Drill, drill, drill,
That’s the music of the Hill.
The Richest Hill on Earth
We work for all it’s worth.
Those who mine are all one race,
Born and bred ’neath a tunnel brace;
Down there deep we’re all one kind,
All one blood, all of one mind.
I back you and you back me.
All one song in unity.
Drill, drill, drill,
That’s the music of the Hill…
It was homely, it was distinctly old-fashioned, it was not particularly profound, but most of all, it was infectious. You could jig to it, march to it, swing a pick and chip out ore to it, hum it, whistle it, sing it in your sleep-it was as catchy as “Camptown Races,” what more can I say? The atmosphere in the auditorium changed for the better with every line we sang of that lucky combination of unifying words and bouncy tune, Sandison’s song working its magic like the proverbial charm. When we were done, the audience came out of its reverent spell and jumped to its feet, clapping and cheering.
Leaping to the stage, Jared seized the moment, raising his arms for attention. “Are we agreed? ‘The Song of the Hill,’ is it?” Unanimity answered him.
AFTERWARD, as Hoop and Griff and the cronies craftily discharged people into the street in imitation of whatever an eisteddfod is like when it winds down, I tended to last things, such as chairs, with Jared helping. At the back of the auditorium Rab was in one-way conversation with Sandison, enthusing about the evening’s outcome while he stood there like a totem.
“Well done, Professor.” Grinning keenly, Jared gave me credit I was not sure I entirely deserved. “It’s a dandy,” he was saying of the song. “It’ll help pull us through any strike. The Wobs can’t outsing us anymore. They can keep their pie in the sky, we’ve got hold of the Hill in one sweet damn tune. And the Anaconda bosses will hear it in their sleep before we’re done. They might bend us, but they can’t break us now,” he vowed. He stopped to whack my shoulder in appreciation.
Buoyant with relief, I admitted: “Now I can tell you, I half-expected that pair of goons and forty others to burst in on us tonight.”
He tugged his ear thoughtfully. “I guess you haven’t heard. Butte has seen the last of those two.”
Stunned, I visualized the two of them meeting the fate that had been hinted at for me, at the bottom of a glory hole.
I must have gasped, because Jared lifted his hands in clean denial. “None of it was our doing, and they’re still among the living. The word is”-I understood he was alluding to gossip on the Hill-“the Wobblies were pretty badly annoyed about that noose and decided to return the hint. So, when the goons went to turn in the other night, there was a dynamite fuse on each pillow and a note saying next time it would be the dynamite.” He grinned in admiration of a maneuver neatly done. “The last anyone saw, the pair of them were piling onto a train with their suitcases.”
Alas, then, for Eel Eyes and Typhoon, their part in the story flickered out as Rab surged over to us. “See? I knew the two of you could bring this off.” She linked arms with Jared and invited triumphantly, “Come celebrate with us at the Purity, Mr. Morgan.”
“You’ll manage nicely without me. I have one last thing to do here.”
I waved them on their way, and as they went out, Jared did an about-face in the doorway and snapped me a salute, while Rabrab blew me a kiss.
WHEN THE AUDITORIUM WAS CLEARED, I took a final look around and went upstairs in search of Sandison.
His desk lamp was on, an open catalogue of rare books in the pool of light, but the big chair was empty.
When Samuel Sandison was in a room, however, you could feel it. Over at the window, the stained glass muted in the darkness, he was peering steadily at the Hill through a whorl peephole. With the starry host of night lights at the mines, it was a rare Butte quietude to remember. Hearing me come in, he glanced in my direction and away again. “What are you doing here? You know we don’t pay overtime.”
“I came to say what a wonder ‘The Song of the Hill’ is, Sandy. Written with a pen of iron and the point of a diamond.”
Sandison grunted.
“And cleverly adapted,” I said the rest to his back, “from when the unheralded pastoral poet Jonathan Cartwright put it to paper as ‘The Song of the Mill’ a century ago.”
He stood deathly still, long enough that my heartbeats grew loud in my ears. At last the slope-shaped man swung around to me, the dim light making it hard to read the face that had taken other men off the earth. Clomp, clomp, the boots advanced toward me, the beard and summit of hair growing whiter as the lord of the library came looming into the lamplight. Just when I began to fear for my neck, he stopped short, an armlength away. “Morgan,” he sighed heavily, “you’re the only one in Butte who’s enough of an educated fool to know that. Sit down, nuisance.”
Relieved, I took to my chair while Sandison squashed into his. “All right, just between us, I helped myself to old Cartwright’s work where it seemed to fit.”
I could not resist: “Rustled it, might one say?”
Another gusty sigh. “That’s fair, I suppose. Who the hell ever knows what you end up doing in this life?” He rested his folded hands on his belly. “Anyhow, Dora touched up the tune a little,” he blandly shared the credit and guilt. “She’s musical, you know.”
“How did you know about the songwriting sessions?”
“Hah. Don’t you savvy anything yet about running an outfit? First rule is to keep track of what’s going on in the bunkhouse.”
“You sided with the union.”
He brushed away virtue, redemption, whatever it was, with a rough hand. “Anybody who puts a hornet up Anaconda’s nose, I’m with.”
“If I may say so, Sandy, you’ve given the miners one of those anthems authored into the mind beyond forgetting.”
“They’ll need it, won’t they.”
For a minute we sat in silence, in tribute to the workers’ battle ahead for a fair share of the yield of the Hill. Sandison stirred before I could. Gruff as a grindstone, at least trying to be, he appraised me. “You didn’t come by just to say nighty-night. Am I going to see that milk face of yours from now on?”
“I fear you won’t, Sandy. I have another chore to tend to, and the library is best left out of it.” Goodbye was not easy to say, no matter how I tried to dress it. “I must draw my wages and-what is the ranch phrase?-ride the grub line for a while.”
Sandison frowned sadly and reached for the cashbox. “Now I’ll have to hire a pack of flunkies to do whatever you’ve been doing.”
We both stood, and shook hands the way people do when they know it is for the last time. “One good thing about you, Morgan,” he looked down his beard at me. “You don’t stick around long enough for a person to get sick of you.”
FOR THE NEXT MATTER I needed the satchel, which I had brought with me and stowed in the sorting room. A full moon carpeted the library steps with silver as I departed the citadel of books, and there was a promise of frost in the air. Butte slept as much as it ever does. The main activity in the downtown streets was out front of the Daily Post building, where the night janitor was dismantling the scoreboard, and I tipped my hat to it as I strode by. Like everything else, baseball was over with the passing of its season.
A few blocks farther on, I turned in at the well-lit cigar store. The regulars telling stories at the counter fell silent and met me with stares, all except the messenger, Skinner, who jerked his head toward the back room.