“Billy, I hated to run away and leave you to bear everything alone; and I hate it when I can’t even tell you where I am; but as long as you told me to do it, and wait four weeks before writing, I’ve done just as you said, though it’s been hard. I’m sure you know best. But why did you typewrite it?
“Don’t worry about me. I’m at my cousin’s,—my uncle’s house, and they treat me fine. I don’t have to do anything that I don’t wish to, and Cousin Will is dandy. Tell ma this; though I suppose you won’t since you fixed everything safe for me. Poor ma! I’m sorry for her.
“I’m sending you a thousand kisses and a heartful of love. I’ll send more money as soon as I can earn it.
“Your loving, troublesome Erminie.”
CHAPTER XIV
THE BLACK HAND
THE Summer was well on toward September. Billy’s first business that Monday morning in June when he made his final break with boyhood was to go to Mr. Smith’s Tum-wah Valley office for instructions. Here Mr. Smith came every morning to see how his big concerns were going in earth and rock, before he took them up in his town offices in the mystic symbolism of paper and figures, and business policy and confidence,—all that vast idealism which is so much more really the business of the world than are the products of the earth we live on.
From the open door of the artistic, vine-covered log building Billy could look up the steep hill to Tuk-wil-la (hazel-nuts), Mr. Smith’s summer home, set in the edge of the forest overlooking the little valley and the broad Lake Kal-lak-a-la-chuck.
Mr. Smith’s instructions were brief. “I told you it would be no picnic, Billy. This is your stunt: take your shovel and go to work with those Dagos on the grade. Learn all of ’em, the look of the face, walk, and whatever you can pick up of their talk. You’ll have to slouch along and be a Dago yourself. Mind, I don’t want any tattling,—just to know if they are plotting any mischief, that’s all. And don’t come near me unless you’re called. Treat me as you see them treat me. See?”
“I’ll try,” Billy answered. He went to the foreman for his tools, and set to work.