Her eyes fired. "You said you were at strike headquarters."
"So I was, until I took a little run out Hazelton way. Then I came back and finished up my work," he lied recklessly.
"He saw you at Catawba. That's ten miles beyond Hazelton.... You didn't get back until midnight last night, Pelham."
"Why, I was here for supper! Then I had to go down town...."
"You were with Miss Richard again." She ventured a chance shot.
His jaw stiffened, the occasional look of childish petulance smoldering around his eyes. "What if I was? Do you expect me to be locked in by a keeper every night?"
"You never mentioned her ... except meeting her."
His mind squirmed. "We have so much else to talk about."
She pushed the disorder of letters backward with a gesture of irritation. "It was a risk marrying you. Every one said so; you had been splendid with me, but before that—you told me yourself—you'd switched from this girl to that.... You had something up with 'Thea Meade, I never asked what.... And the girls while you were in college, Nellie Tolliver and the rest. I never minded them; that was before I knew you. But this.... Do you think I have no shame, even if you haven't?"
"What a lot of side about nothing! Here I merely meet a young lady, take her riding, drop by to see her—what's wrong in that?"
Her low, tense indictment went on, partly to herself. "I always promised myself that I wouldn't marry a ladies' man. It isn't so much what you've done in this case, as the tendency," she continued illogically. "If everything was above-board, why didn't you tell me that you were with her yesterday afternoon and night?"
"Because it was my business, and not yours." His tones rose angrily. "Must I render an account to you for every minute of my time? Can't I have some self-respect left? Do you expect to keep me tied to your apron-strings all my life?"
"You needn't tell me, Pelham Judson, that you took her riding to show her the scenery. I know you better—by now. She made a few large eyes at you; you thought at once that you saw your soul-mate. Told her you were misunderstood at home, of course—that she could understand you." He failed completely to detect the scorn, intended to wither his defense.
"What if I did? It's true, isn't it? We get along finely on lots of things, Jane; but there are some things in which we can't agree."
"We both agree, I suppose, that the marriage agreement doesn't call for you to make love to other girls, when you are married to me. Of course, you kissed her——"
"What if I did?" His retort slipped from his lips too quickly; he wished at once that he had held it back. "There's surely no harm——"
"I won't dare hold up my head in her sight!"
"We're grown men and women, Jane. We're not old fogies. We realize, surely, that love can't be bought and sold, to be locked up forever in a marriage license. Love must be free; and when it comes——"
"You can have your 'love' as free as you wish, Pelham. Only, count me out of it." She rose, the commotion stirred by her quick motion setting the loose sheets flying, drifting to the new carpet they had been so proud of a week ago. Furious, she stooped to pick them up, her ire mounting as the unexpected enormity of his conduct became apparent.
"You talk like a fool, Jane. I haven't done anything——"
"I'll tell you what you've done. You've let a passing fancy for a woman make you forget that you're my husband. I won't share you with another woman, even if she will."
"Why, last night, when I came home, you were as loving——"
Her glance bayoneted him. "I've told you before of that Allie Durfield, the poor girl who'd ended up on Butler's Avenue. I've told you the bitterness with which she said, 'You engaged girls cause us the trouble. After your man's spent an evening with you, we pay for it.' I didn't understand her then; I do now. You spend the evening with this woman, then come home ... you call me loving! I wonder you can look me in the face!"
"You exaggerate everything, as usual. We haven't done a thing——"
"You've kissed her."
"That was nothing."
"It's this much. Either you give me your word now that you will not see her again, or—see only her ... and whoever else your fancy dictates. I'm through. I'll go back to Mrs. Anderson's and let you ... let you...." Her voice broke; she tumbled weakly, weeping and distraught, against the couch.
He was at her side in an instant. She rose, flinging the tears flying. "Keep away! Howdareyou touch me! I suppose you thought I'd cry and make up?... Will you give me your word?" There was a plaintive affection even through the sternness. "Dearest, we can't have our marriage on a rotten foundation."
He fumed to the front door and back, the discarded magazine rustling unnoticed upon the scattered letters. "I'll do anything in reason, Jane. But this is unreasonable, and you know it. You mustn't carry your penchant for running away from situations too far." She flushed at the reference. "I'll agree, of course, not to be unfaithful; but you can't choose whom I may and may not speak to. Common decency——It's ridiculous."
"We can't have a half-way marriage. This has gone too far.... Make your choice. You can't burn both ends of your candle...."
"Anything within reason, Jane."
"You'll promise, then?"
"No." The cruel monosyllable crushed the joy rising in her voice. "It's too ridiculous," he repeated.
There was a dangerous hush in her voice. "You understand the alternative? I leave to-morrow."
"If you're bound to be foolish, I can't stop you. I won't force you to stay here."
"I should say not!"
"You'll come to your senses soon enough. A good night's sleep will cure your tantrum."
Casually he jerked a match against the sole of his shoe. The sputtering head spun smokily into the carpet. He stamped it out, and lit another. Shielding the flame from the night breeze, he relit his pipe. When he looked up, she had left the room.
He knocked considerately on her door at breakfast time. A muffled voice told him that she had a headache, and was not coming out. Well, if she was going to act that way! She was bound to see the matter more reasonably. Probably she was ashamed now to admit that she had been wrong.
He was glad that he had only admitted one kiss....
Disturbed at the thought of the unfinished quarrel, he ran out unannounced to the house for lunch. Voluble Lily, her eyes rolling, informed him that Miss' Jane had left an hour before, and that her trunk had gone too. "An' she said dat you'ud know whar she had gone, Mr. Judson."
"That's all right, Lily. You needn't have supper for me to-night."
