“You want to come down in the mine, Christine? I’m going on down before lunch. That’s what I’m here for, I want to get a start back tonight if I can straighten out the dumb goings-on here.”

“Sure, sure,” the manager said, nervously. “Come on down, Miss Storm, everything’s going swell, Mr. Kennedy.”

“I won’t go down now,” Christine said. “Maybe after lunch. I don’t like coal mines much.”

“You like the money from them all right, don’t you?” Czar asked. She ignored this. “I’m going over to have a little chat with Mrs. Boone at the store. And I’ll fool around with the plane a little bit, we’ll be going back so soon. And you mustn’t skip lunch, Grampa. Bad for you. I’ll meet you at twelve-thirty at Boones’.”

Czar turned abruptly with a gesture to the man, he trotted off with an exaggeration of his short quick stride. He did not talk. He would look, he had decided, he would just say nothing but he would look into everything, he would be calm and quiet and ask this and that, pleasant as you please, and then when he had the whole story he would blast. Who did they think they were fooling! An old man! Not by a damn sight. He wasn’t old. You were as old as you felt and he felt like a man of thirty. Twenty, by God!

An hour in the company office. Figures. Statistics. “Maybe it’s a little too late to go down now before lunch, Mr. Kennedy. Maybe you’d better wait with that till after your lunch.”

“Lunch, hell! I’m here to work, not eat. I don’t need food to keep me going. I’ve got a perpetual-motion machine rigged up inside of me, young fella.”

“Yessir! You sure have.”

“You go on, eat your lunch. I’m going down.”

“Oh, no, Mr. Kennedy.”

“I knew coal mining before you were out of diapers. I want to ramble around alone. Scat!”

He was enjoying himself, really. This was wrong, that was wrong, the lunks! By two o’clock he’d have it all in line, he’d give them the big or-else and buzz back with Chris in time for dinner in Baranof. What a world. Like Christine said, the kid was right. Exciting. I bet I was one of those Roman emperors.

He watched the chunky heavy-laden coal cars coming down the grade like fat old ladies cautiously descending a hill in San Francisco. He laughed to himself, rather fancying this mental figure of speech. Then he thought, they’re not being cautious enough. Look at that! Too fast. So that’s how they been wearing them out, and the machinery too. Why don’t they brake them like I always used to. I’ll jump one of the cars, go down and give them the works right from the coal pile. He waited tense at the side of the narrow track, poised ready to jump as the laden car passed him, to jump aboard as he had a hundred times in his younger days. The car reached him, he jumped, but the muscles had lost their elasticity, they pulled him up but he was short of the goal, he fell under the car with its iron wheels and its tons of coal, the merry little wheels jolted over him and he rolled again and again and again. The coal car scurried on smugly as one who has done a thorough job.