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Carl's gang worked a four foot high coal face. The face was extensive but the gang
worked only small sections. They worked in pairs: two to cut, two to load, two to rest. With
rests the men worked only slightly more than half the ten hours they spent underground. At the beginning of the week O'Grady and Vincent set the production quotas. These were so low that, often by the sixth day and always by the seventh the gang had nothing to do. Then they slept, well back from the face, in the driest places they could find. 'You'd think that when we ain't got no coal to cut they could at least give us something else to use up our time. We could go fishing,' said Willis, who was Carl's partner. 'One of these days they'll want to make us work like shit. Then we'll be sorry.' 'Why don't you try and sleep, Willis?' Carl, resting close by did not want to talk. 'Can't. Never could on an empty stomach.' 'You're right, it would make sense for men who are idle to leave the mine to go and hunt and fish but Mr. O'Grady doesn't look at it that way.' 'Mr. Bluemud never told him.' Willis smacked his lips. 'Fish! It's been months since I had a nice bit of fish. They say there's a big river less than half a mile down that road there from our barracks. I often lie there thinking I can hear that.' The image carried Willis off and he subsided into a fitful silence in which the smacking of his lips and tongue blended with the continual drip of water in the mine. The miners had extinguished their carbide lamps and blackness was complete. 'Don't get me wrong,' said Willis suddenly. 'I wouldn't like to do anything else. Mr. Johnson promised me I could stay here on account of my size, you know. I fit in easy. It's maybe a little harder work but there's less chance of finding anything, if you know what I mean.' Though it had only been worked by Bluemud for the last three years the mine was over three hundred years old. The seam they worked was a small one, never commercially viable in the past, close to the entrance. But some of the men were assigned to excavation of workings much deeper in the mine. 'They say a skeleton was found last week,' continued Willis nervously. 'Fella who found that near went crazy. Ursus told me once about a man he knew who broke into a Demon's house by accident. The Demon was there with all his family. Had been for near on two hundred years, trapped in an explosion, he reckoned. Imagine, living in torment all that time? 'Course when he opened it up, those devils sucked that poor bastard right in. He tried to escape but it was no use. The rest of his life he walked about with one half of him in the real world and the other in the Demon's lair, sharing in their torment. He went crazy in the end.' 'You shouldn't take Ursus too seriously, Willis.' 'I don't mind them Demons when I can see them things. But down here... ' Willis shuddered. 'Think of all them fellas who must have been down here at one time or another.' Once more the image sustained Willis. The blackness flooded in again on Carl. Somewhere, ten or twenty feet away a man was snoring. 'Hear you had a run-in with O'Grady and Johnson today,' said Willis later. 'They give you a bad time, Carl?' 'Not really. Some of the men asked me to speak for them.' 'That's right. You're our Corporal. They should've made you a foreman by now. Can't understand why they haven't. ' Willis laughed with a sudden memory. 'I remember my Pa telling about when that Sheriff caught you in Betty's tavern. Old Butes Griffon were in there... and Andrews and Cummings, I reckon. Sam Savage was about to tear you up. He was a bad man. I was sixteen then. My Pa says: there's a kid with guts, Willis. You was always fair to us. I mean, even when we had our disagreements, you know. That time you twisted my arm, I got over that. It's always good to know there's someone you can't push around who's fair. That Ursus though! He just like his Pa. Headstrong. He's a good fella but he deserves all he gets. I guess he's in the stockade now. Missed his day off.' 'At least it's light in there, Willis.' 'Ah! You been in there already, ain't you Carl? I forgot. What's it like, then.' 'It makes a change.' 'Must try that myself, sometime. ' As abruptly as he did everything else Willis was asleep and snoring softly. |
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