Angry with himself, with the inquisitive negro, with the fascination of Louise, which had precipitated this, most of all with headstrong Jane, he shot past the traffic policeman into the swirl of the city. He would show his wife that she couldn't keep him under her little finger!
The next day began the trial of Ed Cole, for the killing of John Dawson. Militia, equipped by profits from the mountain's wealth, guarded the courthouse; the strikers, realizing that their salvation lay in preventing an armed clash, ignored the provocative slurs and taunts of these guardians of order; but the glint of guns followed wherever they were, a continuing menace. Ben Spence had finally twisted a half-hearted consent from the county prosecutor to let him act with the State. "But they double-cross me every chance they get, Judson," he said as they walked to the county courthouse together. "That young Chippen, who is about as much of a lawyer as I am a South Sea Islander, is to handle the State's case—the youngest and poorest hanger-on around the county attorney's office. And against him, Dick Mabry,andHilary, Leach, Pugh and Garfunkel!"
"They're a good criminal firm——"
"Best in the South. Darned fools, three of them; Tipton Leach is a lawyer. Darned crooks, all four. The company will do anything to get the nigger off. And 'Willy' Hawkes, Tuttle's old partner, holds this term!"
Spence took his seat beside Chippen, Pelham with a row of socialists just behind. Judge Hawkes entered with his usual nervous jerk, twitching his apologetic way to the raised bench. Richard Mabry, smiling in velvety assurance, bowed ostentatiously to His Honor; the defendant's table was otherwise empty. Deputies escorted in the negro, his face bright with a frightened interest, mixed with delight at his sudden importance, and confidence in the last whispered instructions of his lawyers, given half an hour before. The court-room filled rapidly; there was an uneasy rustle, a half-restrained chatter.
"Is the State ready to proceed?" came the case-weary accents from the bench.
"We are ready." Chippen's young voice wobbled uncertainly.
"The defendant ready?"
"If the Court please," in Mabry's meticulous accents, "my colleagues—in a moment——"
The judge leaned back, closing his eyes.
A sudden hush at the door. A stretching of necks from all the fringes of the room. Walking daintily, with a glaze of dignity which never lost its underwash of the furtive, came Meyer Garfunkel, youngest of the firm. Spence leaned forward to Pelham. "Biggest crook in six states! Does all their dirtiest jobs.... They always come in this way; it impresses the courthouse crowd."
The door swung again; a succession of breathless "There he is!"-es, as Colonel Lysander G. Pugh stamped heavily in, with his invariable atmosphere of busied haste, bowing affably left and right, his weathered broad-brim clutched beside his brief case.
Another shifting of interest. Tipton Leach, narrow-eyed, a permanent sneer around his mouth, walking slowly, speculatively. "He is the brains," continued Spence. "The corporations fear him like sin, in damage cases. He bleeds them and his clients indiscriminately. But he knows more law than all the local bench."
Last of all, preceded by his law clerk, Zebulun Hilary himself, his little red face, under the thinned mop of white hair, sticking out of his wide collar like a turtle's. "Over eighty, and indestructible! Even his conscience is asbestos."
There was a leisurely deliberation among the five counsel for the defendant. Five heads came together, five brains bent their scheming toward freeing the accused negro, ten eyes quivered with satisfaction at the prospect.
"Defendant ready?" The jaded judge roused himself to make this interjection.
Colonel Pugh rose in sallow majesty, his vulture eye sweeping the front half of the room in indiscriminate defiance of the court, the State, and, if necessary, the whole United States. Catch Lysander G. Pugh unready? Impossible! In precise affability his round tones rolled out. "The defendant is ready, if it please Your Honor." He sat down in complacent vindication.
An irrepressible ripple of appreciation quivered through the place. Here was a lawyer who knew how to law!
The plea of "not guilty" was entered; the panel of talesmen called from the jury room.
Spence leaned over to Pelham again. "First case since the Whitney scandal when all four have appeared together. They have the perfect system, Judson. Garfunkel does the second-story work; Leach knows enough law for all four of them; Zeb Hilary and Colonel Pugh get the business. They belong to everything—there isn't a lodge of any kind that they don't flock to. These two go into every political fight, one on one side, one on the other; they get 'em coming and going. It'll be a treat to hear them address the jury." He closed his eyes expressively. "Whew!"
Two men lounged in from the clerk's office and took their places at the defendant's table, as the selection of the jury began. Pelham watched their activity in bewilderment; as each name was called, they bent over long lists, and consulted with the lawyers while the talesmen were being examined. He noticed the deference with which their whispers were received.
At the first chance, he spoke to Spence again. "Who are those—more lawyers?"
Ben flashed him a sudden glance. "Don't you know 'Chicory' Jasper, and Bill Letcher? They're two of the company's 'jury strikers'—'jury fixers.' They have the dope on each man; interview them in advance, and all. If a man's ever said anything against a corporation, off he goes."
"But is that ... legal?"
"Supreme Court has ruled that it is." He turned back, to insist on Chippen's challenging a venireman who had worked in the company's office before getting state employment.
Three panels were exhausted, before twelve good men and true could be found who knew, Pelham judged from their answers, nothing whatever about unions or strikes; who had never heard of this strike; who did not read the papers. Eight were farmers from distant edges of the county, one was a bookkeeper as anemic as prosecutor Chippen himself, two were small business men, and the last a nondescript nonagenarian who called himself a "watchman."
Once the jury was chosen, the trial went swiftly enough. The State called the policemen, and made out a prima facie case against the negro. In answer to old Hilary's glib questions, the officers confessed that the negro had claimed self-defense; that Dawson's discarded pistol had an indented shell in it. McGue's evidence as to the fake telephone call helped; but the case for the State could have been stronger.
