"My empire. The land belongs to the company, but the landscape belongs to him who cares for it."
She tossed her head a little. "Where did ye learn to talk like ye do?"
"In another life," said he--"before I became a stableman. Not in entire forgetfulness, but trailing clouds of glory did I come."
For a moment she wrestled with this. Then a smile broke upon her face.
"Sure, 'tis like a poetry-book! Say some more!"
"_O, singe fort, so suess und fein_!" quoted Hal--and saw her look puzzled.
"Aren't you American?" she inquired; and he laughed. To speak a foreign language in North Valley was not a mark of culture!
"I've been listening to the crowd at Reminitsky's," he said, apologetically.
"Oh! You eat there?"
"I go there three times a day. I can't say I eat very much. Could you live on greasy beans?"
"Sure," laughed the girl, "the good old pertaties is good enough for me."
"I should have said you lived on rose leaves!" he observed.
"Go on wid ye! 'Tis the blarney-stone ye been kissin'!"
"'Tis no stone I'd be wastin' my kisses on."
"Ye're gettin' bold, Mister Smith. I'll not listen to ye." And she turned away, and began industriously taking her clothes from the line.
But Hal did not want to be dismissed. He came a step closer.
"Coming down the mountain-side," he said, "I found something wonderful.
It's bare and grim up there, but I came on a sheltered corner where the sun shone, and there was a wild rose. Only one! I thought to myself, 'So roses grow, even in the loneliest parts of the world!'"
"Sure, 'tis a poetry-book again!" she cried. "Why didn't ye bring the rose?"
"There is a poetry-book that tells us to 'leave the wild-rose on its stalk.' It will go on blooming there; but if one were to pluck it, it would wither in a few hours."
He had meant nothing more by this than to keep the conversation going.
But her answer turned the tide of their acquaintance.
"Ye can never be sure, lad. Perhaps to-night a storm may come and blow it to pieces. Perhaps if ye'd pulled it and been happy, 'twould 'a been what the rose was for."
Whatever of unconscious patronage there had been in the poet's attitude was lost now in the eternal mystery. Whether the girl knew it--or cared--she had won the woman's first victory. She had caught the man's mind and pinned it with curiosity. What did this wild rose of the mining camps mean?
The wild rose, apparently unconscious that she had said anything epoch-making, was busy with the wash; and meantime Hal Warner studied her features and pondered her words. From a lady of sophistication they would have meant only one thing, an invitation; but in this girl's clear grey eyes was nothing of wantonness, only pain. But what was this pain in the face and words of one so young, so eager and alive? Was it the melancholy of her race, the thing one got in old folk-songs? Or was it a new and special kind of melancholy, engendered in mining-camps in the far West of America?
The girl's countenance was as intriguing as her words. Her grey eyes were set under sharply defined dark brows, which did not match her hair.
Her lips also were sharply defined, and straight, almost without curves, so that it seemed as if her mouth had been painted in carmine upon her face. These features gave her, when she stared at you, an aspect vivid and startling, bold, with a touch of defiance. But when she smiled, the red lips would curve into gentler lines, and the grey eyes would become wistful, and seemingly darker in colour. Winsome indeed, but not simple, was this Irish lass!
SECTION 8.
Hal asked the name of his new acquaintance, and she told him it was Mary Burke. "Ye've not been here long, I take it," she said, "or ye'd have heard of 'Red Mary.' 'Tis along of this hair."
"I've not been here long," he answered, "but I shall hope to stay now--along of this hair! May I come to see you some time, Miss Burke?"
She did not reply, but glanced at the house where she lived. It was an unpainted, three room cabin, more dilapidated than the average, with bare dirt and cinders about it, and what had once been a picket-fence, now falling apart and being used for stove-wood. The windows were cracked and broken, and upon the roof were signs of leaks that had been crudely patched.
"May I come?" he made haste to ask again--so that he would not seem to look too critically at her home.
"Perhaps ye may," said the girl, as she picked up the clothes basket. He stepped forward, offering to carry it, but she did not give it up.
Holding it tight, and looking him defiantly in the face, she said, "Ye may come, but ye'll not find it a happy place to visit, Mr. Smith. Ye'll hear soon enough from the neighbours."
"I don't think I know any of your neighbours," said he.
There was sympathy in his voice; but her look was no less defiant.
"Ye'll hear about it, Mr. Smith; but ye'll hear also that I hold me head up. And 'tis not so easy to do that in North Valley."
"You don't like the place?" he asked; and he was amazed by the effect of this question, which was merely polite. It was as if a storm cloud had swept over the girl's face. "I hate it! 'Tis a place of fear and devils!"
