It was on one of these occasions that Hal first noticed Mike Sikoria, a grizzle-haired old Slovak, who had spent twenty years in the mines of these regions. All the bitterness of all the wrongs of all these years welled up in Old Mike, as he shouted his score aloud: “Nineteen, twenty-two, twenty-four, twenty! Is that my weight, Mister? You want me to believe that's my weight?”
“That's your weight,” said the weigh-boss, coldly.
“Well, by Judas, your scale is off, Mister! Look at them cars—them cars is big! You measure them cars, Mister—seven feet long, three and a half feet high, four feet wide. And you tell me them don't go but twenty?”
“You don't load them right,” said the boss.
“Don't load them right?” echoed the old miner; he became suddenly plaintive, as if more hurt than angered by such an insinuation. “You know all the years I work, and you tell me I don't know a load? When I load a car, I load him like a miner, I don't load him like a Jap, that don't know about a mine! I put it up—I chunk it up like a stack of hay. I load him square—like that.” With gestures the old fellow was illustrating what he meant. “See there! There's a ton on the top, and a ton and a half on the bottom—and you tell me I get only nineteen, twenty!”
“That's your weight,” said the boss, implacably.
“But, Mister, your scale is wrong! I tell you I used to get my weight. I used to get forty-five, forty-six on them cars. Here's my buddy—ask him if it ain't so. What is it, Bo?”
“Um m m-mum,” said Bo, who was a negro—though one could hardly be sure of this for the coal-dust on him.
“I can't make a living no more!” exclaimed the old Slovak, his voice trembling and his wizened dark eyes full of pleading. “What you think I make? For fifteen days, fifty cents! I pay board, and so help me God, Mister—and I stand right here—I swear for God I make fifty cents. I dig the coal and I ain't got no weight, I ain't got nothing! Your scale is wrong!”
“Get out!” said the weigh-boss, turning away.