The defense evidently intended to take no risks. First they put on several of those present at the mass meeting when Dawson had denounced the negro, sympathizers with theVoice of Labormachine. Invariably these swore to the big strike leader's unreasonable anger against the expelled member. The radical union men in the room could hardly be restrained from hissing; but the testimony went in, and, Pelham noted, Spence's attack lacked some of his usual vigor. At last Cole himself was called. He gave his evidence with that easy circumspection that told to the initiated that he had been thoroughly coached. Nor could cross-examination twist any of his statements.
In rebuttal several of the sincerer strikers were put on; but this last minute recourse did not impress the jury.
The final speeches for the defense were masterly. Colonel Pugh led off, and in vulture-like gyrations pictured the incursion of this carpet-bagger from the North who had thrown good Adamsville men out of their jobs, and damaged all the business of the district; of his senseless persecution of this negro; of Cole's loyalty to the miners' union, and the death of his brothers on the mountain; and finally, of the negro's own act, a simple defense of the life which God gave him.
"They claim that this defendant received a bribe from a man then an ex-employee of the company. Who says so? One John McGue, who admits he is now under indictment in connection with this strike. There is no corroboration; Cole denies it, Jim Hewin, a deputy sheriff, denies it. Believe a jail bird against two witnesses like that? Why, they cannot even invent a motive to account for the fictitious presence of this fictitious money!...
"Are we to have it written down forever in the annals of Adamsville that a black man comes into our courts, and does not get justice? Will you make Ed Cole swing because of the color which his Creator imposed on him? Will you gentlemen be connivers at the legal lynching of an innocent man? Will your decision be that a white scoundrel can attempt to murder a negro, and that the negro must die for a man's first duty, self-protection?"
He ended with oratorical sky-rockets, and sank, seemingly exhausted, into the considerate arms of his legal twin brethren, Garfunkel and Leach.
Spence came next. When he reached the cause of the strike, his words rang convincingly; but the jury were unsympathetic to this. As he proceeded to the case before him, he tried to tear the careful web of evidence which backed up the negro's claim; the talesmen seemed impressed.
Zebulun Hilary's concluding speech for the negro found him in his most telling mood. He had been a leading pleader at the bar sixty years before; and the momentum of that stretch of time had multiplied his powers of persuasion until even Pelham had to confess his weird mastery of the emotions of men. He riddled the case for the State; there was no evidence to contradict the defendant's candid story. He pictured the desolate Cole home, now sought to be robbed of its last bread-winner; he wrung the hearts and the consciences of each juryman with powerful emotional onslaughts. When he finished, an acquittal, unless the last speaker could change the trend, seemed inevitable.
Chippen's lame summing up only made the case worse for the memory of John Dawson.
Pelham went out into the sunlight, Harvey Cade joining him. "It's sheer mockery of justice," came the lawyer's outraged outburst. "Lies, lies, lies! And Ben Spence soldiering on the job.... He represents the official union movement, remember."
"You don't think he would——" Pelham's honest horror was written all over his face.
"He could have done better. As for that Chippen, it's the rare case where he's smart enough to know that a 'not guilty' will help him more than a conviction. This is justice—in Adamsville!"
"And always so bad?"
"Why, our Supreme Court," went on the other bitterly, "has granted a new trial, because the letter 's' was left off the word 'defendants,' and again because an 'i' was omitted from 'malice.' In another case, where the indictment charged that 'A did embezzle from B his money,' the case was reversed, because the Court could not determine who the 'his' referred to. 'To make it refer to B,' said the learned court, 'would imply that the Grand Jury intended to charge A with a crime.' What an implication!... A leading magazine recently said that the criminal administration in this state is more scandalous than in any state in the union. It's unspeakable!"
The first edition of theRegisterwas hot with headlines promising war. Pelham took a copy back to his desk in the Charities' Building, and, after navigating through excited cables of submarine sinkings, and profound announcements from minor Washington officials, found the brief mention of the local case. The jury had rendered the expected verdict of acquittal, after being out less than half an hour.
Pelham fumbled away the afternoon at his desk, self-disgusted and dispirited. The country was being sucked into the red whirlpool of war—a self-inflicted wounding of the white race amounting almost to race suicide. Labor everywhere had fought, before the conflict, to prevent its coming; but it was inherent in the spread of world-wide capitalism. Prussian militarism was a hateful contributing factor; but, if the Germans had been merely imperialists like the British, the conflict would have come just the same: labor's dumb impotence prevented the one saving force from effective prevention. The German socialists had been traitors to the international, except for scattered heroes like Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg; long local schooling in servitude had been too strong. The Allied comrades had not been much better, despite the facts that the British Labor Party promised continued agitation, and Italy and France were hopeful. Russia alone seemed firm: although the amazing news of the March Revolution had been followed by information that the new government contained more bourgeois than revolutionary elements....
And now the United States would come in. There would be defections among the socialists, of course; but Pelham prayed that the mass of the movement would stand untouched. "I'll stick," he muttered to himself. "If I'm alone.... But it won't be that bad."
His mind turned to the local situation. There was hope still, in the nucleus of fighting strikers—this latest judicial outrage would only increase their determination to defeat the company. But the election ... the death of Dawson ... the militia ... this decision ... Jane's leaving.... Things were in a mess.
Most bitterly of all he felt the strike situation. This conflict with his father had called out all the fighting vigor in his blood; win that, and he would have achieved something.... If only his mother could have seen the justice of the strikers' side, and come with him! That would have been a happy household, just he and his dear mother; no uncertain-tongued Jane, to scold at him for nothing, and embarrass his tangled affairs still further by leaving him without any cause,—certainly without any cause that she knew of. She was utterly unlike his mother, his turbulent wrath told him; cold, unsympathetic, un-understanding.... Sweet in a way, but not what he needed....
