King Coal | Page 8

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