Free Black Hills by Dan Simmons

from giving those jobs to them.
    The answer, such as it was, came from someone deep in the press of men.
    —
It’s the Indian.
    —
WHAT?
    Borglum’s roar this time was so loud that the compressor actually stopped, the operator—the only man not at the meeting—obviously thinking that the machinery had seized up.
    —
What goddamned Indian? Do you think I’d hire an Indian for this job?
    The question was answered by silence and a sullen shuffling.
    —
Well, you’re goddamned RIGHT I’d hire an Indian if he was the best man for the job—or a nigger, if it came to that—but Billy Slovak is no damned Indian!
    Howdy Peterson stepped forward.
    —
Mr. Borglum… sir. His name ain’t Billy Slovak. On the lists up at the Homestake, and the Holy Terror Mine before that, they had him down as Billy Slow Horse… sir. And he… he
looks
like an Indian, Mr. Borglum, sir.
    Borglum shook his head as if as much in pity as disgust.
    —
Goddamn it, Peterson. Are you all Norwegian or did a little coon or Cheyenne or wop sneak in there? And who the hell
CARES?
This man I hired is named Billy Slovak—part Czech or Bohunk or whatever the hell it is, and why should I care?—and he was
CHIEF POWDERMAN
at the goddamned Homestake Mine when I hired him. Do you know how long powdermen usually last at the Homestake—much less at that Hell Pit that was the Holy Terror? Three months. Three… goddamned… months. Then they either blow themselves up, and half a crew with them, or become total alkies or just lose their nerve and go hunt for work elsewhere. Billy Slovak—and that is his
NAME,
gentlemen—worked there
eleven years
without losing his nerve or ever hurting another man or piece of equipment.
    The men shuffled and looked at one another and then at the ground again.
    —
So either this crap
stops
or your jobs do. I need good powdermen more than I need stupid pugilists. Slovak’s staying—hell, he’s even playing first base on theteam when summer comes—and the rest of you can make up your own minds as to whether you want and deserve to stay or not. I hear that finding a good-paying, solid job like this in this goddamned year of our Lord nineteen and thirty-one is a goddamned piece of fucking cake. So gang up on Slovak again—or anyone else I hire—and you can pick up your week’s wages from Denison and get out. Now… either head for your cars or
get back to work.
    As it turned out, sixty-six-year-old Paha Sapa didn’t play first base that first summer of 1931 or in the summers since. He played shortstop.

    P AHA S APA FINALLY PAUSES to breathe and set down the crate of dynamite and caps and wipe the sweat from his face when he reaches the top and walks over to the powder shed.
    Can he be ready in eight days?
    He has the explosives—almost two tons of them—stashed away in the falling-down shed and root cellar in the collapsing house he rents in Keystone.
    Dynamite is much safer than most civilians imagine.
New
dynamite, that is. Paha Sapa has trained his new powdermen to understand that new, fresh dynamite can be dropped, kicked, tossed—even burned—with little or no risk of explosion. It takes the little copper-jacketed cylinders of the blasting caps, attached to each stick by a four-foot electric wire, to set off the dynamite proper.
    With fresh dynamite, Paha Sapa explains to his nervous new men, it’s the electric detonator
cap
that is dangerous and that must always be handled with great care. They are touchy things at the best of times, and accidentally closing a circuit or dropping a cap or banging it against something will—even if the cap’s not attached to the dynamite sticks yet—blow off a powderman’s hands or face or belly.
    But the nearly two tons of dynamite (and twenty cases of detonator caps) that Paha Sapa has stolen and hidden in his falling-down shed and old root cellar in Keystone is
not
new dynamite. It was old (and abandoned) when he stole it from the closed-up Holy Terror Mine—named