Well, he would see Louise to-night.
On the way to the Hassons', he sought to solve the tangle of his domestic affairs.
He could not quite account for the errant streak in his blood, that drove him so joyfully toward the soft arms awaiting him. Surely he had an overplus of idealism.... Perhaps this was a part of it: of his endless search for perfection in woman ... for some woman, say, who held the magnificent sweetness his mother had received as the dear Barbour heritage. Louise had something of the understanding mother-spirit, that was the mountain's, that was his own mother's. And in turn the mountain wildness coursed in his blood; these had been his emotions, before he became its prodigal child.
The girl met him at the door, wide-eyed, a little wistful. "Well, Mr. Lover, you did come! Yesterday was lonely.... I have bad news; the folks have changed their plans; they'll be back, to-night.... We can take a ride, though."
His smiling lips straightened, but there was a dancing glow in his eyes. "Get your coat, girl," he said with affectionate curtness.
He turned from Highland Boulevard, the glitter of its lights reflected in the suave luster of the rain-damp pavement, into quieter, less-lighted Haviland Avenue. Into a darkened garage ran the car. Her eyes queried his. He pressed off the lights.
Over the cropped grass to the stone steps; inside the darkened porch he pulled out his keys, opened the door, led into the expectant hallway.
"Your ... home?"
"Jane is away," he said briefly.
The shades were pulled down carefully, a light lit. She sat, her eyes wide, on the hall couch, adjusting her skirts in the light. The dull gray paper brought out all of her ripe rosy loveliness; he paused, struck by the picture.... It was the couch on which he had last seen Jane sitting; a sardonic inner smile disturbed him.
"I don't feel that this is right, Pell—in her house——" Her deep eyes puckered in uncertainty.
Dominant lips closed her protest; she rested for a fleeting moment against him.
On the steps' landing he paused to point out tennis trophies gleaming against the dark woodwork.
Then they turned again, hand in hand, up the carpeted rounds to the dim silence above....
Before midnight he told her good-bye on the Hasson porch.
There were times, in the two weeks which followed, when Pelham viewed himself from without, with a definite disgust; when he realized that a furtive fraction of love could never make up for the big gap caused in the day's doings by the absence of Jane. Once Louise had to tease him out of this mood.
"I'm leaving you, Mr. Lover, on Wednesday.... Make my last three days pleasant."
He took her to the station. As they entered it, two cars disgorged another increment of the militia.
He rode to the first stop with her.
"You were a good lover," was her final praise. "Run down to the coast and see me sometime.... If you still want me."
It was just after ten, in the dry heat of a July day six weeks later, when four of the deputies appeared on the road at the entrance to the miners' shack village, and started to enter. They were backed by a squad of the new Home Guard, who had come to help out the militia, now in process of gradual federalization.
"What d'ye want?" called out John McGue, the only committeeman at the moment in the informal town. Pelham, Joe Mullins, the new national organizer, and a committee were visiting the governor, to protest against two exceptionally brutal clubbings by the restlessly inactive guards. It was a hopeless trip, except as a protest.
"You hold things down, McGue," Mullins had told him. "It's coming, by God! They'll consent to arbitrate before the middle of August, or the federal government'll step in! Four new camps, man, in three weeks—they can't get any more men, either, for love or money. We've got 'em!"
Things were looking serious for the company. The Ed Cole verdict had reacted against it; defections from the ranks of the strike-breakers were frequent, and the output was hardly a third of that of the summer before the strike.
McGue wondered if the visit of the guards and militiamen had been timed to fit in with the absence of most of the strike leaders in Jackson. "What d'ye want?" he repeated.
"We got warrants for six men." The deputy—it was Huggins—started to walk on in; McGue kept his place.
"Get out of the way, there," Huggins warned him shortly.
"Gimme the names; we'll git the men fer you. No need to go trampling through people's houses and gardens, as you guards did last week."
"I'll give you nothin'."
The voices in dispute resounded down the vacant roads. Men, hungry men, their natures warped with the long unequal struggle, massed in a shifting background behind the rugged committeeman.
"Get out of my way, or I'll jug you too."
Silently McGue stepped aside. The crowd flattened back against the flimsy walls. The armed guards, grinning at one another, jostling and joking, penetrated deeper and deeper into the straggly irregularity of the settlement.
All at once Huggins caught sight of an undergrown, misshapen boy scowling from the back of the men and women. Pushing them aside, he shoved to the spot, the guards close behind. His hand gripped the boy's arm, until he winced.
"Hey—whatcher——"
"What's your name?"
"Aw, you lemme 'lone! I ain't done a thing."
"Take him, there." He shook the boy savagely. "Your name's McGuire, ain't it? Frank McGuire—I know you."
McGue came up again, holding in his irritation. "What do you want this boy for?"
"None of your damn' business! We got a warrant for him, see? You keep out, or——"
Several of the deputies in the rear clicked their hammers suggestively, snickering at the one-sided joke. A disturbed buzz wavered up and down the massed strikers. As Huggins turned up the wider road again, it grew in volume into a subdued stream of boohs, catcalls, hisses, low threats. He turned incautiously, facing them.
"Don't you follow me, you gutter trash, or I'll jug the lot of you!"
A weak satiric voice came from behind a house. "Aw, will you, though!"
McGue's eyes grinned; but his face remained set, as he doggedly kept pace with the head of the marching guards.
Two more men were taken in the same methodical fashion. The surging procession was now near the open center of the location, where a square had been left as a common, with the artesian well at one end.
