Conward offered his cigarette
box, and the two smoked for a few moments in silence.
"What kind of a job do you want?" Conward asked at length.
"Any kind that pays a wage," said Dave. "If I don't like it I'll chuck
it as soon as I can afford t' be partic'lar, but just now I've got to
get a grub-stake."
"I know the fellow that runs an employment agency down here," Conward
answered. "Let's go down. Perhaps I can put you in right."
Conward spoke to the manager of the employment agency and introduced
Dave.
"Nothing very choice on tap to-day," said the employment man. "You can
handle horses, I suppose?"
"I guess I can," said Dave. "Some."
"I can place you delivering coal. Thirty dollars a month, and you
board with the boss."
"I'll take it," said Dave.
The boss proved to be one Thomas Metford. He owned half a dozen teams
and was engaged in the cartage business, specializing on coal. He was
a man of big frame, big head, and a vocabulary appropriate to the
purposes to which he applied it. Among his other possessions were a
wife, numerous children, and a house and barn, in which he boarded his
beasts of burden, including in the term his horses, his men, and his
wife, in the order of their valuation. The children were a by-product,
valueless until such time as they also would be able to work.
Dave's duties were simple enough. He had to drive a wagon to a coal
yard, where a very superior young man, with a collar, would express
surprise that he had been so long gone, and tell him to back in under
chute number so-and-so.
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