He was amazed at her strength. He was amazed also at the vehemence of her emotion. She was calling him a crazy fool, and names even more harsh. "Have ye no more sense than a woman? Running into the mouth of a revolver like that!"
The crisis passed in a moment, for Mrs. David fell back, and then the marshal put up his weapon. But Mary continued scolding Hal, trying to drag him away. "Come on now! Come out of here!"
"But, Mary! We must do something!"
"Ye can do nothin', I tell ye! Ye'd ought to have sense enough to know it. I'll not let ye get yeself murdered! Come away now!" And half by force and half by cajoling, she got him farther down the street.
He was trying to think out the situation. Were the men in Number Two really in danger? Could it be possible that the bosses would take such a chance in cold blood? And right at this moment, with the disaster in the other mine before their eyes! He could not believe it; and meantime Mary, at his side, was declaring that the men were in no real danger--it was only Alec Stone's brutal words that had set her crazy.
"Don't ye remember the time when the air-course was blocked before, and ye helped to get up the mules yeself? Ye thought nothin' of it then, and 'tis the same now. They'll get everybody out in time!"
She was concealing her real feelings in order to keep him safe; he let her lead him on, while he tried to think of something else to do. He would think of the men in Number Two; they were his best friends, Jack David, Tim Rafferty, Wresmak, Androkulos, Klowoski. He would think of them, in their remote dungeons--breathing bad air, becoming sick and faint--in order that mules might be saved! He would stop in his tracks, and Mary would drag him on, repeating over and over, "Ye can do nothin'!
Nothin'!" And then he would think, What could he do? He had put up his best bluff to Jeff Cotton a few hours earlier, and the answer had been the muzzle of the marshal's revolver in his face. All he could accomplish now would be to bring himself to Cotton's attention, and be thrust out of camp forthwith.
SECTION 28.
They came to Mary's home; and next door was the home of the Slav woman, Mrs. Zamboni, about whom in the past she had told him so many funny stories. Mrs. Zamboni had had a new baby every year for sixteen years, and eleven of these babies were still alive. Now her husband was trapped in Number One, and she was distracted, wandering about the streets with the greater part of her brood at her heels. At intervals she would emit a howl like a tortured animal, and her brood would take it up in various timbres. Hal stopped to listen to the sounds, but Mary put her fingers into her ears and fled into the house. Hal followed her, and saw her fling herself into a chair and burst into hysterical weeping. And suddenly Hal realised what a strain this terrible affair had been upon Mary. It had been bad enough to him--but he was a man, and more able to contemplate sights of horror. Men went to their deaths in industry and war, and other men saw them go and inured themselves to the spectacle.
But women were the mothers of these men; it was women who bore them in pain, nursed them and reared them with endless patience--women could never become inured to the spectacle! Then too, the women's fate was worse. If the men were dead, that was the end of them; but the women must face the future, with its bitter memories, its lonely and desolate struggle for existence. The women must see the children suffering, dying by slow stages of deprivation.
Hal's pity for all suffering women became concentrated upon the girl beside him. He knew how tenderhearted she was. She had no man in the mine, but some day she would have, and she was suffering the pangs of that inexorable future. He looked at her, huddled in her chair, wiping away her tears with the hem of her old blue calico. She seemed unspeakably pathetic--like a child that has been hurt. She was sobbing out sentences now and then, as if to herself: "Oh, the poor women, the poor women! Did ye see the face of Mrs. Jonotch? She'd jumped into the smoking pit-mouth if they'd let her!"
"Don't suffer so, Mary!" pleaded Hal--as if he thought she could stop.
"Let me alone!" she cried. "Let me have it out!" And Hal, who had had no experience with hysteria, stood helplessly by.
"There's more misery than I ever knew there was!" she went on. "'Tis everywhere ye turn, a woman with her eyes burnin' with suffering wondering if she'll ever see her man again! Or some mother whose lad may be dying and she can do nothin' for him!"
"And neither can you do anything, Mary," Hal pleaded again. "You're only sorrowing yourself to death."
"Ye say that to me?" she cried. "And when ye were ready to let Jeff Cotton shoot ye, because you were so sorry for Mrs. David! No, the sights here nobody can stand."
He could think of nothing to answer. He drew up a chair and sat by her in silence, and after a while she began to grow calmer, and wiped away her tears, and sat gazing dully through the doorway into the dirty little street.
