Keating made a face of disgust. "Well, he was my chaperon. Imagine trying to get the miners to talk to you with that sneak at your heels! I said to the superintendent, 'I don't need anybody to escort me around your place.' And he looked at me with a nasty little smile. 'We wouldn't want anything to happen to you while you're in this camp, Mr. Keating.'
'You don't consider it necessary to protect the lives of the other reporters,' I said. 'No,' said he; 'but the _Gazette_ has made a great many enemies, you know.' 'Drop your fooling, Mr. Cartwright,' I said.
'You propose to have me shadowed while I'm working on this assignment?'
'You can put it that way,' he answered, 'if you think it'll please the readers of the _Gazette_.'"
"Too bad we didn't meet!" said Hal. "Or if you'd run into any of our check-weighman crowd!"
"Oh! You know about that check-weighman business!" exclaimed the reporter. "I got a hint of it--that's how I happened to be down here to-day. I heard there was a man named Edstrom, who'd been shut out for making trouble; and I thought if I could find him, I might get a lead."
Hal and MacKellar looked at the old Swede, and the three of them began to laugh. "Here's your man!" said MacKellar.
"And here's your check-weighman!" added Edstrom, pointing to Hal.
Instantly the reporter was on his job again; he began to fire another series of questions. He would use that check-weighman story as a "follow-up" for the next day, to keep the subject of North Valley alive.
The story had a direct bearing on the disaster, because it showed what the North Valley bosses were doing when they should have been looking after the safety of their mine. "I'll write it out this afternoon and send it by mail," said Keating; he added, with a smile, "That's one advantage of handling news the other papers won't touch--you don't have to worry about losing your 'scoops'!"
SECTION 2.
Keating went to the telephone again, to worry "long distance"; then, grumbling about his last edition, he came back to ask more questions about Hal's experiences. Before long he drew out the story of the young man's first effort in the publicity game; at which he sank back in his chair, and laughed until he shook, as the nursery-rhyme describes it, "like a bowlful of jelly."
"Graham!" he exclaimed. "Fancy, MacKellar, he took that story to Graham!"
The Scotchman seemed to find it equally funny; together they explained that Graham was the political reporter of the _Eagle_, the paper in Pedro which was owned by the Sheriff-emperor. One might call him Alf Raymond's journalistic jackal; there was no job too dirty for him.
"But," cried Hal, "he told me he was correspondent for the Western press association!"
"He's that, too," replied Billy.
"But does the press association employ spies for the 'G. F. C.'?"
The reporter answered, drily, "When you understand the news game better, you'll realise that the one thing the press association cares about in a correspondent is that he should have respect for property. If respect for property is the back-bone of his being, he can learn what news is, and the right way to handle it."
Keating turned to the Scotchman. "Do you happen to have a typewriter in the house, Mr. MacKellar?"
"An old one," said the other--"lame, like myself."
"I'll make out with it. I'd ask this young man over to my hotel, but I think he'd better keep off the streets as much as possible."
"You're right. If you take my advice, you'll take the typewriter upstairs, where there's no chance of a shot through the window."
"Great heavens!" exclaimed Hal. "Is this America, or mediaeval Italy?"
"It's the Empire of Raymond," replied MacKellar. "They shot my friend Tom Burton dead while he stood on the steps of his home. He was opposing the machine, and had evidence about ballot-frauds he was going to put before the Grand Jury."
While Keating continued to fret with "long distance," the old Scotchman went on trying to impress upon Hal the danger of his position. Quite recently an organiser of the miners' union had been beaten up in broad day-light and left insensible on the sidewalk; MacKellar had watched the trial and acquittal of the two thugs who had committed this crime--the foreman of the jury being a saloon-keeper one of Raymond's heelers, and the other jurymen being Mexicans, unable to comprehend a word of the court proceedings.
"Exactly such a jury as Jeff Cotton promised me!" remarked Hal, with a feeble attempt at a smile.
"Yes," answered the other; "and don't make any mistake about it, if they want to put you away, they can do it. They run the whole machine here. I know how it is, for I had a political job myself, until they found they couldn't use me."
The old Scotchman went on to explain that he had been elected justice of peace, and had tried to break up the business of policemen taking money from the women of the town; he had been forced to resign, and his enemies had made his life a torment. Recently he had been candidate for district judge on the Progressive ticket, and told of his efforts to carry on a campaign in the coal-camps--how his circulars had been confiscated, his posters torn down, his supporters "kangarooed." It was exactly as Alec Stone, the pit-boss, had explained to Hal. In some of the camps the meeting-halls belonged to the company; in others they belonged to saloon-keepers whose credit depended upon Alf Raymond. In the few places where there were halls that could be hired, the machine had gone to the extreme of sending in rival entertainments, furnishing free music and free beer in order to keep the crowds away from MacKellar.
All this time Billy Keating had been chafing and scolding at "long distance." Now at last he managed to get his call, and silence fell in the room. "Hello, Pringle, that you? This is Keating. Got a big story on the North Valley disaster. Last edition put to bed yet? Put Jim on the wire. Hello, Jim! Got your book?" And then Billy, evidently talking to a stenographer, began to tell the story he had got from Hal. Now and then he would stop to repeat or spell a word; once or twice Hal corrected him on details. So, in about a quarter of an hour, they put the job through; and Keating turned to Hal.
"There you are, son," said he. "Your story'll be on the street in Western City in a little over an hour; it'll be down here as soon thereafter as they can get telephone connections. And take my advice, if you want to keep a whole skin, you'll be out of Pedro when that happens!"
SECTION 3.
When Hal spoke, he did not answer Billy Keating's last remark. He had been listening to a retelling of the North Valley disaster over the telephone; so he was not thinking about his skin, but about a hundred and seven men and boys buried inside a mine.
"Mr. Keating," said he, "are you sure the _Gazette_ will print that story?"
"Good Lord!" exclaimed the other. "What am I here for?"
"Well, I've been disappointed once, you know."
"Yes, but you got into the wrong camp. We're a poor man's paper, and this is what we live on."
"There's no chance of its being 'toned down'?"
"Not the slightest, I assure you."
"There's no chance of Peter Harrigan's suppressing it?"
"Peter Harrigan made his attempts on the _Gazette_ long ago, my boy."
"Well," said Hal, "and now tell me this--will it do the work?"
"In what way?"
"I mean--in making them open the mine."
Keating considered for a moment. "I'm afraid it won't do much."
Hal looked at him blankly. He had taken it for granted the publication of the facts would force the company to move. But Keating explained that the _Gazette_ read mainly by working-people, and so had comparatively little influence. "We're an afternoon paper," he said; "and when people have been reading lies all morning, it's not easy to make them believe the truth in the afternoon."
"But won't the story go to other papers--over the country, I mean?"
"Yes, we have a press service; but the papers are all like the _Gazette_--poor man's papers. If there's something very raw, and we keep pounding away for a long time, we can make an impression; at least we limit the amount of news the Western press association can suppress. But when it comes to a small matter like sealing up workingmen in a mine, all we can do is to worry the 'G. F. C.' a little."
So Hal was just where he had begun! "I must find some other plan," he exclaimed.
"I don't see what you can do," replied the other.
There was a pause, while the young miner pondered. "I had thought of going up to Western City and appealing to the editors," he said, a little uncertainly.