CHAPTER III
IN THE CINDER PIT
BOB JARVIS had been a little doubtful when Steve told him of the change in their work. Bob thought the present job was quite good enough, all but the pay; yet he was willing to get along on twelve dollars a week so long as he had so much leisure time.
On the following morning the two boys reported for duty to the foreman of number seven hearth, Bill Foley. There was a gleam of quiet satisfaction in the eyes of the foreman as he saw the boys coming toward his division. He had been informed that they were to work on a trick in number seven section. Foley did not know why the change had been made. He believed that, for some reason, the boys had been reduced to the ranks. The only directions he had received regarding what was to be done with the Iron Boys was the injunction of the assistant superintendent's messenger, to "make them work till they can't tell a cinder pit from a hole in the ground."
Foley grinned.
"You bet they'll work! Everybody in my division works."
Foley's head pitman was a Pole named Watski Kalinski, a heavy-faced man, surly and quarrelsome at times, especially with the few men that were under him. He understood cleaning the cinder pits, however, and he was kept in his place because of the work that his shift got through with, rather than for any especial intelligence that he might possess; which, as a matter of fact, he did not.