“As I understand it, you people want a check-weighman. Now, they tell me the pay for a check-weighman should be three dollars a day, but we’ve got only seven miners among us, and that’s not enough. I will offer to take the job for twenty-five cents a day from each man, which will make a dollar-seventy-five, less than what I’m getting now as a buddy. If we get thirty men to come in, then I’ll take ten cents a day from each, and make the full three dollars. Does that seem fair?” “Sure!” said Mike; and the others added their assent by word or nod. “All right. Now, there’s nobody that works in this mine but knows the men don’t get their weight. It would cost the company several hundred dollars a day to give us our weight, and nobody should be so foolish as to imagine they’ll do it without a struggle. We’ve got to make up our minds to stand together.” “Sure, stand together!” cried Mike. “No get check-weighman!” exclaimed Jerry, pessimistically. “Not unless we try, Jerry,” said Hal. And Mike thumped his knee. “Sure try! And get him too!” “Right!” cried “Big Jack.” But his little wife was not satisfied with the response of the others. She gave Hal his first lesson in the drilling of these polyglot masses. “Talk to them. Make them understand you!” And she pointed them out one by one with her finger: “You! You! Wresmak, here, and you, Klowoski, and you, Zam--you other Polish fellow. Want check-weighman. Want to get all weight. Get all our money. Understand?” “Yes, yes!” “Get committee, go see super! Want check-weighman. Understand? Got to have check-weighman! No back down, no scare.” “No--no scare!” Klowoski, who understood some English, explained rapidly to Zamierowski; and Zamierowski, whose head was still plastered where Jeff Cotton’s revolver had hit it, nodded eagerly in assent. In spite of his bruises, he would stand by the others, and face the boss. This suggested another question. “Who’s going to do the talking to the boss?” “You do that,” said Mrs. David, to Hal. “But I’m the one that’s to be paid. It’s not for me to talk.” “No one else can do it right,” declared the woman. “Sure--got to be American feller!” said Mike. But Hal insisted. If he did the talking, it would look as if the check-weighman had been the source of the movement, and was engaged in making a good paying job for himself. There was discussion back and forth, until finally John Edstrom spoke up. “Put me on the committee.” “You?” said Hal. “But you’ll be thrown out! And what will your wife do?” “I think my wife is going to die to-night,” said Edstrom, simply.