As I rounded the corner to the library, I saw that the usual line of staff and a few patrons at the door had grown mightily and fanned out like a peacock’s tail, the entire street filled with new faces. For a moment my soul lifted at this surge of literary interest from the citizenry of Butte. Then it dawned on me that the atmosphere of the city had changed overnight. The Hill’s normal throb of labor was not to be heard: no ore trains were running, the seven smokestacks of the Neversweat were empty pipes in the air, the headframes stood as stark and still as gallows. And the mass of fidgeting men here in the light of day ordinarily would have been at work in the everlasting night of the mines. Whatever Jared’s definition of a “work action” was, it closely resembled a wildcat strike. A crowd is a temperamental thing. I could tell at once that as watchfully quiet as this one was, it would not take much to make it growl. The minute I arrived, Sandison—grim as thunder—beckoned me up.
