“Did you find out who the stranger was?”
“No; but he was rather a nice-looking fellow. It was him who was fixing the harness. He helped pick Roscoe up and carry him into Steele’s drugstore, and seemed to be mighty sorry for what had happened. He stayed till the doctor came and found Roscoe’s right leg broken, and helped lift him into the ambulance which took him to the hospital. Then he went up to pay the damages at the livery-stable. He was a drummer, I reckon. There’s a fellow in the smoker looks a good deal like him. I thought it was him, at first, and spoke to him, but he didn’t seem to know me.”
The train slowed up for a station and the conductor hurried away to attend to his duties. But nobody got aboard and he soon came back and sat down again by Allan.
“Business light to-night,” he remarked, and, indeed, there was not more than six or eight people on the train. “Though I’ve got two passengers,” he added, “riding in the baggage-car.”
“In the baggage-car?”
“Yes; they’re taking out the money to pay off the miners at Coalville, to-morrow morning. They’ve got a big, iron-bound chest, about all that four men can lift, and they’re sitting on it, armed to the teeth. There’s probably fifty or sixty thousand dollars in it. They take it out that way every month.”
“Isn’t there a bank at Coalville?”
“A bank? Bless your heart, no! The coal company runs a sort of little savings institution for its employees; but they don’t pay any interest, and I’ve heard it said they don’t encourage their men to save anything. You see, as long as they can keep the men living from hand to mouth, there’s less danger of a strike; and if they do strike, it don’t take very long to starve ’em out. Oh, the company’s wise! It don’t want any bank at Coalville. Besides, I don’t imagine anybody’d be especially anxious to start a bank there. They’d be afraid the miners ’d get drunk some night and clean it out.”
“Are they so bad as all that?”
“They’re a tough gang, especially when they get liquor in them. The company doesn’t take any chances with them. It banks its money at Wadsworth and brings out just enough every month to pay them off. There’s always a wagon and half a dozen armed men ready to take it over to the company’s office, which is fitted up like a fort, and by noon next day, it’s all paid out and a big slice of it’s spent.”