than you'd ever imagine. The real evil, though, was letting the miners think they'd be allowed to put it on the management like that.

"Another cause of trouble was that Winford had monkeyed with the clock. Instead of putting up with Pacific Standard, which was good enough time for everybody else; he started a scheme of changing with the seasons, to match up better with daylight and dark. The nearest town or railroad was so far off that the difference in time didn't really hurt anybody, but Potter, the mine electrician-a big, husky Missourian, who was a trouble-maker, if ever I saw one -Potter told the miners the new way was un-American, and then all those Dagoes and Austrians were red-headed with Win for tampering with the clock.

"But the worst grievance was the stripand-search order. You see, Winford happened along into a new stope one day and found that Al Hines and his Austrian mucker had broken into a rich pocket. The ore was just filthy with gold. Hines declared they'd only just opened her up. A couple of tons of that ore netted my old man about fifty thousand plunks, but Winford wasn't satisfied with that he suspected that Hines and the Austrian had got away with some of the best ore. Winford and his shift bosses-those fellows were absolutely reliable-watched like hawks, they hunted high and low for evidence, but nothing developed until a week later, when Winford went out to the nearest town to buy supplies. There he found an Austrian from the Little Maggie, drunk and opening wine, and a fellow told him the miner got the money for his spree by selling dust to the saloon-keeper. Winford wasn't the sort to call a man a thief unless he could prove itthis time he couldn't-but he took Hines out of the mine and put him to work as an extra man on the hoist, and gave Hines's Austrian helper a job chopping wood for mine timbering. And even if he hadn't proved there'd been looting, he wasn't going to chance it any longer, so he issued his strip-and-search order.

"I thought that strip-and-search order would bring on a strike right then. It wasn't any hardship-the Little Maggie's a hot mine, and the miners all worked stripped to the waist, dressed only in copper-riveted blue overalls and a rag to wipe

off the sweat, but the men resented the indignity. Winford stood pat. He said every honest man ought to be glad to be protected from any chance of suspicion. The order went into effect, but the atmosphere in that camp fairly sizzled.

"I figured out that just one man was at the bottom of all the bad feeling, always fomenting anger and discontent, and that man was Potter, the electrician. I told Winford I'd sized up Potter as an intelligent, ambitious, pestilential demagogue, who'd cause a strike if he could, and try to get a big name as a labor leader, and to make himself a Heywood or a John Mitchell or something-anything, so he could be 'prominent.' Winford wouldn't fire him. He said he didn't propose to set up any martyrs round his camp. So Potter kept on making trouble, all surreptitious and out of sight, and pretending all the time to be bluff and hearty and friendly, and enthusiastic about Winford's improvements 'round the mine.

"Winford was working wonders, for the good of the miners as well as for the mine. He tore down the buggy old bunk-houses, there since the Outcasts quit Poker Flat; he built a club-house for the miners, with billiard-tables and a shooting-gallery; he gave them better grub than they'd ever eaten in their lives; he put a fair price on everything in the company store, instead of keeping the place a cross between a confidence game and a highway robbery; he sold the contract-men their giant-powder at what the company paid for it plus freight and a fair percentage; he overhauled the mechanical equipment above and below ground, and made the mine and the mill not only safer but more comfortable to work in; he imported a young doctor who'd spent seven years at Harvard and two in the Massachusetts General Hospital learning how to cure measles and saw bones, and he built a mine hospital that would open anybody's eyes. His reward was that the miners wanted to lynch him for taking a hospital fee out of their wages.

And Bess worked wonders, too. My goodness, what she didn't do! She started a school for the few children 'round the place and got up a Sunday-school and church sociables and picnics; she set the women to planting vegetable gardens and competitive sweet peas; with Bong's wife

to steer her she started out China New Year's and took a present to every Chinese kid in camp; she was always looking after families with sickness or accidents or babies, from Bong's to the school-teacher's; and she fixed it up for a Catholic priest-a good old codger he was, too-to come and say mass once a month.

"But just the same the 'Black Hand' letters Winford began to get threatened Bess as violently as him. He'd find these letters, full of cuss words and misspelled threats, on the porch in the morning or stuck in the .pommel of his saddle or waiting for him at the company store. At first it was merely warnings to 'clear out or there'd be something doing'; then the letters promised he'd be ducked in crude oil and rolled in a feather bed unless he jumped his job quick; and finally these pleasant little notes were headed 'BLOOD!' or 'DEATH!' in red ink, and filled with threats he'd be killed and his wife into the bargain unless he vamoosed pretty pronto. Winford was mighty careful not to let Bess get hold of any of his let ters, but otherwise he paid no attention.

