After five o'clock in the afternoon no white
collars were to be seen upon the streets of Coal Creek.
In the town men lived like brutes. Dumb with toil they drank greedily
in the saloon on Main Street and went home to beat their wives. Among
them a constant low muttering went on. They felt the injustice of
their lot but could not voice it logically and when they thought of
the men who owned the mine they swore dumbly, using vile oaths even in
their thoughts. Occasionally a strike broke out and Barney Butterlips,
a thin little man with a cork leg, stood on a box and made speeches
regarding the coming brotherhood of man. Once a troop of cavalry was
unloaded from the cars and with a battery paraded the main street. The
battery was made up of several men in brown uniforms. They set up a
Gatling gun at the end of the street and the strike subsided.
An Italian who lived in a house on the hillside cultivated a garden.
His place was the one beauty spot in the valley. With a wheelbarrow he
brought earth from the woods at the top of the hill and on Sunday he
could be seen going back and forth and whistling merrily. In the
winter he sat in his house making a drawing on a bit of paper. In the
spring he took the drawing, and by it planted his garden, utilising
every inch of his ground.
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