My work here was to take samples from the "roof." A grinning peon who called himself "Bruno Básques" (Vásquez) followed me about, holding his hat under the hammer with which I chipped bits of rock from above, back and forth across the top of the tunnel, every few feet. The ore ran very high in grade here, the vein being some six feet of whitish rocky substance between sheer walls of ordinary rock. It struck one most forcibly, this strange inquisitiveness of man that had caused him to prowl around inside the earth like a mole, looking for a peculiar kind of soil or stone which no one at first sight could have guessed was of any particular value. The peons, smeared all over with the drippings of candle-grease, worked steadily for all the heat and stuffiness. Indeed, one could not but wonder at the amount of energy they sold for a day's wages; though of course their industry was partly due to my "gringo" presence. We addressed them as inferiors, in the "tu" form and with the generic title "hombre," or, more exactly, in the case of most of the American bosses, "húm-bray." The white man who said "please" to them, or even showed thanks in any way, such as giving them a cigarette, lost caste in their eyes as surely as with a butler one might attempt to treat as a man. I tried it on Bruno, and he almost instantly changed from obsequiousness to near-insolence. When I had put him in his place again, he said he was glad I spoke Spanish, for so many "jefes" had pulled his hair and ears and slapped him in the face because he did not understand their "strange talk." He did not mention this in any spirit of complaint, but merely as a curious fact and one of the many visitations fate sees fit to send those of her children unluckily born peons. His jet black hair was so thick that small stones not only did not hurt his head as they fell from under my hammer, but remained buried in his thatch, so that nearly as many samples were taken from this as from the roof of the passage.
Thus the sweat-dripping days passed, without a hint of what might be going on in the world far above, amid the roar and pounding of air and hand-drills, the noisy falling of masses of rock as these broke it loose, the constant ringing of shovels, the rumble of iron ore-cars on their thread-like rails, cries of "'stá pegado!" quickly followed by the stunning, ear-splitting dynamite blast, screams of "No vás echar!" as some one passed beneath an opening above, of "Ahora sí!" when he was out of danger; the shrill warning whistling of the peons echoing back and forth through the galleries and labyrinthian side tunnels, as the crunch of shoes along the track announced the approach of some boss; the shouting of the peons "throwing" a loaded car along the track through the heavy smoke-laden air, so thick with the smell of powder and thin with oxygen that even experienced bosses developed raging headaches, and the Beau Brummel secretary of the company fell down once with dizziness and went to bed after the weekly inspection.