Past All Dishonor by James M. Cain Page B

learned my way around. By the time Paddy took me to a crosscut where it was cooler, and we had our first jackbite, I was willing to pitch powder into the place and light it, I was so sore. Paddy said what we needed was blowers, but they’d require a bigger boiler and more transmission belts, and Hale was too cheap to put them in.
    At night we held street meetings, but right away we hit a snag: we had to find some way to get Americans to listen to it, because they wouldn’t stop for Paddy and his guitar. After a while he remembered a fellow named Newt, that loaded ore on weekdays but on Sundays he played the cornet in church. We looked him up, and if you ask me he thought the union was some kind of a fraternal organization like the Odd Fellows, but on an offer to play his cornet, all he could say was yes. So that night he came with us and played Listen to the Mocking Bird with curlicue variations, but Paddy could chord along on the guitar, and the miners stopped to listen and I began handing it out. I asked them how much longer they were going to stand for it, to be treated like so many mules on a picket line. I asked them did they think the owners were going to do something for them just from love, or because somebody made them do it. I asked them did they like to get burned up in fires, or were they going to organize and compel the owners to put in the things that would make the mines safe. I asked them plenty, and I had never made any speeches, but I was surprised to find I was pretty good at it. Sometimes they would grunt at you like they thought you had it figured out right, and sometimes they’d cut in on you with mean questions. But even then you knew they were interested in what you said.
    After the street meetings we’d go in the mines. Those that were in bonanza worked three shifts, and Paddy knew every drift and shaft, and how to get in and how to get out. Around jackbite time we’d slip into the Savage or the Sierra Nevada or the Kentuck, and the men would hear the guitar and slip in a dead entry or wherever we were, and we’d douse the lights and for twenty minutes I’d shoot it. They didn’t cut in on me then. Time meant too much and the steam was too near. It was coming our way, you could see that, so pretty soon we came down to brass tacks. We set a date for a meeting, a real one, with every miner in town expected to attend, on Sunday night, when they’d be free. We appointed captains and committees and wrote down names and really worked. And at the Dakota, from the way Trapp acted and Hale acted and Williams acted, you could see they were worried. One night, as I was coming out, the timekeeper said Williams wanted to see me. I went in there, and he looked me over close and asked me to sit down. “Duval, you’re one of the leading spirits in this union, is that right, my boy?”
    “I don’t say I’m not.”
    “You could be the leading spirit.”
    “We got plenty of leading spirits.”
    “Not like you. I attended your boardwalk meeting last night. You didn’t see me, but I was there. You seem to have a talent for gab, my boy.”
    “If I have, you gave it to me. You and Hale.”
    “How so?”
    “By giving me plenty to gab about.”
    “And quite a wit you have too. Now, let’s be frank, what are your complaints with this company? You seem to be a reasonable young fellow, intelligent, educated, well-born—what’s the real reason for this thing you’re doing?”
    “The whole system’s wrong.”
    “Nothing personal?”
    “Like what?”
    “Ah—Trapp, for instance.”
    “He’s a dirty, cruel, son of a bitch.”
    “If that difficulty were adjusted, would that take care of whatever you expect to deal with by means of a union?”
    “It would help, but we’d still organize.” He studied me, and I expected him to lash out with something hot, and fire me, but he didn’t. He nodded and said he just wanted to get straightened out, and when I told Paddy, he was proud I had handed it back