"He change you to hell!" replied Mike. "You get him cross, he put us in
bad room, cost us ten dollar a week. No, sir--you give him drink, say
fine feller, make him feel good. You talk American--give him jolly!"



SECTION 21.

Hal was glad of this opportunity to get better acquainted with his
pit-boss. Alec Stone was six feet high, and built in proportion, with
arms like hams--soft with fat, yet possessed of enormous strength. He
had learned his manner of handling men on a sugar-plantation in
Louisiana--a fact which, when Hal heard it, explained much. Like a
stage-manager who does not heed the real names of his actors, but calls
them by their character-names, Stone had the habit of addressing his men
by their nationalities: "You, Polack, get that rock into the car! Hey,
Jap, bring them tools over here! Shut your mouth, now, Dago, and get to
work, or I'll kick the breeches off you, sure as you're alive!"

Hal had witnessed one occasion when there was a dispute as to whose duty
it was to move timbers. There was a great two-handled cross-cut saw
lying on the ground, and Stone seized it and began to wave it, like a
mighty broadsword, in the face of a little Bohemian miner. "Load them
timbers, Hunkie, or I'll carve you into bits!" And as the terrified man
shrunk back, he followed, until his victim was flat against a wall, the
weapon swinging to and fro under his nose after the fashion of "The Pit
and the Pendulum." "Carve you into pieces, Hunkie! Carve you into
stew-meat!" When at last the boss stepped back, the little Bohemian
leaped to load the timbers.