Hal's eyes followed hers. There were the ash-heaps and tomato-cans, there were two of Mrs. Zamboni's bedraggled brood, poking with sticks into a dump-heap--looking for something to eat, perhaps, or for something to play with. There was the dry, waste grass of the road-side, grimy with coal-dust, as was everything else in the village. What a scene!--And this girl's eyes had never a sight of anything more inspiring than this. Day in and day out, all her life long, she looked at this scene! Had he ever for a moment reproached her for her "black moods"? With such an environment could men or women be cheerful--could they dream of beauty, aspire to heights of nobility and courage, to happy service of their fellows? There was a miasma of despair over this place; it was not a real place--it was a dream-place--a horrible, distorted nightmare! It was like the black hole in the ground which haunted Hal's imagination, with men and boys at the bottom of it, dying of asphyxiation!
Suddenly it came to Hal--he wanted to get away from North Valley! To get away at all costs! The place had worn down his courage; slowly, day after day, the sight of misery and want, of dirt and disease, of hunger, oppression, despair, had eaten the soul out of him, had undermined his fine structure of altruistic theories. Yes, he wanted to escape--to a place where the sun shone, where the grass grew green, where human beings stood erect and laughed and were free. He wanted to shut from his eyes the dust and smoke of this nasty little village; to stop his ears to that tormenting sound of women wailing: "O, mein Mann! O, mein Mann!"
He looked at the girl, who sat staring before her, bent forward, her arms hanging limply over her knees.
"Mary," he said, "you must go away from here! It's no place for a tenderhearted girl to be. It's no place for any one!"
She gazed at him dully for a moment. "It was me that was tellin' _you_ to go away," she said, at last. "Ever since ye came here I been sayin'
it! Now I guess ye know what I mean."
"Yes," he said, "I do, and I want to go. But I want you to go too."
"D'ye think 'twould do me any good, Joe?" she asked. "D'ye think 'twould do me any good to get away? Could I ever forget the sights I've seen this day? Could I ever have any real, honest happiness anywhere after this?"
He tried to reassure her, but he was far from reassured himself. How would it be with him? Would he ever feel that he had a right to happiness after this? Could he take any satisfaction in a pleasant and comfortable world, knowing that it was based upon such hideous misery?
His thoughts went to that world, where careless, pleasure-loving people sought gratification of their desires. It came to him suddenly that what he wanted more than to get away was to bring those people here, if only for a day, for an hour, that they might hear this chorus of wailing women!
SECTION 29.
Mary made Hal swear that he would not get into a fight with Cotton; then they went to Number Two. They found the mules coming up, and the bosses promising that in a short while the men would be coming. Everything was all right--there was not a bit of danger! But Mary was afraid to trust Hal, in spite of his promise, so she lured him back to Number One.
They found that a rescue-car had just arrived from Pedro, bringing doctors and nurses, also several "helmets." These "helmets" were strange looking contrivances, fastened over the head and shoulders, air-tight, and provided with oxygen sufficient to last for an hour or more. The men who wore them sat in a big bucket which was let down the shaft with a windlass, and every now and then they pulled on a signal-cord to let those on the surface know they were alive. When the first of them came back, he reported that there were bodies near the foot of the shaft, but apparently all dead. There was heavy black smoke, indicating a fire somewhere in the mine; so nothing more could be done until the fan had been set up. By reversing the fan, they could draw out the smoke and gases and clear the shaft.
The state mine-inspector had been notified, but was ill at home, and was sending one of his deputies. Under the law this official would have charge of all the rescue work, but Hal found that the miners took no interest in his presence. It had been his duty to prevent the accident, and he had not done so. When he came, he would do what the company wanted.
Some time after dark the workers began to come out of Number Two, and their women, waiting at the pit-mouth, fell upon their necks with cries of thankfulness. Hal observed other women, whose men were in Number One, and would perhaps never come out again, standing and watching these greetings with wistful, tear-filled eyes. Among those who came out was Jack David, and Hal walked home with him and his wife, listening to the latter abuse Jeff Cotton and Alec Stone, which was an education in the vocabulary of class-consciousness. The little Welsh woman repeated the pit-boss's saying, "Damn the men, save the mules!" She said it again and again--it seemed to delight her like a work of art, it summed up so perfectly the attitude of the bosses to their men! There were many other people repeating that saying, Hal found; it went all over the village, in a few days it went all over the district. It summed up what the district believed to be the attitude of the coal-operators to the workers!