"I felt dead sure a crisis was near. Wherever I went, every one shut up like a clam, even the miners I'd been chummiest with, who'd helped me ore-sampling, when I was doing the assaying, or who'd spent Sunday after Sunday with me trout-fishing or shooting quail, or served on the committee with me for the Fourth of July races and the big dance. One particular Sunday afternoon I went out horseback riding, and stopped, on my way back, in the winery garden at the head of the valley, way down below the mine. Our Dagoes and Austrians and Cornishmen were all full of red paint or bad whiskey-they work some kind of poison off on the miners, not real whiskey and all yelling and making motions at once. But when I walked in, they all shut up, and it felt like two minutes before a thunder-storm breaks loose back East. A couple of drunks tried to talk to me, but they were hustled out of sight, and I started home no wiser than I'd come.

"When I reached home, Winford had started down the trail to see the night shift go on. I tied my horse to the fence and went on down to ask him if he felt the squally feeling in the air. At the mouth of the mine I found a big crowd, the night shift all ready to go on, and the day shift,

most of 'em, back from supper. A bunch of Chinamen climbed on the ore-bucket and hung there waiting to be let down the shaft. They yelled at the engineer, but the engineer didn't lower the skip.

"Then out stepped Bill Potter, the big electrician, and announced that the miners had organized a new union and declared a strike. Puffed up like a peacock, Potter announced their terms. The union must be recognized, they wanted 'real time' back, there wasn't to be any limit on the number of meals a man might eat in a day, there wasn't to be any more stripping and searching, and all Chinks must go-no more Chinese labor in that camp, 'taking bread out of the white man's mouth.'

"Winford replied, very amiable and polite, that he'd be glad to recognize the union and deal with its officers, but that none of the four other demands could be considered

except maybe the clock. Then Winford walks over to the hoist lever himself and calls to the Chinamen to climb on and go down. 'No you don't!' yells Potter, and announces he'll knock the particular stuffings out of any Chink who tries to work in that mine. Winford took one jump and landed on Potter with both fists. That was plenty. Then Winford politely informed him there'd be no beating-up of Chinamen in his camp, if you please.

"Well there was a yellow streak in Potter. He got up from the ground with his nose bleeding, sick and scared as a licked cur. His chance was gone-like that! Potter's own followers admired Winford's grit, and they sniggered at Potter as he backed away.

"Winford announced to the crowd that the Little Maggie would continue operations just as usual. But there wasn't a Chink who'd go down. It wasn't their fight, and they were going to stay at a respectful distance from the ropes. Back to Chinatown they went, and began to play fantan and cook stuff with dead fish in it, just as usual-but no work for them till things were all fought out!

"The shift bosses stood by Winford, and a few other loyal spirits. Hines was among them, and that seemed to Winford like coals of fire on his head, because he'd moved Hines up from below ground and put him on the hoist only because he'd suspected him of swiping ore. Well-there

were enough of us left to keep the pumps going and the hoist ready and everything guarded night and day, and Winford counted on time to work wonders in making the strikers think better of their vacation. But a mining camp with a strike on is no place for a woman, and Winford tried to get Bess to go pay a visit to mother in Berkeley. Lots of good it did him! I tried, too, in private. Bess hauled out a bundle of letters the grapevine telegraph had been working for her, too. Some she showed me, and some she wouldn't. She told me not to tell Winford, that he had enough to worry him already, and his work to do. But did I think she was going home for a visit! You know Bess!

"Things looked blacker every day. With no work to do the miners spent their time drinking, gambling, quarrelling and talking over their wrongs: 'Why should other people have money to burn while they had to grub for a living?' Maybe you think it wasn't hard on their wives-wages stopped, and the cupboard getting empty and the rainy-day stocking lean, and everybody's nerves on edge. Lots of the miners hadn't wanted to strike, anyway, but what could they do when the whole crowd went one way? How'd you like to be a scab? One thing pleased me-everybody had a hard word for that loud-mouthed blatherskite Potter. He'd got 'em into the mess, and now they were mad clear through, and they wouldn't back out, but everybody had it in for Potter, just the same.

"Winford stayed on duty night and day. He was everywhere at once, never excited, never in a hurry, always good-natured, but watching everything like a hawk. Late one afternoon Winford and I came out of the mine together and started home. Then Win said he must go down to number two level a minute, but he'd be right home for dinner. He climbed on the skip and Hines, the hoist-man, lowered away. I started up the trail, but stopped in a clump of bushes to wait for Winford. Through the leaves I saw Hines looking up the trail as if to make sure I was gone and every one else out of sight. I heard the signal-bell sound: 'Man aboard; hoist to the surface.' Hines hoisted away slow. Winford's head appeared above ground. Hines threw the lever over to full speed. The skip hurtled up toward the dumping-point, fifty feet up in the air.

Sure death-that's what Hines meant! But Winford leaped from the skip in mid-air, he shot forward in a great curve, he landed with a clatter of hob-nails on the springboardy galvanized-iron roof of the tool shed. He started for Hines. Hines didn't wait. He let out one yell and tore off down the mountainside as if there were forty million devils after him. In ten seconds he was out of sight in the chaparral. Winford turned back.

"See that?' asked Winford. 'Tried to kill me! Don't tell anybody-Bess might hear about it.'

