Part 11 (1/2)

But even she was shaken when his Aunt Nellie, over ostensibly for an afternoon of sociable carpet-rag sewing, began abruptly: ”Do you know what Bill is doing, Rose?”

”Working in the mines,” returned his mother easily. ”Isn't it strange, Nellie, that he should be digging coal right under this farm, the very coal that gave Martin his start?”

”Well, I'm not going to beat about the bush,” continued her sister-in-law abruptly. ”He's working in the mines all right, but he isn't digging coal at all, though that would be bad enough. I wouldn't say a word about it, but I think you ought to know the truth and put a stop to such a risky business--he's firing shots.”

Rose's heart jumped, but she continued to wind up her large ball with the same uninterrupted motion.

”Are you sure?”

”I made Frank find out for certain. It's an extra dangerous mine because gas forms in it unusually often, and he gets fifteen dollars a day for the one hour he works. There's a contract, but he's told them he's twenty-one, and when you prove he's under age they'll make him stop.”

Rose still wound and wound, her clear eyes, looking over her gla.s.ses, fixed on Nellie.

”It's bad enough, I'll say,” rapped out the spare, angular woman, ”to have everybody talking about the way Martin has ditched his son, without having the boy scattered to bits, or burned to a cinder. Already he's been blown twenty feet by one windy shot, and more than once he's had to lie flat while those horrible gases burned themselves out right over his head. His 'buddie,' the Italian who fires in the other part of the mine at the same time, told Harry Brown, the nightman, and he told Frank, himself. Why, they say if he'd have moved the least bit it would have fanned the fire downward and he'd have been in a fine mess. Sooner or later all shot-firers meet a tragic end. You want to put your foot down, Rose, and put it down hard--for once in your life--if you can,” she added, half under her breath.

”It isn't altogether Martin's fault,” began Rose, but Nellie cut her off with a short: ”Now, don't you tell me a word about that precious brother of mine! It's as plain to me as the nose on your face that between his bull-headed hardness and your wishy-washy softness you're fixing to ruin one of the best boys G.o.d ever put on this earth.”

”I'll talk to Billy,” Rose promised.

It was the first time she ever had found herself definitely in opposition to her boy, but she felt serene in the confidence of her own power to dissuade him from anything so perilous. She understood the general routine of mining, and had been daily picturing him going down in the cage to the bottom, travelling through a long entry until he was under his home farm and located in one of the low, three-foot rooms where a Kansas miner must stoop all day. Oh, how it had hurt--that thought of those fine young shoulders bending, bending! She had visualized him filling his car, and mentally had followed his coal as it was carried up to the surface to be dumped into the hopper, weighed and dropped down the chute into the flat cars. Of course, there was always the danger of a loosened rock falling on him, but wasn't there always the possibility of accidents on a farm, too? Didn't the company's man always go down, first, into the mine to test the air and make certain it was all right? Rose had convinced herself that the risk was not so great, after all, though she could not help sharing a little of her husband's wonder that the boy could prefer to work underground instead of in the sweet, fresh suns.h.i.+ne. But she had thought it was because in the desperation of his complete revolt from Martin's domination anything else seemed to him preferable. Now, in a lightning flash, she understood. This reaction from a life whose duties had begun before sun-up and ended long after sundown, made danger seem as nothing in comparison with the marvellous chance to earn a comfortable living with only one hour's work a day.

Her conversation with Bill proved that she had been only too right. The boy was intoxicated with his own liberty. ”I know I ought to have told you, mother,” he confessed. ”I wanted to. Honest, I did, but I was afraid you'd worry, though you needn't. The man who taught me how to fire has been doing it over twenty years. A lot of it's up to a fellow, himself. You can pretty near tell if the air is all right by the way it blows--the less the better it is. And if you're right careful to see that the tool-boxes the boys leave are all locked--so's no powder can catch, you know--and always start lighting against the air, so that if there's gas and it catches the fire'll blow away from you instead of following you up--and if you examine the fuses to see they're long enough and the powder is tamped in just right--each miner does that before he leaves and lots of firers just give 'em a hasty once-over instead of a real look--and then shake your heels good and fast after you do fire--”

”Billy!” Rose was white. ”I can't bear it--to hear you go on so lightly, when it's your life, your LIFE, you're playing with. For my sake, son, give it up.”

With an odd sinking of the heart, she observed the expression in his face which she had seen so often in his father's--the one that said as plainly as words that nothing could shake his determination. ”A fellow's got a right to some good times in this world,” he said very low, ”and I'm getting mine now. I'm not going to grind away and grind away all my life like father and you've done. If anything did happen I'd have had a chance to dream and think and read instead of getting to be old without ever having any fun out of it all. Maybe you won't believe it, but some days for hours I just lie in the sun like a darky boy, not even thinking. Gee! it feels great! And sometimes I read all day until I have to go to the mine. There's one thing I'm going to tell you square,” he went on, a firm ring in his voice, boyish for all its deep, ba.s.s note, ”I'm never going back to the farm, never! Mother,” he cried, suddenly, coming over to take her hand in both his. ”Will you leave father? We could rent a little house and you'd have hardly anything to do. I'm making more than lots of men with families. And I'd give you my envelope without opening it every pay-day.” ”Oh, Billy, you don't know what you're saying! I couldn't leave your father. I couldn't think of it.”

”What I don't see is how you can stand it to stay with him. He's always been a brute to you. He's never cared a red cent for either of us.”

Rose was abashed before the harsh logic of youth. ”Oh, son,” she murmured brokenly, ”there are things one can't explain. I suppose it may seem strange to you--but his life has been so empty. He has missed so much! Everything, Billy.”

”Then it's his own fault,” judged the boy. ”If ever anybody's always had his own way and done just as he darn pleased it's father. I wish he'd die, that's what I wish.”

”Bill!” His mother's tone was stern.

”There you are!” he marvelled. ”You must have wished it lots of times yourself. I know you have. Yet you always talk as if you loved him.”

In Rose's eyes, the habitual look of patience and understanding deepened. How could Bill, as yet scarcely tried by life, comprehend the purging flames through which she had pa.s.sed or realize time's power to reveal unsuspected truths.

”When you've been married to a man nearly twenty-two years and have built up a place together, there's bound to be a bond between you,” she eluded. ”He just lives for this farm. It's almost as dear to him as you are to me, son, and it's a wonderful heritage, Bill, a magnificent heritage. Just think! Two generations have labored to build it out of the dust. Your father's whole life is in it. Your father's and mine. And your grandmother's. If only you could ever come to care for it!”

Bill fidgeted uneasily. ”You mean you want me to go on with it?”

he demanded. ”You want me to come back to it, settle down to be a farmer--like father?”

The tone in which he asked this question made Rose choose her words carefully.

”What are your plans, son? What do you want to be--not just now, but finally?”

”I can't see what difference it makes what a fellow is--except that in one business a man makes more than in another. And I can't see either that it does a person a bit of good to have money. I'm having more fun right now than father or you ever had--more fun than anybody I know.

Mother,” and his face was solemn as if with a great discovery, ”I've figured it out that it's silly to do as most people--just live to work.

I'm going to work just enough to live comfortably. Not one sc.r.a.p more, either. You can't think how I hate the very thought of it.”