“Come on!” shouted another. “To hell with their gunmen!”
Hal pushed his way into the crowd. “Tim!” he cried. “How do you know this?”
“There's a fellow in there seen it.”
“Who?”
“I can't tell you—they'd fire him; but it's somebody you know as well as me. He come and told me. They're beatin' me old father out of damages!”
“They do it all the time!” shouted Wauchope, an English miner at Hal's side. “That's why they won't let us in there.”
“They done the same thing to my father!” put in another voice. Hal recognised Andy, the Greek boy.
“And they want to start Number Two in the mornin'!” yelled Tim. “Who'll go down there again? And with Alec Stone, him that damns the men and saves the mules!”
“We'll not go back in them mines till they're safe!” shouted Wauchope. “Let them sprinkle them—or I'm done with the whole business.”
“And let 'em give us our weights!” cried another. “We'll have a check-weighman, and we'll get what we earn!”