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 grouchy. 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 canyon, 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 grumbling 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............