The Glenwood Post

Found Only Way to Win
By JAMES BLACK
(© 1924, Western Newspaper Union.)

BILL, it ain't no use your coming here no more. You're gitting too old to work underground, and that's the plain truth. You kin get your pay tonight."

Old Bill stared in dismay at McCarthy, the superintendent of the construction gang. He had lived in dread of just those words for months now but that did not make them any easier.

Years before Bill had himself been foreman. He had lost that job through drinking, but there had always been a place for him in the coal mine. And yet he had known it could not last forever.

His life had not been a very happy one. There was Rose—they had never got along together at all. And his son, the only child, had died in the war. No, life hadn't much to hold out for him.

All his savings he had put into life insurance. When he died Rose would get four thousand dollars, enough to establish her for life comfortably with a little shop, or something like that.

But what was the use of that? Fired from the only job he knew, he couldn't turn in the weekly pay envelope. Nor could he keep up the premiums. And worse than anything he dreaded the scolding that he knew would come when he got back and told his wife that the mine was finished so far as he was concerned.

All the morning he brooded over it as he picked at the thin seam of coal—for old Bill got the thinnest and most unprofitable seams nowadays. He hated McCarthy, the Irish giant with whom lay the decision that meant life or death to him. Meanwhile, in some way the news had got about among the men.

"Old Bill's fired," Bill heard one whisper to another. "Time he was, too, I guess. The company's only been keeping him out of charity for years past. He's past work."

The words sank into his soul. No use, no use to any one. Useless here, and useless at home. His wife had commented acridly upon that fact, as old Bill's pay envelope dwindled and grew smaller week by week.

No use—and he must starve in his old age. Rose must starve, too. Why couldn't he die, so that she could collect that four thousand dollars? No such luck. He must just go on, a burden upon everybody.

He was picking away in the far end of the gallery when he heard a strange rumbling sound in the distance. He stopped and listened. His ears were not so good as they had been, but he remembered that he had heard a sound like that once, long years before.

That was when the cave-in occurred at an adjacent mine. He had been one of those who escaped. Nineteen miners were killed when the ground collapsed. They were buried under half a mile of stone and rubble.

Shouts, shouts of warning. Now old Bill flung down his pick and ran along the gallery. He could not mistake that warning.

When he drew near the entrance he saw a strange thing. The miners were scurrying like ants toward the distant light. And straddling the corridor was a figure looking like one of those statues that he had seen outside the lower stories of buildings in the city—men carrying the weight of the building on their backs.

And then he knew what it was. It was McCarthy, the superintendent, bearing the entire weight of the caving timbers on his shoulders. A Hercules, the big Irishman stood there, his bowed legs set into the coal dust, his mighty muscles upholding the sagging timbers.

And the moment McCarthy let go he would be buried—as those nineteen had been buried. He was giving his life for the men.

"Bill." He gasped under the strain. "Hurry, man, I can't hold 'em up much longer."

Then old Bill did a strange thing. Deliberately he took his stand behind McCarthy. He braced his strong old shoulders under the sagging timbers.

"Run, Mac," he gasped. "You got a wife and four kids."

"Bill, you durned old fool! Git!"

"I won't git, Mac. If you don't git, I'll stay here with you. Quick! I ain't as strong as I was. It's no use talking, Mac."

"Bill, I can't do it."

"You got to do it, Mac."

"God bless you, Bill. If it wasn't—I'll see to your wife."

"Quick! I can't hold on! Good-by, Mac."

As McCarthy emerged into the light he heard the mine cave in behind him.