Part 1 (2/2)

But I was no so old, ye'll be mindin', and I won't say I was not fearsome, too. It's a queer feelin' ye have when ye first go doon into a pit. The sun's gone, and the light, and it seems like the air's gone from your lungs with them. I carried a gauze lamp, but the bit flicker of it was worse than useless--it made it harder for me to see, instead of easier. The pressure's what ye feel; it's like to be chokin' ye until you're used to it. And then the black, damp walls, pressin' in, as if they were great hands aching to be at your throat! Oh, I'm tellin' ye there's lots of things pleasanter than goin' doon into a coal pit for the first time.

I mind, since then, I've gone doon far deeper than ever we did at Hamilton. At b.u.t.te, in Montana, in America, I went doon three thousand feet--more than half a mile, mind ye! There they find copper, and good copper, at that depth. But they took me doon there in an express elevator. I had no time to be afeared before we were doon, walkin'

along a broad, dry gallery, as well lighted as Broadway or the Strand, with electric lights, and great fans to keep the air cool and dry.

It's different, minin' so, to what it was when I was a boy at Hamilton.

But I'm minded, when I think of b.u.t.te, and the great copper mines there, of the thing I'm chiefly thinking of in writing this book.

I was in b.u.t.te during the war--after America had come in. 'Deed, and it was just before the Huns made their last bid, and thought to break the British line. Ye mind yon days in the spring of 1918? Anxious days, sad days. And in the war we all were fighting, copper counted for nigh as much as men. The miners there in b.u.t.te were fighting the Hun as surely as if they'd been at Cantigny or Chateau-Thierry.

Never had there been such pay in b.u.t.te as in yon time. I sang at a great theatre one of the greatest in all the western country. It was crowded at every performance. The folk sat on the stage, so deep packed, so close together, there was scarce room for my walk around.

Ye mind how I fool ye, when I'm singin', by walkin' round and round the stage after a verse? It's my way of givin' short measure--save that folk seem to like to see me do it!

Weel, there was that great mining city, where the copper that was so needed for munitions was being mined. The men were well paid. Yet there was discontent. Agitators were at work among them, stirring up trouble, seeking to take their minds off their work and hurt the production of the copper that was needed to save the lives of men like those who were digging it out of the ground. They were thinkin', there, in yon days, that men could live for themselves and by themselves.

But, thank G.o.d, it was only a few who thought so. The great lot of the men were sound, and they did grand work. And they found their reward, too--as men always do when they do their work well and think of what it means.

There were others in b.u.t.te, too, who were thinking only of themselves.

Some of them hung one of the agitators, whiles before I was there.

They had not thought, any more than had the foolish men among the workers, how each of us is dependent upon others, of the debts that every day brings us, that we owe to all humanity.

Ye'll e'en forgie me if I wander so, sometimes, in this book? Ye'll ken how it is when you'll be talkin' with a friend? Ye'll begin about the bit land or the cow one of you means to sell to the other. Ye'll ha' promised the wife, maybe, when ye slipped oot, that ye'd come richt back, so soon as ye had finished wi' Sandy. And then, after ye'd sat ye doon together in a corner of the bar, why one bit word would lead to another, and ye'd be wanderin' from the subject afore ye knew it? It's so wi' me. I'm no writin' a book so much as I'm sittin' doon wi' ye all for a chat, as I micht do gi'en you came into my dressing room some nicht when I was singin' in your toon.

It's a far cry that last bit o' wandering meant--from Hamilton in my ain Scotland to b.u.t.te in the Rocky Mountains of America! And yet, for what I'm thinkin' it's no so far a cry. There were men I knew in Hamilton who'd have found themselves richt at hame among the agitators in b.u.t.te. I'm minded to be tellin' ye a tale of one such lad.

CHAPTER II

The lad I've in mind I'll call Andy McTavish, which'll no be his richt name, ye'll ken. He could ha' been the best miner in the pit. He could ha' been the best liked lad in a' those parts. But he was not. Nothin'

was ever good enough for Andy. I'm tellin' ye, had he found a golden sovereign along the road, whiles he went to his work, he'd have come to us at the pit moanin' and complainin' because it was not a five pound note he'd turned up with his toe!

Never was Andy satisfied. Gi'en there were thirty s.h.i.+llin' for him to draw at the pit head, come Sat.u.r.day night, he'd growl that for the hard work he'd done he should ha' had thirty-five. Mind ye, I'm not sayin' he was wrong, only he was no worse off than the rest, and better than some, and he was always feeling that it was he who was badly used, just he, not everyone. He'd curse the gaffer if the vein of coal he had to work on wasn't to his liking; he knew nothing of the secret of happiness, which is to take what comes and always remember that for every bit of bad there's nearly always a bit o' good waitin'

around the corner.

Yet, with it all, there wasn't a keener, brighter lad than Andy in all Lanarks.h.i.+re. He had always a good story to crack. He was handy with his fists; he could play well at football or any other game he tried.

He wasn't educated; had he been, we all used to think, he micht ha'

made a name for himself. I didn't see, in those days, that we were all wrong. If Andy'd been a good miner, if he'd started by doing well, at least, as well as he could, the thing he had the chance to do, then we'd have been right to think that all he needed to be famous and successful was to have the chance.

But, as it was, Andy was always too busy greetin' over his bad luck.

It was bad luck that he had to work below ground, when he loved the suns.h.i.+ne. It was bad luck that the wee toon was sae dull for a man of his spirit. Andy seemed to think that some one should come around and make him happy and comfortable and rich--not that the only soul alive to whom he had a right to look for such blessings was himself.

I'll no say we weren't liking Andy all richt. But, ye ken, he was that sort of man we'd always say, when we were talking of him: ”Oh, aye-- there's Andy. A braw laddie--but what he micht be!”

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