SECTION 25.

 Hal had promised Alec Stone to keep a look-out for trouble-makers; and one evening the boss stopped him on the street, and asked him if he had anything to report. Hal took the occasion to indulge his sense of humour.

“There's no harm in Mike Sikoria,” said he. “He likes to shoot off his head, but if he's got somebody to listen, that's all he wants. He's just old and grouchy¹. But there's another fellow that I think would bear watching.”

“Who's that?” asked the boss.

“I don't know his last name. They call him Gus and he's a 'cager.' Fellow with a red face.”

“I know,” said Stone—“Gus Durking.”

“Well, he tried his best to get me to talk about unions. He keeps bringing it up, and I think he's some kind of trouble-maker.”

“I see,” said the boss. “I'll get after him.”

“You won't say I told you,” said Hal, anxiously.

“Oh, no—sure not.” And Hal caught the trace of a smile on the pit-boss's face.

He went away, smiling in his turn. The “red-faced feller. Gus,” was the person Madvik had named as being a “spotter” for the company!

There were ins and outs to this matter of “spotting,” and sometimes it was not easy to know what to think. One Sunday morning Hal went for a walk up the canyon², and on the way he met a young chap who got to talking with him, and after a while brought up the question of working-conditions in North Valley. He had only been there a week, he said, but everybody he had met seemed to be grumbling³ about short weight. He himself had a job as an “outside man,” so it made no difference to him, but he was interested, and wondered what Hal had found.

Straightway came the question, was this really a workingman, or had Alec Stone set some one to spying upon his spy. This was an intelligent fellow, an American—which in itself was suspicious, for most of the new men the company got in were from “somewhere East of Suez.”

Hal decided⁴ to spar for a while. He did not know, he said, that conditions were any worse here than elsewhere. You heard complaints, no matter what sort of job you took.

Yes, said the stranger, but matters seemed to be especially bad in the coal-camps. Probably it was because they were so remote, and the companies owned everything in sight.

“Where have you been?” asked Hal, thinking that this might trap him.

But the other answered straight; he had evidently worked in half a dozen of the camps. In Mateo he had paid a dollar a month for wash-house privileges, and there had never been any water after the first three men had washed. There had been a common wash-tub for all the men, an unthinkably filthy⁵ arrangement. At Pine Creek⁷—Hal found the very naming of the place made his heart stand still—at Pine Creek he had boarded with his boss, but the roof of the building leaked, and everything he owned was ruined; the boss would do nothing—yet when the boarder moved, he lost his job. At East Ridge⁸, this man and a couple of other fellows had rented a two room cabin and started to board themselves, in spite of the fact that they had to pay a dollar-fifty a sack for potatoes and eleven cents a pound for sugar at the company store. They had continued until they made the discovery that the water supply had run short, and that the water for which they were paying the company a dollar a month was being pumped from the bottom of the mine, where the filth⁶ of mules⁹ and men was plentiful¹⁰!

Hal forced himself to remain non-committal; he shook his head and said it was too bad, but the workers always got it in the neck, and he didn't see what they could do about it. So they strolled back to the camp, the stranger evidently baffled, and Hal, for his part, feeling like the reader of a detective story at the end of the first chapter. Was this young man the murderer, or was he the hero? One would have to read on in the book to find out!

1 grouchy   

adj.好抱怨的；愠怒的

参考例句：

• Grouchy people are always complaining for no reason.满腹牢骚的人总是毫无理由地抱怨。
• Sometimes she is grouchy, but all in all she is an excellent teacher.有时候她的脾气很坏，但总的来说她还是一位好老师。

2 canyon   

n.峡谷，溪谷

参考例句：

• The Grand Canyon in the USA is 1900 metres deep.美国的大峡谷1900米深。
• The canyon is famous for producing echoes.这个峡谷以回声而闻名。

3 grumbling   

adj. 喃喃鸣不平的, 出怨言的

参考例句：

• She's always grumbling to me about how badly she's treated at work. 她总是向我抱怨她在工作中如何受亏待。
• We didn't hear any grumbling about the food. 我们没听到过对食物的抱怨。

4 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

5 filthy   

adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的

参考例句：

• The whole river has been fouled up with filthy waste from factories.整条河都被工厂的污秽废物污染了。
• You really should throw out that filthy old sofa and get a new one.你真的应该扔掉那张肮脏的旧沙发，然后再去买张新的。

6 filth   

n.肮脏，污物，污秽；淫猥

参考例句：

• I don't know how you can read such filth.我不明白你怎么会去读这种淫秽下流的东西。
• The dialogue was all filth and innuendo.这段对话全是下流的言辞和影射。

7 creek   

n.小溪，小河，小湾

参考例句：

• He sprang through the creek.他跳过小河。
• People sunbathe in the nude on the rocks above the creek.人们在露出小溪的岩石上裸体晒日光浴。

8 ridge   

n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭

参考例句：

• We clambered up the hillside to the ridge above.我们沿着山坡费力地爬上了山脊。
• The infantry were advancing to attack the ridge.步兵部队正在向前挺进攻打山脊。

9 mules   

骡( mule的名词复数 )； 拖鞋； 顽固的人； 越境运毒者

参考例句：

• The cart was pulled by two mules. 两匹骡子拉这辆大车。
• She wore tight trousers and high-heeled mules. 她穿紧身裤和拖鞋式高跟鞋。

10 plentiful   

adj.富裕的，丰富的

参考例句：

• Their family has a plentiful harvest this year.他们家今年又丰收了。
• Rainfall is plentiful in the area.这个地区雨量充足。