CHAPTER 9.

PIRATES AT WORK

WHEN Ted had relayed this conversation to Nelson, they stared at each other for a moment. Then Nelson threw down the knapsack he was packing. “This ends our own expedition, doesn’t it?”

“I guess it does. It’s a better lead than we could get by ourselves.”

“What kind of lead, Ted? Just what good does it do us?”

“Well, we’re anxious to find out everything we can about what’s going on in the mine, right? And this is our chance to find out a little something.”

“What are the pirates going to say if they catch us?”

“Let’s hope they won’t catch us. I doubt that the pirates will like the idea of anybody’s spying on them.”

“Except that everybody knows the pirating is going on,” Nelson pointed out, “even Mr. Winslow. So what do the pirates care?”

“They might prefer not to be identified.”

“That’s easy, Ted. We don’t know any of them well enough to identify them.”

They spent a restless evening, waiting for the anonymous caller to show up. What if it were only something intended to interfere with their own plans? Or what if it had some sinister motive?

“Ted, suppose you did get a story, including the names of all the pirates and an exact description of what they were doing. What would you do with it? Print it, or do you happen to like the way you’re put together?”

“I’m pretty well satisfied. But it wouldn’t be up to me. Mr. Dobson would have to decide whether to use the story.”

“And Mr. Dobson might have some qualms about getting you involved.”

Ten o’clock came and passed, and they had about decided to give up on their visitor, when there came a discreet knock on their door. Nelson was closest, and opened it. There appeared to be no one there at first. Their visitor was standing off to the side.

“Ready to go?” he asked.

Nelson looked at Ted. “I guess we’re ready. Will we take my car?”

“No, I’ve got mine a little way down the road. We’ll go in that.”

Ted left a note on his desk saying where they had gone—as far as they knew. Chances were it would do little good, but it was the only precaution he could think of that would not actually interfere with the story they were after.

The visitor walked on ahead of them. The car was parked in a dark spot, and they were unable to read the license plate. He motioned them into the front seat, then took his own place from the driver’s side. He started the engine as quietly as he could, and the car moved slowly forward.

They could not tell much about their guide. Though he was not hiding his face, his hat was pulled low, and shadowed it. They got the impression that he was no older than they were. While it could not have been anyone they knew well, they were unable to eliminate the possibility it might be someone they had met briefly, perhaps at the Canteen.

“Where are we going?” asked Nelson, as much in the hope of drawing the young man into conversation as an attempt to pick up information.

The driver only shook his head, and refused to answer. Whether he was trying to hide his voice or whether he was simply worried they could not tell.

One thing seemed certain to the passengers: although they had expected right along that they were being taken to the mine, they could tell that they weren’t going by the most direct route. Unfamiliar though they were with the roads around East Walton, it did not seem that they could circle around quite this much without getting anywhere. Apparently the idea was to confuse them, or to throw off anyone who might be following.

The driver’s frequent glances in the mirror bore this out. After all, he couldn’t be sure they hadn’t told anyone about their excursion, and had arranged to have themselves followed.

They turned up some obscure side road, and after making several turns drew up to what was obviously an entrance to the mine. A truck was parked there—not a very large truck—and it was partly filled with coal. Their driver got out of the car, and motioned them ahead of him.

“How much coal do you think that truck would hold?” Ted asked Nelson in a whisper.

“About four tons, I’d say at a guess. If that’s all they’re able to haul away in a night, it’s no wonder Mr. Winslow isn’t interested.”

Their guide had put a miner’s light on his head, which helped to illuminate the path ahead of them. At the mine entrance he took the lead, while they followed close behind. They were following a set of tracks on which carts had once hauled coal.

The tracks branched off several times, but their guide seemed to know where he was going. If their guide should desert them, however, they would have no means of getting out except by feeling their way along the tracks. If they made a mistake and wandered up one of the branches, there was no telling where they might end up.

But a more immediate problem came to Ted’s mind. He thought, once or twice, that he could hear the sound of shoveling or picking somewhere up ahead. How could their guide be sure that they would not accidentally stumble upon some of the pirates at work? That bright light would be a give-away, and could be seen a long distance up the tunnel ahead.

Ted wished they had brought a light of their own, but felt quite sure, somehow, that if they had, their guide would have taken it away from them before leading them into the mine. This must be a risk for him, and he wanted their full cooperation. Still it was awkward to be dependent upon a light held by someone else. They stumbled along after the young man, sometimes unable to avoid small obstacles that they could easily have stepped around with their own flashlights.

The picking seemed to be getting a little louder and closer. Wasn’t it time for their guide to grow more cautious and urge them to be quiet and advance carefully? Suddenly he turned a corner, and as they followed him they saw several miners at work. They started to draw back, but their guide motioned them on, and announced to one of the men:

“Here they are.”

Then at last Ted and Nelson tumbled to the truth. The guide wasn’t a spy who wanted to expose the pirates. He was one of the pirates himself! It even seemed probable, from their attitude toward each other, that he was the son of the leader.

The chief of the coal pirates had a quiet voice and a pleasant manner.

