"Your mug's familiar. Lemme see—your name's Hewin, ain't it?"
The superintendent grinned. "You ought to remember it. You beat hell out of me in the Coalstock strike for staying on as foreman."
"Scab then, eh, and still at it." Dawson's tolerance had a touch promising danger.
"That's what you'd call it. I'm in charge here. Mind your own business, or I'm not the one who'll get beat up this time." He turned with grinning ugliness and climbed back to the opening.
They cut over to the railroad track, and entered Hewintown by the back way. Dawson studied the land carefully. "That's the way they'd bring the train from Pittsburgh, of course. And that's a pretty narrow cut beyond that dinky little house. Who lives there?"
"Mr. Judson, the vice-president."
"This ain't no place for a mine-owner."
Dawson's comment on the shack town was a string of profanity. "Even in West Virginia they had better dumps than those! I wouldn't let my pig live there. Company houses, as always."
"Yes."
"This crew out?"