Morning came, and the mine-whistle blew, and Hal stood at the window
again. This time he noticed that some of the miners on their way to work
had little strips of paper in their hands, which strips they waved
conspicuously for him to see. Old Mike Sikoria came along, having a
whole bunch of strips in his hands, which he was distributing to all who
would take them. Doubtless he had been warned to proceed secretly, but
the excitement of the occasion had been too much for him; he capered
about like a young spring lamb, and waved the strips at Hal in plain
sight of all the world.
Such indiscreet behaviour met the return it invited. As Hal watched, he
saw a stocky figure come striding round the corner, confronting the
startled old Slovak. It was Bud Adams, the mine-guard, and his hard
fists were clenched, and his whole body gathered for a blow. Mike saw
him, and was as if suddenly struck with paralysis; his toil-bent
shoulders sunk together, and his hands fell to his sides--his fingers
opening, and his precious strips of paper fluttering to the ground. Mike
stared at Bud like a fascinated rabbit, making no move to protect
himself.
Hal clutched the bars, with an impulse to leap to his friend’s defence.
But the expected blow did not fall; the mine-guard contented himself
with glaring ferociously, and giving an order to the old man. Mike
stooped and picked up the papers--the process taking him some time, as
he was unable or unwilling to take his eyes off the mine-guard’s. When
he got them all in his hands, there came another order, and he gave them
up to Bud. After which he fell back a step, and the other followed, his
fists still clenched, and a blow seeming about to leap from him every
moment. Mike receded another step, and then another--so the two of them
backed out of sight around the corner. Men who had been witnesses of
this little drama turned and slunk off, and Hal was given no clue as to
its outcome.
A couple of hours afterwards, Hal’s jailer came up, this time without
any bread and water. He opened the door and commanded the prisoner to
“come along.” Hal went downstairs, and entered Jeff Cotton’s office.
The camp-marshal sat at his desk with a cigar between his teeth. He was
writing, and he went on writing until the jailer had gone out and closed
the door. Then he turned his revolving chair and crossed his legs,
leaning back and looking at the young miner in his dirty blue overalls,
his hair tousled and his face pale from his period of confinement. The
camp-marshal’s aristocratic face wore a smile. “Well, young fellow,”
said he, “you’ve been having a lot of fun in this camp.”
“Pretty fair, thank you,” answered Hal.
“Beat us out all along the line, hey?” Then, after a pause, “Now, tell
me, what do you think you’re going to get out of it?”
“That’s what Alec Stone asked me,” replied Hal. “I don’t think it would
do much good to explain. I doubt if you believe in altruism any more
than Stone does.”
The camp-marshal took his cigar from his mouth, and flicked off the
ashes. His face became serious, and there was a silence, while he
studied Hal. “You a union organiser?” he asked, at last.
“No,” said Hal.
“You’re an educated man; you’re no labourer, that I know. Who’s paying
you?”
“There you are! You don’t believe in altruism.”
The other blew a ring of smoke across the room. “Just want to put the
company in the hole, hey? Some kind of agitator?”
“I am a miner who wants to be a check-weighman.”
“Socialist?”
“That depends upon developments here.”
“Well,” said the marshal, “you’re an intelligent chap, that I can see.
So I’ll lay my hand on the table and you can study it. You’re not going
to serve as check-weighman in North Valley, nor any other place that the
‘G. F. C.’ has anything to do with. Nor are you going to have the
satisfaction of putting the company in a hole. We’re not even going to
beat you up and make a martyr of you. I was tempted to do that the other
night, but I changed my mind.”
“You might change the bruises on my arm,” suggested Hal, in a pleasant
voice.
“We’re going to offer you the choice of two things,” continued the
marshal, without heeding this mild sarcasm. “Either you will sign a
paper admitting that you took the twenty-five dollars from Alec Stone,
in which case we will fire you and call it square; or else we will prove
that you took it, in which case we will send you to the pen for five or
ten years. Do you get that?”
Now when Hal had applied for the job of check-weighman, he had been
expecting to be thrown out of the camp, and had intended to go, counting
his education complete. But here, as he sat and gazed into the marshal’s
menacing eyes, he decided suddenly that he did not want to leave North
Valley. He wanted to stay and take the measure of this gigantic
“burglar,” the General Fuel Company.
“That’s a serious threat, Mr. Cotton,” he remarked. “Do you often do
things like that?”
“We do them when we have to,” was the reply.
“Well, it’s a novel proposition. Tell me more about it. What will the
charge be?”
“I’m not sure about that--we’ll put it up to our lawyers. Maybe they’ll
call it conspiracy, maybe blackmail. They’ll make it whatever carries a
long enough sentence.”
“And before I enter my plea, would you mind letting me see the letter
I’m supposed to have written.”
“Oh, you’ve heard about the letter, have you?” said the camp-marshal,
lifting his eyebrows in mild surprise. He took from his desk a sheet of
paper and handed it to Hal, who read:
“Dere mister Stone, You don’t need worry about the check-wayman. Pay me
twenty five dollars, and I will fix it right. Yours try, Joe Smith.”
Having taken in the words of the letter, Hal examined the paper, and
perceived that his enemies had taken the trouble, not merely to forge a
letter in his name, but to have it photographed, to have a cut made of
the photograph, and to have it printed. Beyond doubt they had
distributed it broadcast in the camp. And all this in a few hours! It
was as Olson had said--a regular system to keep the men bedevilled.