He hesitated a moment; then, "Will you tell me what you mean by that when I come?"
But "Red Mary" was winsome again. "When ye come, Mr. Smith, I'll not be entertaining ye with troubles. I'll put on me company manner, and we'll go out for a nice walk, if ye please."
All the way as he walked back to Reminitsky's to supper, Hal thought about this girl; not merely her pleasantness to the eye, so unexpected in this place of desolation, but her personality, which baffled him--the pain that seemed always just beneath the surface of her thoughts, the fierce pride which flashed out at the slightest suggestion of sympathy, the way she had of brightening when he spoke the language of metaphor, however trite. How had she come to know about poetry-books? He wanted to know more about this miracle of Nature--this wild rose blooming on a bare mountain-side!
SECTION 9.
There was one of Mary Burke's remarks upon which Hal soon got light--her statement that North Valley was a place of fear. He listened to the tales of these underworld men, until it came so that he shuddered with dread each time that he went down in the cage.
There was a wire-haired and almond eyed Korean, named Cho, a "rope-rider" in Hal's part of the mine. He was one of those who had charge of the long trains of cars, called "trips," which were hauled through the main passage-ways; the name "rope-rider" came from the fact that he sat on the heavy iron ring to which the rope was attached. He invited Hal to a seat with him, and Hal accepted, at peril of his job as well as of his limbs. Cho had picked up what he fondly thought was English, and now and then one could understand a word. He pointed upon the ground, and shouted above the rattle of the cars: "Big dust!" Hal saw that the ground was covered with six inches of coal-dust, while on the old disused walls one could write his name in it. "Much blow-up!"
said the rope-rider; and when the last empty cars had been shunted off into the working-rooms, and he was waiting to make up a return "trip,"
he laboured with gestures to explain what he meant. "Load cars. Bang!
Bust like hell!"
Hal knew that the mountain air in this region was famous for its dryness; he learned now that the quality which meant life to invalids from every part of the world meant death to those who toiled to keep the invalids warm. Driven through the mines by great fans, this air took out every particle of moisture, and left coal dust so thick and dry that there were fatal explosions from the mere friction of loading-shovels.
So it happened that these mines were killing several times as many men as other mines throughout the country.
Was there no remedy for this, Hal asked, talking with one of his mule-drivers, Tim Rafferty, the evening after his ride with Cho. There was a remedy, said Tim--the law required sprinkling the mines with "adobe-dust"; and once in Tim's life, he remembered this law's being obeyed. There had come some "big fellows" inspecting things, and previous to their visit there had been an elaborate campaign of sprinkling. But that had been several years ago, and now the apparatus was stored away, nobody knew where, and one heard nothing about sprinkling.
It was the same with precautions against gas. The North Valley mines were especially "gassy," it appeared. In these old rambling passages one smelt a stink as of all the rotten eggs in all the barn-yards of the world; and this sulphuretted hydrogen was the least dangerous of the gases against which a miner had to contend. There was the dreaded "choke-damp," which was odourless, and heavier than air. Striking into soft, greasy coal, one would open a pocket of this gas, a deposit laid up for countless ages, awaiting its predestined victim. A man might sink to sleep as he lay at work, and if his "buddy," or helper, happened to be out of sight, and to delay a minute too long, it would be all over with the man. And there was the still more dreaded "fire-damp," which might wreck a whole mine, and kill scores and even hundreds of men.
Against these dangers there was a "fire-boss," whose duty was to go through the mine, testing for gas, and making sure that the ventilating-course was in order, and the fans working properly. The "fire-boss" was supposed to make his rounds in the early morning, and the law specified that no one should go to work till he had certified that all was safe. But what if the "fire-boss" overslept himself, or happened to be drunk? It was too much to expect thousands of dollars to be lost for such a reason. So sometimes one saw men ordered to their work, and sent down grumbling and cursing. Before many hours some of them would be prostrated with headache, and begging to be taken out; and perhaps the superintendent would not let them out, because if a few came, the rest would get scared and want to come also.
Once, only last year, there had been an accident of that sort. A young mule-driver, a Croatian, told Hal about it while they sat munching the contents of their dinner-pails. The first cage-load of men had gone down into the mine, sullenly protesting; and soon afterwards some one had taken down a naked light, and there had been an explosion which had sounded like the blowing up of the inside of the world. Eight men had been killed, the force of the explosion being so great that some of the bodies had been wedged between the shaft wall and the cage, and it had been necessary to cut them to pieces to get them out. It was them Japs that were to blame, vowed Hal's informant. They hadn't ought to turn them loose in coal mines, for the devil himself couldn't keep a Jap from sneaking off to get a smoke.