frightened Clate tried to explain that he had supposed the wood
thrown aside was useless and that he was making ready for the young
shoat his folks meant to bring him.

"What you suppose the company would do if every miner packed off planks
and posts that he happens to see laying around?" he eyed Clate
suspiciously. "We'd soon shut down, that's what would happen. And as for
meat. You can buy sow-belly and bologna at the commissary." There was
something more. "If you want to keep out of trouble and don't want a
couple bucks taken out of your pay, you better get them planks and posts
back where you found them!"

The miner's shack was perched on such high stilts that the wind whistled
underneath the floor until it felt like ice to the bare feet of the
children. It took a lot of coal in the grate and the kitchen stove to
keep the place halfway warm. The children were sick all through the
winter. Now and then the company doctor stopped in on his rounds of the
coal camp to leave calomel and quinine.

With the birth of her last baby, Clate's wife got down with a bealed
breast after she had been up and about for a week. "I'm bound to hire
someone," Clate told his wife. So he hired Liz Elswick to come and do
the cooking, washing, and ironing and to look after the children.

Out on Shoal's Fork neighbor women came eagerly to help each other in
case of sickness.

Though it was not much they had to pay Liz--she took it out in trade at
the store, the makings of a calico dress, a pair of shoes--it was a
hardship on the Wellfords. For Liz Elswick, like other women in a coal
camp, never having handled real money, knew little of cost. Nor did she
know how to supply the simple needs of the family. Phoebe was too ill to
offer a word of advice, poor though it would have been. So, before long,
Clate was behind with his store bill. Or to put it the other way around,
for the company always took theirs first, Clate had nothing left in his
pay envelope on payday.

Then, when he might have had a few dollars coming, something else would
happen: shoes would be worn out, he'd have to buy new ones for the
children couldn't go barefoot in the winter. He himself had to wear
heavy boots in the mine in order to work at all, for Clate had to stand
in water most of the time when he picked or loaded. Another time the
house caught fire and burned up their beds, chairs, everything. Even
though he had steady work that month he had to sell his time to th