Mother raised her eyes toward me in wonder.

“Darb Sorrels’s a dog, if there ever was one,” Harl said.

Harl and Tibb stood on the porch with Father, kicking heels of mud from their boots, scraping dirt crumbs from hob toes. It was Saturday, late in November, and they had come home from the mines with silver rattling in their pockets. I heard their feet grinding the floor and I came out from under the porch where I had been hunting rat holes.

“Darb allus has been square with me,” Father said, rolling his dynamite-cap pouch into a ball. “Little troubles are bounden to happen.” He bent down, carving the mud away with the long blade of his knife.

“He’s set us digging a vein not thick as a flitter/’ Tibb said, his mouth full of scorn. “Hit’s eighty feet off the main tunnel, mixed with jackrock, and a feller’s got to break his back to wedge in.”

“Can’t make brass, a-digging the vein,” Harl said. “For a pretty I’d set a fuse and blow that trap.”

“Stick and dig,” Father said. “You’re the last fellers tuck on, and they’re already talking about cutting to a three-day week. Darb can’t give a pick and choose. I say dig that coal, and don’t start pulling any rusties.” He shucked his boots off, taking them under his arm, and went inside in his socks.

I climbed the steps. Harl was shaking his feet like a cat come in out of the dew, his thin lips speaking against Darb Sorrels.

“I’ll wash your boots for a penny,” I said, “and shine them till they’ll be nigh like a looking glass.”

They cocked their heads, their eyes dark as chinquapins under the bills of mine caps. “What would you buy with such a bag o’ money?” Tibb asked. They laughed, shaking their pockets, jingling their pay.

“I’d buy me a broadside off the peddle woman,” I said. “I would, now.”

Tibb reached up and caught hold of the porch joist. He was that tall. A grin wrinkled his mouth. “They dropped no pennies in my pay pocket,” he said. “Get Samp to beg you a broadside. He hangs around that Todd woman every chance. This morning I saw him standing in the road middle talking to her, standing there with his brogans hitched with yarn strings.”

Harl struck his hands together, laughing. “I nigh broke my neck stumbling over Samp’s boots last night,” he said. “I tuck me a blade and eased it through the eel-strings. They cut like butter.”

“You oughten to do it,” I said, feeling sorry for Uncle Samp. “Hit’s not honest.”

“I’d give a pretty to stick him and Darb Sorrels in that mine alley and set off a keg o’ powder this side,” Tibb said. “By grabs, I would.”

They scrubbed their boots on the porch a bit more, clapped the carbide flame on their cap lamps, and went inside. The floor was dark where they stepped, marking their way over the scoured planking.