The old man quailed and fell silent. He stood for a moment more, biting
his whiskered lips nervously; then his shoulders sank together, and he
turned and slunk off, followed by his negro helper.



SECTION 15.

Old Mike boarded at Reminitsky's, and after supper was over, Hal sought
him out. He was easy to know, and proved an interesting acquaintance.
With the help of his eloquence Hal wandered through a score of camps in
the district. The old fellow had a temper that he could not manage, and
so he was always on the move; but all places were alike, he said--there
was always some trick by which a miner was cheated of his earnings. A
miner was a little business man, a contractor who took a certain job,
with its expenses and its chance of profit or loss. A "place" was
assigned to him by the boss--and he undertook to get out the coal from
it, being paid at the rate of fifty-five cents a ton for each ton of
clean coal. In some "places" a man could earn good money, and in others
he would work for weeks, and not be able to keep up with his
store-account.

It all depended upon the amount of rock and slate that was found with
the coal. If the vein was low, the man had one or two feet of rock to
take off the ceiling, and this had to be loaded on separate cars and
taken away. This work was called "brushing," and for it the miner
received no pay. Or perhaps it was necessary to cut through a new
passage, and clean out the rock; or perhaps to "grade the bottom," and
lay the ties and rails over which the cars were brought in to be loaded;