“I take it that you are Ted Wilford, and you are Nelson Morgan,” he began. “I know your names, of course, and I wish I could tell you mine. But I think we’ll get on much better if I preserve our anonymity for the time being. If this is a newspaper story for you, you are welcome to your story, but not to our names.”

“Do I understand that you brought us here so that I could interview you, and that you are willing to answer any questions apart from the names of your men?”

“That’s it, Ted. You go right ahead.”

Meanwhile, their former guide, his duty done, had drifted away, and the miners who had stopped work at their arrival now returned to their task. They were using picks and shovels, apparently the only tools they had. The little carts were loaded by hand, and when one of them was full, they saw one of the miners pushing it back down the tracks. Man power—even more primitive than mule power—and that was the way these men were earning a living! They suddenly realized how much a few dollars meant to these men, if they would work like this. Somewhere the boys heard a faint buzz, as though someone were idling the motor of either the truck or the car at the mine’s entrance, but it soon stopped.

This was one of the most unusual interviews Ted had ever had. Just that day he had interviewed Mr. Winslow sitting before a broad desk in a neatly furnished office. Now the pirate leader was sitting on a large rock, seemingly glad of the chance to rest for a few minutes, and Ted and Nelson sat down, too.

“It would seem, sir, that you want me to print this story, since you went to quite a bit of trouble to get me here. What’s your purpose in that?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I don’t particularly want our illegal activities publicized, but I think it just as well that people know as much as possible about how things are in East Walton. The more people we can interest in our case, the more likely it is that some sort of help will come to us. And of course there can’t be any real benefits for any of us unless the mine reopens.”

“Then you didn’t trust me to find my own story?” asked Ted with a smile.

“I’ll put it to you directly: you couldn’t have got this story, if we didn’t want you to have it. We have a small alarm system that would tell us when someone was coming, and we could disappear without your ever catching sight of us. And of course that is exactly what we would do, if an unauthorized person approached us. I know a little about you, Ted, and feel that you are a responsible reporter who will give us fair shakes in your story.”

“Are you really afraid of being discovered,” Nelson questioned, “when everyone knows you’re here anyway?”

“They know about us, Nelson, but they don’t know us. They don’t know for sure who we are. Mr. Winslow could never give us permission to work in the mine the way we do. If he did, he would find himself in all kinds of trouble. But he pretends that he is unable to catch us and stop us, can’t afford all the guards he would need, and so on. We, on our part, must pretend to be thieves, even though we know in our hearts that we are not. We are taking something that, for the time being, no one else wants, and won’t be missed when the mine reopens. By helping our families, we are relieving a little of the burden on the public charities, and I suppose that people who buy our cheap coal are getting some small benefits, too.”

“How many men do you have working here?” Ted inquired.

“I’d rather not mention any numbers, Ted, but I don’t think I could give you any accurate figure, even if I wanted to. It isn’t always the same number, and it isn’t always the same men. Some nights there may be only two or three, some nights there are more. I suppose it depends on the state of a man’s pocketbook whether he is willing to put in a night like this.”

Nelson picked up the ax the miner had laid aside, and took a few swings at the face of the coal seam without making very much impression on it. If this was supposed to be soft coal, it still seemed hard enough to him.

“Whee! I thought I had muscles, but they seem to be the wrong kind of muscles for this work,” he decided, putting the ax down again.

“Soft,” said the miner with a slight smile visible behind the glare of his miner’s lamp. Though he wasn’t giving his name, he seemed to have little fear of being identified.

“Is this all you have,” asked Ted, “just these hand tools?”

“That’s all we can afford. Mr. Winslow has better equipment, of course, but he would never dare loan or rent it to us. Oh, I wouldn’t say we wouldn’t like a little better tooling, some power cutters, for example, but we make do with what we have.”

“What about mules?” Nelson wanted to know.

“There used to be quite a few mules around. In fact, these tracks were designed for mule carts. But they were becoming obsolete, and when the mine closed the animals were all dispersed. I don’t believe you’ll ever find mules at work in this mine again. We would need better help than they could give to restore this mine to a competitive position.”

“Then you do have hopes of this mine opening again?”

“It’ll open, Ted, when enough people get together and decide that they want it open again. Your guess is just as good as mine about when that will be.”

“If it reopened, would it be on an automated basis?”

“There would certainly have to be some big improvements made in the operation. But automation—I don’t know just how far you’d have to go. If the mine were able to hire back only half the men who were laid off, that would still solve half our problem, wouldn’t it?”

“What about safety? Isn’t what you are doing sort of dangerous?”

“We don’t let ourselves think about that, but accept whatever risks there are.”

The interview ended then, and the miner summoned their former guide, who reappeared out of the shadows. Wordlessly, he led the way back along the tracks and out to the mine entrance. One or two cartloads of coal had been added to the truck while they were inside, and it was now about half filled.

They got into the car, and their guide, after circling around a little, returned them to the motel. He dropped them off a short distance from their door, then drove off, waving his hand.

“So those were the coal pirates,” Nelson muttered. “You know, I think from now on I’ll look at a dollar bill with a little more respect, now that I see what some people have to go through to earn it.”