Beyond the
mines, ranged at different heights on the barren mountain slope, were
huts much like the abandoned ones at "Little Devil"--black caverns,
smoke-stained and gaping, where stooping human beings moved in and out,
maimed and broken like insects whose wings some brutal boy has pulled.
And yet the priest affirmed that to get half a dozen families to leave
this place and go to the new settlement would be no easy task. They were
too dull to grasp the promise of betterment, and the very mention of
"Little Devil" filled them with alarm. It would need many days and much
patient handling to convince them that the _forestieri_ meant them good
instead of harm.
Padre Filippo was the one who most persuaded them--he and a Sicilian
workman, a native of Vencata who had lately returned from America.
Between these two the miners' fears were partly allayed, and in less
than a week's time Derby received a small company of men, women, and
children into his new settlement. They came like prisoners, under the
guard of the _carabinieri_, and so feeble and debilitated were the
wretched creatures that, for a few weeks after their arrival, Derby
turned his settlement into a hospital.
Yet suspicion surrounded him on every side. It was one of the
_carabinieri_--the taller one--who ventured his opinions one day:
"Signore does not know these people! Signore is letting them grow strong
that they may the better use their fangs.
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