Sheridan, the local headquarters of the union, to report the situation.
He would probably not come back; he had got his little group together,
he had planted the seed of revolt in North Valley.

They discussed back and forth the problem of getting advice. It was
impossible to telephone from North Valley without everything they said
being listened to; but the evening train for Pedro left in a few
minutes, and "Big Jack" declared that some one ought to take it. The
town of Sheridan was only fifteen or twenty miles from Pedro, and there
would be a union official there to advise them; or they might use the
long distance telephone, and persuade one of the union leaders in
Western City to take the midnight train, and be in Pedro next morning.

Hal, still hoping to withdraw himself, put this task off on Jack David.
They emptied out the contents of their pockets, so that he might have
funds enough, and the big Welshman darted off to catch the train. In the
meantime Jerry and Hal agreed to keep in the background, and to seek out
the other members of their group and warn them to do the same.

SECTION 4.

This programme was a convenient one for Hal; but as he was to find
almost at once, it had been adopted too late. He and Jerry started after
the crowd, which had stopped in front of one of the company buildings;
and as they came nearer they heard some one making a speech. It was the
voice of a woman, the tones rising clear and compelling. They could not
see the speaker, because of the throng, but Hal recognised her voice,
and caught his companion by the arm. "It's Mary Burke!"

Mary Burke it was, for a fact; and she seemed to have the crowd in a
kind of frenzy. She would speak one sentence, and there would come a
roar from the throng; she would speak another sentence, and there would
come another roar. Hal and Jerry pushed their way in, to where they
could make out the words of this litany of rage.

"Would they go down into the pit themselves, do ye think?"

"They would not!"

"Would they be dressed in silks and laces, do ye think?"

"They would not!"

"Would they have such fine soft hands, do ye think?"

"They would not!"

"Would they hold themselves too good to look at ye?"

"They would not! They would not!"

And Mary swept on: "If only ye'd stand together, they'd come to ye on
their knees to ask for terms! But ye're cowards, and they play on your
fears! Ye're traitors, and they buy ye out! They break ye into pieces,
they do what they please with ye--and then ride off in their private
cars, and leave gunmen to beat ye down and trample on your faces! How
long will ye stand it? How long?"

The roar of the mob rolled down the street and back again. "We'll not
stand it! We'll not stand it!" Men shook their clenched fists, women
shrieked, even children shouted curses. "We'll fight them! We'll slave
no more for them!"

And Mary found a magic word. "We'll have a union!" she shouted. "We'll
get together and stay together! If they refuse us our rights, we'll know
what to answer--we'll have a _strike!_"

There was a roar like the crashing of thunder in the mountains. Yes,
Mary had found the word! For many years it had not been spoken aloud in
North Valley, but now it ran like a flash of gunpowder through the
throng. "Strike! Strike! Strike! Strike!" It seemed as if they would
never have enough of it. Not all of them had understood Mary's speech,
but they knew this word, "Strike!" They translated and proclaimed it in
Polish and Bohemian and Italian and Greek. Men waved their caps, women
waved their aprons--in the semi-darkness it was like some strange kind
of vegetation tossed by a storm. Men clasped one another's hands, the
more demonstrative of the foreigners fell upon one another's necks.
"Strike! Strike! Strike!"

"We're no longer slaves!" cried the speaker. "We're men--and we'll live
as men! We'll work as men--or we'll not work at all! We'll no longer be
a herd of cattle, that they can drive about as they please! We'll
organise, we'll stand together--shoulder to shoulder! Either we'll win
together, or we'll starve and die together! And not a man of us will
yield, not a man of us will turn traitor! Is there anybody here who'll
scab on his fellows?"

There was a howl, which might have come from a pack of wolves. Let the
man who would scab on his fellows show his dirty face in that crowd!

"Ye'll stand by the union?"

"We'll stand by it!"

"Ye'll swear?"

"We'll swear!"

She flung her arms to heaven with a gesture of passionate adjuration.
"Swear it on your lives! To stick to the rest of us, and never a man of
ye give way till ye've won! Swear! _Swear!_"

Men stood, imitating her gesture, their hands stretched up to the sky.
"We swear! We swear!"

"Ye'll not let them break ye! Ye'll not let them frighten ye!"

"No! No!"

"Stand by your word, men! Stand by it! 'Tis the one chance for your
wives and childer!" The girl rushed on--exhorting with leaping words and
passionate out-flung arms--a tall, swaying figure of furious rebellion.
Hal listened to the speech and watched the speaker, marvelling. Here was
a miracle of the human soul, here was hope born of despair! And the
crowd around her--they were sharing the wonderful rebirth; their waving
arms, their swaying forms responded to Mary as an orchestra to the baton
of a leader.

A thrill shook Hal--a thrill of triumph! He had been beaten down
himself, he had wanted to run from this place of torment; but now there
was hope in North Valley--now there would be victory, freedom!

Ever since he had come to the coal-country, the knowledge had been
growing in Hal that the real tragedy of these people's lives was not
their physical suffering, but their mental depression--the dull,
hopeless misery in their minds. This had been driven into his
consciousness day by day, both by what he saw and by what others told
him. Tom Olson had first put it into words: "Your worst troubles are
inside the heads of the fellows you're trying to help!" How could hope
be given to men in this environment of terrorism? Even Hal himself,
young and free as he was, had been brought to despair. He came from a
class which is accustomed to say, "Do this," or "Do that," and it will
be done. But these mine-slaves had never known that sense of power, of
certainty; on the contrary, they were accustomed to having their efforts
balked at every turn, their every impulse to happiness or achievement
crushed by another's will.

But here was this miracle of the human soul! Here was hope in North
Valley! Here were the people rising--and Mary Burke at their head! It
was his vision come true--Mary Burke with a glory in her face, and her
hair shining like a crown of gold! Mary Burke mounted upon a snow-white
horse, wearing a robe of white, soft and lustrous--like Joan of Arc, or
a leader in a suffrage parade! Yes, and she was at the head of a host,
he had the music of its marching in his ears!

Underneath Hal's jesting words had been a real vision, a real faith in
this girl. Since that day when he had first discovered her, a wild rose
of the mining-camp taking in the family wash, he had realised that she
was no pretty young working-girl, but a woman with a mind and a
personality. She saw farther, she felt more deeply than the average of
these wage-slaves. Her problem was the same as theirs, yet more complex.
When he had wanted to help her and had offered to get her a job, she had
made clear that what she craved was not merely relief from drudgery, but
a life with intellectual interest. So then the idea had come to him that
Mary should become a teacher, a leader of her people. She loved them,
she suffered for them and with them, and at the same time she had a mind
that was capable of seeking out the causes of their misery. But when he
had gone to her with plans of leadership, he had been met by her
corroding despair; her pessimism had seemed to mock his dreams, her
contempt for these mine-slaves had belittled his efforts in their behalf
and in hers.

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