Girls and women quietly replaced the men in the front line, jeering and cursing at the flushed faces of the soldiers, occasionally stumbling awkwardly against them. There was a scream as a soldier turned suddenly on a pretty red-haired girl, and caught her wrist. An old Irish virago beside clutched his shoulder and flung him sideways.
"Touch my daughter, you dirty bastard, and I'll tear your heart out!"
Huggins re-formed his men at the entrance to the square. There were only fifty soldiers in line; there were already several hundred of the tenters, and their number swelled constantly. Of course, they couldn't do anything.... He had his orders.
The stage was set for trouble. Over the heads of the women and girls, from the shelter of the nearest house, a rock whished—an apple-sized ore boulder from the iron heart of the hill. It crunched into one of the guards, square on his cheek. He grunted. An uncertain hand patted his dazed face. When he drew it away, it was smeared with blood; the stain widened over his collar and breast.
A second stone came from the opposite side. Then another ... another....
Two deputies fired wildly in the direction of the hidden throwers.
Out of the dissolving panorama of frightened strikers came a spurted crack, a spit of smoke. One of the deputies screamed, was supported, writhing terribly, by the men on either side of him. His head hung limp.
"Back to that building, there," boomed Huggins, pointing to the distributing store at the mountain end of the square.
The retreat began. The strikers eddied backward from the cleared place. From houses along the way unexpected bursts of rocks, an occasional shot, crashed into the close ranks of the law-enforcers.
Four or five revolvers puffed off to the left. A guard dropped his gun, shaking his hand in agony. The left third of the soldiers at a command raised their rifles, and blazed away at the infuriated welter of retreating humanity. A madhouse of screams, men and women running, two bodies settling onto the stained July grass....
Another volley, this toward the right.
"Take that, you——" screamed a deputy, as the startled face at a window was met by the blaze of a rifle. The woman hung swaying over the ledge; choking horribly, she trembled further and further out, dropped hideously upon the ground.
At the storehouse now. "Hey, you, get out of that," Huggins commanded the strikers' distributors.
"This is our——"
The sight of the rifles settled the matter. The two dead guards were stretched on the floor, the wounded were roughly bandaged. Huggins phoned the facts to the militia headquarters on the mountain.
"Said for us to wait here," he explained to the army lieutenant in charge. "It 'ud be suicide, trying to get out. For all we know, all them houses is full of strikers. There'll be two companies here inside of an hour. By God, we'll do for 'em this time!" His tone shook in fierce rapture—the man hunt was on!
The main bulk of the rifles covered the big open field in front; small parties watched toward west, south and north, to warn if any activity showed in the houses fifty feet away.
There was no water; the wounded cursed continually for it. Huggins sent a party, well protected, over to the well, seventy feet away, to bring back two bucketfuls. One of the detail was shot in the collar bone, but managed to make his way back with the bearers of the precious drink.
There was a shouting from in front. "Hey," came a voice, waving a white towel raised high on a clothes-pole. "Can we talk with your man in charge?"
It was Edward McGuire, the father of little hump-backed Frank, who had been arrested, but had slipped away in the disorderly retreat to the store. He had been selected as one of the older, more law-abiding of the miners, to bring the flag of truce.
"What d'ye want?" Huggins demanded belligerently. "Ain't no use to talk; I got a regiment comin' in half an hour, will clean up this whole damned nest of rats."
"Can I come closer?" called McGuire.
There was no answer. He came over to where the lieutenant of the guard stood, clutching the pole with its white symbol high above his head.
"Well?"
"Can we pick up those bodies out on the field? You can get any of your men there. We'll carry this flag, sir—one of 'em 's my son, I think."
The deputy beside Huggins stepped two feet forward. His revolver reversed, he brought it down with all his force on the undefended grizzled head. McGuire dropped in a heap.
All the while, down the dusty July road, Major Grinnell, of the State Guards, had double-quicked his men. They reached the railroad spur just out of sight of the shack village. Here he divided his force. The company automobiles, equipped with searchlights and machine guns, had gone by the county road to the eastern end of the colony, behind the sand ridge, to cut off possible retreat. The motley mass of deputies, mine guards and special police cut in after them, to work back with the machines. The militia marched above the camp, close to the store held by Huggins. After a fifteen minutes' wait, they proceeded in open formation, converging toward the common.
The strikers, stunned by the brutal killing of McGuire, swirled together beyond the well, hidden by the jerry-built shacks.
"We gotter rush 'em," "Micky" Ray insisted, weaving in and out of the perturbed herd, followed by several adherents as violent. "Damn it, why doncher rush 'em, before they sneak out?"
McGue confronted him again. "Still at it, you fool? They'd shoot us down like dogs——"
"They'll shoot us anyway. 'Fraid of 'em, are you, Johnny?" another taunted.
"We gotter rush 'em. Get your guns ready," commanded Ray. "All that aren't afraid, line up behind Bill there."
He turned his back to round up others. The line doubled on him, an excited commotion shaking it. He tried to break his way clear, to understand what they were saying.
"What the——"
"Aincher heard her?"
"Nellie seed 'em!"
"All the soldiers is come! They're right behind the store!"
"They're everywhere!"
"You see?" stormed McGue, shoving Ray to the side. "Everybody below the common."
They made the change. The militia assembled before the storehouse, extended their wings, beat down the open space and the lanes parallel with it. Undetermined, the strikers waited, poorly armed, but sheltered behind friendly walls.
Huggins' big voice came faintly. "Lay down your guns," he shouted. "The first man who shoots, we'll fire. Do you surrender?"
There was no answer.
"We'd better," insisted McGue, perspiring from heat and excitement. "They ain't got anything on us. You can't fight rifles with bare hands."
