ed out with no more to say. Sometimes he'd vent his
spleen upon his wife. "You wuz the one that wanted to come here! Wisht
I'd never married. A man can't get nowheres with a wife and young ones
on his hands." And the wife, remembering the way of mountain women,
offered no word of argument.

When the owners of the coal operation came from the East to check up
output and earnings they didn't take time to make a tour of inspection
of the shacks. Certainly they had no time to listen to complaints of
miners.

Lured by the promise of big money Clate Wellford, like many other
mountain men, forsook the familiar life of his own creek for the strange
work-a-day of the mining camp.

Back on Shoal's Fork of Greasy Creek there was always milk a-plenty to
drink. Bless you, Clate knew the time when he'd carried buckets full of
half-sour milk to the hogs. How they guzzled it! Here there was never a
drop of cow's milk to drink. You got it in cans--thick, condensed,
sickeningly sweet. Couldn't fool the children, not even when you thinned
it with water. "It don't taste like Bossy's milk," the youngsters shoved
it away.

What was more, back on Shoal's Fork there was always fried chicken in
the spring. All you could eat. Turkey and goose and duck, if you chose,
through the winter and plenty of ham meat. There was never a day date's
folks couldn't go out into the garden and bring in beans, beets, corn,
and cabbage. He'd never known a time when there were not potatoes and
turnips the year round. The Wellfords had come to take such things for
granted. But here in the coal camp you could walk the full length of the
place from the last ramshackle house on down to the commissary and never
see a bed of onions and lettuce. The shacks were so close together there
was no room for a garden, even if the company had permitted it.

"That's company-owned!" the boss growled at Clate that time he was
trying to break up the hard crusty earth with a hoe.

"I've got my own onion sets," Clate tried to explain. "My folks fetched
'em down."

"Who cares?" the company boss snarled. "What you reckon the company's
running a commissary for? The store manager can sell you onions--ready
to eat."

So the miner didn't set out an onion bed.

Again, Clate found some old warped planks outside the drift mouth of the
mine; he brought them home and was building a pigpen. The mine boss came
charging down upon him.

"What you doing with the company's planks?"

The