"Then Winford dug up another hoist man and put him on Hines's job, and then we went on up to the house, and all the way through dinner Win kept telling funny stories about Boers, and English privates, and German students he'd known at Freiberg, and Bess kept making jolly little jokes, and after our coffee she played and sang for us, and the Little Maggie mine and the strikers might have been a thousand miles away. But after a while Winford said he had to go below again-the pump machinery had been acting up, he thought they'd got it fixed all right, but he'd have another look. Bess told him he ought to be in bed, that he knew he'd been overdoing terribly, but he only laughed and said work was good for him. As he went out, he whispered to me to be sure the guns were loaded and handy, because I must look out for Bess if anything happened.

"Once he was gone, Bess let out a feeler or two in the way of a question, and then I found she'd seen the whole episode at the hoist, from the hillside above, and that she understood perfectly what it meant-an attempt to murder her husband. She was sick with fear. She said she'd had a dreadful presentiment all evening that she'd never see Winford alive again. She reproached herself because she hadn't gone down to the mine with him.

"If I'd only gone along!' she kept sayThen they wouldn't have dared-! they wouldn't have dared-!'

ing.

"I told her it was all bosh-there wasn't any danger; but I knew better, inside.

"I tried to read, and I couldn't-neither Mark Twain, nor Lindley on Mines. Bess tried to play, but she kept striking discords, and anyway, the noise of a piano made me shiver. Then we tried playing dominos,

round the double, but I'd play a five on a four and Bess would build right on and never notice it, and she'd get the ends all fives and forget to count, and I'd make my play and never think to stick her for not pegging. Finally I made Bess play' pennya-point-the first time in her life she'd ever played for money. It worked, too. I got her mind off her worries and her attention absorbed in the game. But suddenly she sat up with a start that knocked her dominos over face up and slid a pile of chips into her lap.

666

Listen!' she whispered.

"I listened with all my might, but I couldn't hear a sound except the pulse in my own ears. She'd heard some one come stealthily up on the porch, and then step back on the ground. I went all 'round the house, through the darkened rooms, and looked out there was no one in sight.

"I'm going to telephone the hoist man and see if Winford's still below,' said Bess. "I heard her ringing and ringing and rattling the hook. Then she came back, her face white.

"The telephone's dead,' she said; 'some one's cut the wires. I'm going down to the mine to look for Winford.'

"I laughed at her, and told her to go to bed and pull the covers over her head and go to sleep, and when she woke up by daylight she'd have forgotten her bad dreams. "Of course,' she answered; 'but I'm going down to the mine.'

"Just then we heard yelling. I went to a window in the darkened dining-room and looked out. The hoist-house was on fire, and by the glare I saw a mob of miners, tearing things to pieces and howling like mad. I heard Bess behind me-there she was, all ready in cap and overalls and boots. "I'm ready,' she said; 'coming along?' We slipped out through the screen porch and right into the brush behind the house. Bess clutched my arm. There was a man hiding in the bushes. It was old Bong. "You go see boss!' he said. Too muchey fight. Got'm gun?' He offered me his. We couldn't get another word out of him. He led us through the brush, keeping away from the mouth of the mine, and along a steep trail, way down the mountainside, to the mouth of an old disused tunnel. 'Boss all lite,' he said; 'in fo'.' Then all at once he had melted into the darkness.

"Bess and I climbed up the dump, we pushed through the brush at the mouth of the tunnel, and in another minute we were plashing along in the trickle of water under foot, well started into the mine. I lighted my candle, but told Bess not to light up yet. We followed ahead a long way. Then we felt warmer air-we were approaching a cross drift. My glasses fogged. I took them off, to wipe off the moisture, and stuck my candle into the wall. Next minute I knocked against it, it tumbled down and went out, and there we were in the dark. And then-neither of us had any matches!

"No matches! It would take us an hour to go home and get some, and every chance of our being intercepted on the way! But what else could be done? You know how it feels when you've done a fool thing like that. You're furious, and then you realize you've only yourself to blame, and that makes it worse. But- !

"For, next minute we heard footsteps in the cross drift. We crouched down behind a pile of caved-in rock. We heard two men approaching. They stopped near us. Then some one began to talk. It was Pottercalling Winford all the foul names you ever heard, and then some.

66.6

666

'Accident!' answered Hines's voice.

"Of course he's wise now,' went on Potter, 'but if you hadn't skipped- -!' "He knew I tried to do him up,' answered Hines.

"Then you've got to finish the job,' said Potter.

"I can't!' said Hines.

"Why not?' asked Potter. 'You'veyou've killed him once. It's no more to finish the job. If you don't do him up now, then it's you for the pen-or likelier he'll kill you!"

"Well,' said Hines, hesitatingly, 'supposin' we do, how'll we get at it? Gun play?'

"Naw!' answered Potter. 'No bullet holes! He's in number four somewhere, all by his lonely. We'll put a stick of dynamite handy, and rig up some wires, and when we see him coming, spark her off, and that's the end of Winford, and no evidence.'

"All right,' assented Hines, 'pretty