'"That's what," said Abe; and then he went off into a fusilade of scientific profanity, expressive of his esteem for the girl who had swung his team round the curves; and the miners nodded to each other, and winked their entire approval of Abe's performance, for this was his specialty.
'Very decent fellow, Abe, but his talk wouldn't print.'
Here Craig paused, as if balancing Abe's virtues and vices.
'Well,' I urged, 'who is she?'
'Oh yes,' he said, recalling himself; 'she is an Edinburgh young lady--met Lewis Mayor, a young Scotch-English man, in London--wealthy, good family, and all that, but fast, and going to pieces at home. His people, who own large shares in these mines here, as a last resort sent him out here to reform. Curiously innocent ideas those old country people have of the reforming properties of this atmosphere! They send their young bloods here to reform.
Here! in this devil's camp-ground, where a man's lust is his only law, and when, from sheer monotony, a man must betake himself to the only excitement of the place--that offered by the saloon. Good people in the east hold up holy hands of horror at these godless miners; but I tell you it's asking these boys a good deal to keep straight and clean in a place like this. I take my excitement in fighting the devil and doing my work generally, and that gives me enough; but these poor chaps--hard worked, homeless, with no break or change--God help them and me!' and his voice sank low.
'Well,' I persisted, 'did Mavor reform?'
Again he roused himself. 'Reform? Not exactly. In six-months he had broken through all restraint; and, mind you, not the miners'
fault--not a miner helped him down. It was a sight to make angels weep when Mrs. Mavor would come to the saloon door for her husband.
Every miner would vanish; they could not look upon her shame, and they would send Mavor forth in the charge of Billy Breen, a queer little chap, who had belonged to the Mavors in some way in the old country, and between them they would get him home. How she stood it puzzles me to this day; but she never made any sign, and her courage never failed. It was always a bright, brave, proud face she held up to the world--except in church; there it was different.
I used to preach my sermons, I believe, mostly for her--but never so that she could suspect--as bravely and as cheerily as I could.
And as she listened, and especially as she sang--how she used to sing in those days!--there was no touch of pride in her face, though the courage never died out, but appeal, appeal! I could have cursed aloud the cause of her misery, or wept for the pity of it. Before her baby was born he seemed to pull himself together, for he was quite mad about her, and from the day the baby came--talk about miracles!--from that day he never drank a drop. She gave the baby over to him, and the baby simply absorbed him.
'He was a new man. He could not drink whisky and kiss his baby.
And the miners--it was really absurd if it were not so pathetic.
It was the first baby in Black Rock, and they used to crowd Mavor's shop and peep into the room at the back of it--I forgot to tell you that when he lost his position as manager he opened a hardware shop, for his people chucked him, and he was too proud to write home for money--just for a chance to be asked in to see the baby.
I came upon Nixon standing at the back of the shop after he had seen the baby for the first time, sobbing hard, and to my question he replied: "It's just like my own." You can't understand this.
But to men who have lived so long in the mountains that they have forgotten what a baby looks like, who have had experience of humanity only in its roughest, foulest form, this little mite, sweet and clean, was like an angel fresh from heaven, the one link in all that black camp that bound them to what was purest and best in their past.
'And to see the mother and her baby handle the miners!
'Oh, it was all beautiful beyond words! I shall never forget the shock I got one night when I found "Old Ricketts" nursing the baby.
A drunken old beast he was; but there he was sitting, sober enough, ****** extraordinary faces at the baby, who was grabbing at his nose and whiskers and cooing in blissful delight. Poor "Old Ricketts" looked as if he had been caught stealing, and muttering something about having to go, gazed wildly round for some place in which to lay the baby, when in came the mother, saying in her own sweet, frank way: "O Mr. Ricketts" (she didn't find out till afterwards his name was Shaw), "would you mind keeping her just a little longer?--I shall be back in a few minutes." And "Old Ricketts" guessed he could wait.
'But in six months mother and baby, between them, transformed "Old Ricketts" into Mr. Shaw, fire-boss of the mines. And then in the evenings, when she would be singing her baby to sleep, the little shop would be full of miners, listening in dead silence to the baby-songs, and the English songs, and the Scotch songs she poured forth without stint, for she sang more for them than for her baby.
No wonder they adored her. She was so bright, so gay, she brought light with her when she went into the camp, into the pits--for she went down to see the men work--or into a sick miner's shack; and many a man, lonely and sick for home or wife, or baby or mother, found in that back room cheer and comfort and courage, and to many a poor broken wretch that room became, as one miner put it, "the anteroom to heaven."'
Mr. Craig paused, and I waited. Then he went on slowly--'For a year and a half that was the happiest home in all the world, till one day--'
He put his face in his hands, and shuddered.
'I don't think I can ever forget the awful horror of that bright fall afternoon, when "Old Ricketts" came breathless to me and gasped, "Come! for the dear Lord's sake," and I rushed after him.
At the mouth of the shaft lay three men dead. One was Lewis Mavor.