"Hell, no! You saw what they did to Ed McGuire. Let's kill the uglies——"
"Kill 'em!" Ray adopted a new slogan. "Kill 'em! Kill 'em, I says."
They wavered. The blistering sun beat fiercely on the metallic barrels of the menacing rifles.
A dreadful tumult of shots, shouts, indescribable noises, broke out in the rear. The shuddering sound of machine guns pelted whistling hail through the sparse tree leaves above.
Out of the blind turmoil came running figures, blaspheming in horrible rage. "They're there too!"
"It's another regiment!"
"They're killing everybody!"
The noise grew louder.
Major Grinnell halted at the head of his men. McGue, surrounded by a cowed hundred of the strikers, walked quietly out. "Do you want to arrest us?"
Methodically the houses and alleys were combed, until close to five hundred men, women and children had been herded into the trampled square. One by one they were marched before the guards and deputies; a hundred and nine were pointed out largely at random, as having had some part in the attack. The rest who were involved had slipped away between the two lines of attackers. Wailing and lamenting, the former were herded away into the overcrowded jails.
That night the militia encamped in the remains of the settlement. Fire had destroyed the western third of the houses, a fire which the soldiers made no attempt to put out.
Not a striker was permitted to enter the barred area.
Jim Hewin, back on duty as a sheriff's deputy, led one of the squads that scoured the surrounding woods the next morning for fugitives and bodies. "Hey, 'Red,'—they pipped somebody here," he explained.
It was the rocky road behind the settlement, which led above the wet-weather falls of the brook that eased away into Shadow Creek. The oasis of grass in the middle of the sandy road was darkly muddied by a mixture of dirt and blood. A cap, crumpled, the visor torn loose, lay in the clawed sand beside it.
"Red" Jones ran up. Hewin's quick eyes zigzagged eagerly. "Look, 'Red'—he went here!"
The trail of blood began again a few feet beyond the road. A heavy body had been dragged over succulent pokeberry plants: moist pithy leaves swung crushed, oozing their thick sap; dark berries lay mashed upon a soil purple with their blood.
They parted the sumach and haw bushes screening the falls.
The slimed slope of gray rocks was darkened by a muddy reddish trickle of water. It was a broken stretch of seventy feet to the green stagnancy below.
"Hey, 'Red'——" Jim's voice dropped; his shaking hand pointed to an awkward mass half way down the incline.
They slid cautiously, clutching the rough crag edges beside the water.
Caught in one of the shelf-flaws of the rock, his miner's shirt coagulated with blackened blood, his stained overalls soggy with the water, lay a dead negro.
Hewin turned the body over; his fingers shrank and slipped at the moist unpleasantness.
They peered into the dead face of Ed Cole. A clinging mould of leaves half obscured the deputy's badge on his greasy lapel.
Jim's eyes expanded. "Cole, you know—he shot John Dawson."
They regarded the face for a few minutes.
"Got any terbaccer, Jim?"
"Red" lit up his pipe.
"Guess we'll tote 'im back—down that way, huh?"
The dank and dripping bundle was carried and dragged through the scratching underbrush. When they reached the road at last, they rested it on a scaly-bark's littered knees.
Jim rubbed the sweat off from his forehead with his soaked sleeves. "Hell, he's heavy, ain't he? This'll do.... You see Huggins; he'll send a wagon." His hands pushed throughout his trousers pockets. "Did you gimme them matches back?"
Governor Tennant—his pet name among friends and enemies alike was "Whiskey-barrel Tennant"—dismissed the committee with a few curt platitudes about law and order. When they reached Adamsville, they found the shack colony sacked, the strikers and their dependents either jailed or scattered. The militia had done a thorough job.
Wearily Pelham dragged himself to the meeting at Arlington Hall.
Jack Bowden, of the local miners' organization, who always came like a bird of carrion at evil news, secured the floor, and moved that the strike committee be discharged and the strike settled on whatever terms could be secured. "They've bashed in our heads," he said vigorously. "Do we want 'em to cut our throats as well?"
There was no John Dawson to reply to him. From many groups of the strikers came discouraged support for the motion. Most of the old tried unionists saw nothing to be gained in wasting energy on a dead struggle.
"Makes mighty little difference now," Pelham whispered hopelessly to Serrano, seated in explosive agitation beside him.
"You'llnever quit!"
"Not quit.... But start a newer fight, with some chance of winning it."
One violent industrial unionist demanded the floor, and pounded out that the strike must continue, with a general tie-up of every trade, organized and unorganized, in Adamsville.
"One big union!" he continued to shout, even after the ready ushers had pushed him into his seat.
"That's the sort of fool advice," Jack Bowden said, "that's lost this strike. For it is lost; and I'll tell you who's lost it. Not the company, nor Paul Judson's money, not his murdering gunmen; but——" and his lean arm pointed straight to Pelham, "but crazy radicals in and out of the union movement; lounge Socialists, lemonade trade-unionists, men who claim to be with us, but were born with scab hearts. It's them and their kind have led to this smash-up. And the sooner we reckernize it, the better!"
There was a tossing roar of applause at this. The crowd, Pelham grasped at once, was ready to quit, and only wanted someone to blame for the failure.
