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Updated: May 24, 2025
Shaw, fire-boss of the mines. And then in the evenings, when she would be singing her baby to sleep, the little shop would be full of miners, listening in dead silence to the baby-songs, and the English songs, and the Scotch songs she poured forth without stint, for she sang more for them than for her baby. No wonder they adored her.
"They both caught it coming down, but Hoover lost his hold trying to change hands for tapping, and Young dropped the knife he was knocking with, and slipped fishing for it," the fire-boss explained. Meantime at the entrance to the mine, a half hour having passed without a knocking on the pipe to announce the arrival inside of the young operator, anxiety began to be felt for his safety also.
"White, get back on the job," directed the speaker, who Wilson later learned was the fire-boss. "You brought him down with you," he added, to the boy. The man spoken to began creeping up the water-covered slope dragging a pick, and Wilson turned to look about him.
The eleven men in the party, not including the man on the slope, were crowded together on the level floor of what evidently was the lower fault of the lead. From the darkness beyond came the sound of water trickling to a lower level. "Are all here, and no one hurt?" he asked. "Hoover and Young, and everybody, and not one scratched," responded the fire-boss. "You were the one nearest hurt.
Therefore in every coal-camp had to be another kind of "fire-boss," whose duty it was to guard against another kind of explosions not of carbon monoxide, but of the human soul. The immediate duties of this office in North Valley devolved upon Jeff Cotton, the camp-marshal.
"To the left of the old tool house there's a room where odd articles of every description have been stored for any number of years. The blacksmith and the fire-boss used to go there to smoke and tell stores, if I remember right." "Does anyone ever go there now?" asked Will. "Not that I know of," was the reply. "Then we'll drop down there some time towards morning," Will decided.
The "fire-boss" was supposed to make his rounds in the early morning, and the law specified that no one should go to work till he had certified that all was safe. But what if the "fire-boss" overslept himself, or happened to be drunk? It was too much to expect thousands of dollars to be lost for such a reason. So sometimes one saw men ordered to their work, and sent down grumbling and cursing.
And there was the still more dreaded "fire-damp," which might wreck a whole mine, and kill scores and even hundreds of men. Against these dangers there was a "fire-boss," whose duty was to go through the mine, testing for gas, and making sure that the ventilating-course was in order, and the fans working properly.
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