abstract
| - A foreman working for Magistrate Higgins in the Canton factory settlement on Higgins' Moon was in charge of the large body of workers, known as mudders, and handled the daily affairs of the business. An imposing man, the right-hand man of Higgins ran a small crew of feared "prods" to assist him and treated the destitute mudders cruelly. He had a strong accent, and seemingly Slavic (possibly Russian) speech pattern. The week before Serenity landed at Canton, the foreman heard that a man named Kessler was moving contraband through the town. The foreman and his prod crew severed Kessler's hands and feet with a machete and rolled him into the bog. When Serenity touched down, the foreman demanded that the crew leave unless they were buyers. Prepared for this, Malcolm Reynolds made Simon Tam clumsily pose as a buyer of mud. The foreman gave the crew a tour, bragging about the quantity and quality of his product, and did not hesitate to say—in front of the mudders—that workers were paid next to nothing in order to pass on savings to the buyer. Mal took control of the conversation and the foreman left, reminding them to contact him when they were ready to buy. The foreman reported to Magistrate Higgins when the mudders began celebrating raucously when their beloved hero, Jayne Cobb, was discovered among the buyers. The foreman retrieved the effects of Stitch Hessian, and went with Higgins to free him from his cramped prison box. The foreman was taken aback by the disfigured Stitch, but soon was grinning when he began to understand Higgins' plan: Stitch was a former ally of Jayne whom he had betrayed. Instead of sending the prods after Jayne, Stitch would find him and publicly destroy the "hero of Canton" with the truth. The following day, the foreman was approached by one of his subordinate prods, who was eager to disrupt the mudders' celebration and go after Jayne. He sternly commanded the prod to stand down, on account of the magistrate's order. After Jayne killed Stitch, Serenity escaped the moon on account of the intervention of the magistrate's son Fess Higgins, and any chance the foreman and his prods had to go after Jayne was lost.
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