Nils Jensen, still under bond pending the decision of his case by the Supreme Court, answered the charge at once. "Men, brothers," his voice rang out, "I've been a miner, and a member of this local, for thirteen years. I don't know who is to blame, but I know who isn't—and that's the Socialists among us. We've fought, in the union and at the polls, day in, day out, while your old-fashioned unionists have been pulling down fat jobs under Democratic sheriffs,——" a hit at Pooley, who had been first deputy under the previous official. "I'm not in favor of going on now, if the crowd's ready to stop. I can get work, here or somewhere else, in or out of jail,——" There was a friendly smile at this. "I know that the war between our class and the Paul Judson class will go on until classes are ended. If you're to blame anybody, blame ignorant laborers, who can't see that scabbing against their fellows cuts their own throats, and betrays their wives and children. Blame the labor fakers, the crooked bunch who 'lead' you so that their pockets are lined for delivering your votes to the old parties, while you get nothing. And when Jack Bowden says that Comrade Pelham Judson, as good a socialist as any one of us, is a lounging lemonade socialist, with a scab heart, he lies, and he knows he lies!"
The chair's rappings were lost in the outcries. "Order!" "Order!" broke all over the hall. An uproar circled around Jensen and also Bowden; for a minute the meeting threatened to break into a riot.
Jack Bowden jumped up to the platform, a document waving over his head. "Brothers!... Brothers!... Let me answer him!" He paused, while they quieted. "I'll answer him. When I moved that the committee be discharged without thanks, I knew what I was doing. When I charged that 'Mister'" (with an ugly sneer) "Pelham Judson, son of the vice-president of the Birrell-Florence-Mountain Iron and Steel Company, was born with a scab heart, I knew what I was doing!"
Cries of "Shame!" "Shame!" "Throw him out!"
He kept his place. As he waved the mysterious document before their faces, the cries weakened; curiosity hushed them.
"One member of that committee, a man who had no right on it, for he had no union card——"
"As Paul Judson has!" Jensen cut in sharply, amid indignant demands to keep quiet.
"One member of that committee has been—a scab! As he may be a scab again, when he pleases to. I have here," he opened the paper, so that the large red seals were displayed to all, "—affidavits from Connecticut, proving that 'Mister' Pelham Judson, 'Comrade' Judson if brother Jensen wants to call him that, in October, 1913, in New Haven, acted as a scab during a strike of conductors and motormen on the New Haven Electric Company, and helped to break that strike. He's kept quiet about it; I can't. And I say that such a man should be kicked out of all affiliation with the labor movement, here or elsewhere!"
"It's not true," shrieked Jensen and a score of fervid socialists. One brawny Norwegian started for the platform. "I'll tear out dat dam' liar's tongue." The sergeant-at-arms pulled him back.
Pelham rose, pale and trembling.
The chair picked him out. "Does brother Judson desire the floor?"
There was an intent silence, as he stood, alone, surrounded by the hostile hundreds of the men and women he had fought for. He tried to begin.
Bowden walked across the platform, toward him. "Is it true, or not?"
Pelham's swollen tongue licked his lips. At length he spoke, quietly, yet so penetratingly that every syllable reached his audience. "I can explain——" he began.
"Is it true?" Bowden led the demand of hundreds of angered throats.
He faced them unflinchingly. "It is true. I can explain——"
The hooting and jeering broke with savage, almost bestial fury. Doggedly Pelham kept to his feet, in spite of the efforts of Serrano and others to drag him down. "This is terrible, comrade," whispered Serrano. "You'd better leave——"
At length Bowden got the eye of the chair again. "I move that we give five minutes to Mr. Judson to 'explain', as he calls it, his scabbing."
In simple language Pelham told of his training in a home dedicated to the fight against labor; of his acts at New Haven, while a college student; of his conversion to socialism and the cause of labor. He did not mention what it had cost him; a few remembered this. When he came to his New Haven experiences, the hissing began, swelled in volume. All of the chair's entreaties could not stop it.
"If you think, comrades, that my usefulness on this committee is over, I hereby resign. But I can assure you that nothing will shake my efforts in the cause for which I have fought, am fighting, and will continue to fight."
No eloquence could have moved them. The mass psychology of the meeting demanded a victim; here was one before them. The shrivelling strike months of turmoil and undernourishment had thrown them back into a lower, more barbarous state; their sense of justice was perverted from ultimate social equality and order into a primitive condemnation of the accursed thing that had brought them into this predicament. They were only too ready to throw a Jonah to the deep, as an expiatory sacrifice to the omnipotent god who doled out bi-weekly pay-envelopes. They were in a starving panic to get back to the skimpy flesh-pots of a darker Egypt.
It was moved and seconded that the resignation be accepted. An earburst of "ayes" were for the proposition; one or two scattering voices registered weak negatives.
"The motion is carried."
The sudden blow had crushed all opposition. The resolutions to end the strike were accepted without debate.
Jack Bowden, highly satisfied with the night's work, went over to the state office with Bob Bivens and John Pooley. "Reckon I better destroy that?" he grinned, handing a letter out to the big State president.
It was from Henry Tuttle, on the company's legal stationery, enclosing the affidavits relating to Pelham's activities in the New Haven strike.
The letter was burned, the ashes scattered.
The next afternoon'sRegisterinformed Pelham of the company's terms, which were to take back all except the ringleaders, some twenty in number—he noticed the names of Jensen and the committeemen heading it—at the old rate, with an agreement from each man binding him not to join the union. The strikers under arrest, continued the account, would be discharged in all probability, except in cases of serious nature.
The same paper contained the sparse outline of another story, which Pelham read with a growing horror.
At three-thirty the previous afternoon, an old man had entered the mining company's office, and asked for Paul Judson.
"What name?"
His watery blue eyes danced peculiarly beneath stringy white hair. "He doesn't know me. It's important."
"We must have your name."
Fumbling first on one foot, then the other, he eyed the uninterested clerk closely. At length he made up his mind. "My name is Duckworth—Christopher Duckworth, tell him. I've come about the settlement of the strike."
She marked down the name, snapping to the drawer. "He's out of town to-day."