Having got over the first shock of the disaster, Hal wanted information, and he questioned Big Jack, a solid and well-read man who had given thought to every aspect of the industry. In his quiet, slow way, he explained to Hal that the frequency of accidents in this district was not due to any special difficulty in operating these mines, the explosiveness of the gases or the dryness of the atmosphere. It was merely the carelessness of those in charge, their disregard of the laws for the protection of the men. There ought to be a law with "teeth" in it--for example, one providing that for every man killed in a coal-mine his heirs should receive a thousand dollars, regardless of who had been to blame for the accident. Then you would see how quickly the operators would get busy and find remedies for the "unusual" dangers!
As it was, they knew that no matter how great their culpability, they could get off with slight loss. Already, no doubt, their lawyers were on the spot, and by the time the first bodies were brought out, they would be fixing things up with the families. They would offer a widow a ticket back to the old country; they would offer a whole family of orphaned children, maybe fifty dollars, maybe a hundred dollars--and it would be a case of take it or leave it. You could get nothing from the courts; the case was so hopeless that you could not even find a lawyer to make the attempt. That was one reform in which the companies believed, said "Big Jack," with sarcasm; they had put the "shyster lawyer" out of business!
SECTION 30.
There followed a night and then another day of torturing suspense. The fan came, but it had to be set up before anything could be done. As volumes of black smoke continued to pour from the shaft, the opening was made tight with a board and canvas cover; it was necessary, the bosses said, but to Hal it seemed the climax of horror. To seal up men and boys in a place of deadly gases!
There was something peculiarly torturing in the idea of men caught in a mine; they were directly under one's feet, yet it was impossible to get to them, to communicate with them in any way! The people on top yearned to them, and they, down below, yearned back. It was impossible to forget them for even a few minutes. People would become abstracted while they talked, and would stand staring into space; suddenly, in the midst of a crowd, a woman would bury her face in her hands and burst into tears, and then all the others would follow suit.
Few people slept in North Valley during those two nights. They held mourning parties in their homes or on the streets. Some house-work had to be done, of course, but no one did anything that could be left undone. The children would not play; they stood about, silent, pale, like wizened-up grown people, over-mature in knowledge of trouble. The nerves of every one were on edge, the self-control of every one balanced upon a fine point.
It was a situation bound to be fruitful in imaginings and rumours, stimulated to those inclined to signs and omens--the seers of ghosts, or those who went into trances, or possessed second sight or other mysterious gifts. There were some living in a remote part of the village who declared they had heard explosions under the ground, several blasts in quick succession. The men underground were setting off dynamite by way of signalling!
In the course of the second day Hal sat with Mary Burke upon the steps of her home. Old Patrick lay within, having found the secret of oblivion at O'Callahan's. Now and then came the moaning of Mrs. Zamboni, who was in her cabin with her brood of children. Mary had been in to feed them, because the distracted mother let them starve and cry. Mary was worn out, herself; the wonderful Irish complexion had faded, and there were no curves to the vivid lips. They had been sitting in silence, for there was nothing to talk of but the disaster--and they had said all there was to say about that. But Hal had been thinking while he watched Mary.
"Listen, Mary," he said, at last; "when this thing is over, you must really come away from here. I've thought it all out--I have friends in Western City who will give you work, so you can take care of yourself, and of your brother and sister too. Will you go?"
But she did not answer. She continued to gaze indifferently into the dirty little street.
"Truly, Mary," he went on. "Life isn't so terrible everywhere as it is here. Come away! Hard as it is to believe, you'll forget all this.
People suffer, but then they stop suffering; it's nature's way--to make them forget."
"Nature's way has been to beat me dead," said she.
"Yes, Mary. Despair can become a disease, but it hasn't with you. You're just tired out. If you'll try to rouse yourself--" And he reached over and caught her hand with an attempt at playfulness. "Cheer up, Mary!
You're coming away from North Valley."
She turned and looked at him. "Am I?" she asked, impassively; and she went on studying his face. "Who are ye, Joe Smith? What are ye doin'
here?"