King Coal | Page 5

down the canyon with you, and if you show your face round here again, you'll get a bullet through you."
So Hal went out into the sunshine, with a guard on each side of him as an escort. He was on the same mountain road, but in the midst of the company-village. In the distance he saw the great building of the breaker, and heard the incessant roar of machinery and falling coal. He marched past a double lane of company houses and shanties, where slattern women in doorways and dirty children digging in the dust of the roadside paused and grinned at him--for he limped as he walked, and it was evident enough what had happened to him.
Hal had come with love and curiosity. The love was greatly diminished--evidently this was not the force which kept the wheels of industry a-roll. But the curiosity was greater than ever. What was there so carefully hidden inside this coal-camp stockade?
Hal turned and looked at Bill, who had showed signs of humour the day before. "See here," said he, "you fellows have got my money, and you've blacked my eye and kicked me blue, so you ought to be satisfied. Before I go, tell me about it, won't you?"
"Tell you what?" growled Bill.
"Why did I get this?"
"Because you're too gay, kid. Didn't you know you had no business trying to sneak in here?"
"Yes," said Hal; "but that's not what I mean. Why didn't you let me in at first?"
"If you wanted a job in a mine," demanded the man, "why didn't you go at it in the regular way?"
"I didn't know the regular way."
"That's just it. And we wasn't takin' chances with you. You didn't look straight."
"But what did you think I was? What are you afraid of?"
"Go on!" said the man. "You can't work me!"
Hal walked a few steps in silence, pondering how to break through. "I see you're suspicious of me," he said. "I'll tell you the truth, if you'll let me." Then, as the other did not forbid him, "I'm a college boy, and I wanted to see life and shift for myself a while. I thought it would be a lark to come here."
"Well," said Bill, "this ain't no foot-ball field. It's a coal-mine."
Hal saw that his story had been accepted. "Tell me straight," he said, "what did you think I was?"
"Well, I don't mind telling," growled Bill. "There's union agitators trying to organise these here camps, and we ain't taking no chances with 'em. This company gets its men through agencies, and if you'd went and satisfied them, you'd 'a been passed in the regular way. Or if you'd went to the office down in Pedro and got a pass, you'd 'a been all right. But when a guy turns up at the gate, and looks like a dude and talks like a college perfessor, he don't get by, see?"
"I see," said Hal. And then, "If you'll give me the price of a breakfast out of my money, I'll be obliged."
"Breakfast is over," said Bill. "You sit round till the pinyons gets ripe." He laughed; but then, mellowed by his own joke, he took a quarter from his pocket and passed it to Hal. He opened the padlock on the gate and saw him out with a grin; and so ended Hal's first turn on the wheels of industry.

SECTION 3.
Hal Warner started to drag himself down the road, but was unable to make it. He got as far as a brooklet that came down the mountain-side, from which he might drink without fear of typhoid; there he lay the whole day, fasting. Towards evening a thunder-storm came up, and he crawled under the shelter of a rock, which was no shelter at all. His single blanket was soon soaked through, and he passed a night almost as miserable as the previous one. He could not sleep, but he could think, and he thought about what had happened to him. "Bill" had said that a coal mine was not a foot-ball field, but it seemed to Hal that the net impress of the two was very much the same. He congratulated himself that his profession was not that of a union organiser.
At dawn he dragged himself up, and continued his journey, weak from cold and unaccustomed lack of food. In the course of the day he reached a power-station near the foot of the canyon. He did not have the price of a meal, and was afraid to beg; but in one of the group of buildings by the roadside was a store, and he entered and inquired concerning prunes, which were twenty-five cents a pound. The price was high, but so was the altitude, and as Hal found in the course of time, they explained the one by