“Fact is, we ain’t but brutes to them, Doctor. There’s the crux of it. No more’n beasts of burden for King Coal. My husband was working a drift mine in Pike County back in niney-nine and the foreman had him put iron helmets on the driving mules cause he was afraid of a collapse. Husband asked why the miners didn’t get helmets, too. Foreman said, ‘Kill a man and we can hire another. But you got to buy the mule.’” She shook her head. “If that’s how the foreman thinks, imagine the gun thugs. They was on a mission to turn us out today and not a thing in this world was like to stop them.