"When does he return?"
"Maybe late this evening ... maybe not until to-morrow."
Suspicious old eyes searched her face. "Sure he isn't in?"
"I told you once, didn't I?"
"He may return to-day?"
"Maybe."
"I'll wait."
Passers in and out of the offices remembered his shoving a paper hurriedly into his pocket as they neared.
About an hour later, when the information clerk left for a few minutes, he rose, and started to open the door marked "Paul Judson: Private."
"Where you going?" an accounting clerk demanded, watching his unusual movements.
"Mr. Judson wants to see me."
"He isn't there."
He caught the old man roughly by the arm, as he tried to push past.
The enfeebled socialist retreated to the center of the room.
"Give him this," his quavering tones insisted, pushing a piece of paper into surprised hands.
The clerk looked up hurriedly, some warning of the unexpected, the dangerous, reaching him. His eyes caught the rusty glint of metal.
He jumped. At the same moment, the roar of the shot rattled the windows, acrid smoke swirled throughout the room, the old man's legs buckled up. He fell quietly to the floor; his shoes scraped the flooring once. He lay still.
The clerk read the note aloud, after the morgue had been phoned, and the body covered.
"To Paul Judson:"This act is my punishment, for living on the earth your presence scars; a just God will punish you in another world."This act will bring home to your conscience your responsibility for murder:"Murder of twenty-three miners in the mine explosion;"Murder of John Dawson, and fifty innocent strikers, by the guns of your gunmen;"Murder of your guards by your own acts;"Murder of the bodies, hearts and souls of starving strikers. Murder of good in all people. Murder of justice in your courts."Murder of me, as a warning of what you deserve."Christopher Duckworth."
"To Paul Judson:
"This act is my punishment, for living on the earth your presence scars; a just God will punish you in another world.
"This act will bring home to your conscience your responsibility for murder:
"Murder of twenty-three miners in the mine explosion;
"Murder of John Dawson, and fifty innocent strikers, by the guns of your gunmen;
"Murder of your guards by your own acts;
"Murder of the bodies, hearts and souls of starving strikers. Murder of good in all people. Murder of justice in your courts.
"Murder of me, as a warning of what you deserve.
"Christopher Duckworth."
"Can you beat it?" the clerk whistled. "A plain nut."
"I seen how crazy he looked," said the information clerk. "Good thing he didn't miss an' hit you, Courtney."
A little stenographer fainted. One of the telephone operators discussed it with a chummy runner. "I wouldn't work here now, not if you paid me! It's awful bad luck."
"Gee, if I was afraid of stiffs!" he said, pityingly.
The scrubwomen grumbled at having to clean up the floor again. "Ought to be extra pay for this.... Bad enough to clean them floors once."
Paul Judson, returning from Jackson on the morning train, did not learn about the grim protest until he reached the office.
Stella Cole loitered, fascinated by the glisten of the new Judson kitchen. She addressed the cook, with that shade of superiority family servants invariably feel to newcomers.
"Could you ask Miss' Mary to step heah a secon', Mahaly?"
The girl departed, sniffing superciliously at the old mountain woman who still had the monopoly of the Judson laundry.
The gaunt-cheeked negress faced her mistress with an elemental dignity. "Miss' Mary, kin you ask Mr. Judson a favor fo' me?"
"Surely, Stella. What is it?"
She traced the linoleum pattern slowly with the frowsy toe of a black slipper. "Hit's dis way, Miss' Mary. Ah'se movin'."
"Moving! From the mountain?"
"Yassum."
"It isn't——" she hesitated a moment. "It isn't—the strike?"
Mary Judson shivered as she spoke the word. The overtones to that word jangled horribly, summoning with their ghastly discord troops of disordered pictures, fragments of sorrows, jagged moments of agony. Around that word she grouped mentally Pelham's distressing breach with his father, the son's growth away from her, the dead-fingered protest of Duckworth's suicide, glimpses of red death staining the kindly mountain, the wilful burning of the house that had stored memories which, next to the Jackson childhood, were the most poignantly joyful life had given her. That word summoned the defacing of the mountain's beauty and harmony, and her present exile from it; as well as a spiritual exile, the cold-visioned knowledge of the chasm between her and Paul that had widened irrevocably in the hushed storms that were their quarrels born out of the strike.
The keen black eyes took in something of this, as it shadowed momentarily the lined, tortured face of the wife of Paul Judson. Mary Judson had grown old, older than the soft gray of her hair and the gray prints around her mouth indicated: old with the timeless age of torn illusions and murdered dreams: old with the age that the same three years had brought to Stella Cole.
"No'm, Miss' Mary.... Yassum, dat is.... Ah'se movin'."
A spasm of pity smoothed the mistress' drawn cheeks, as she felt gripped by the roughened brownish face, gnarled by its helpless acceptance of the death of hope. "Do you.... Have you found a house, Stella? Do you know where you're going?"
"Yessum. Ah knows whar Ah'se gwine."
"And you're going——"
"Home, Miss' Mary."
"Home?"
"Yessum...." Feeling that more was required, her face wrinkled with an old shy eagerness. "To Macon, Miss' Mary; Macon, Georgy. Whar me 'n' Tom comed f'um, afore we done moved to Atlanta.... Afore we done come here."
"We'll hate to lose you from the mountain, Stella."
"Yessum." She recrossed her hands uneasily, and straightened up from the table against which her hip had swayed for its solid rest.
Mary Judson studied the face of the mother before her with a hidden hunger, trying to read in its blackened lineaments the elusive recipe that had brought that flicker of happiness at the mention of home.
"Your boys.... You have Ed still, haven't you?"
"No'm." The rich tones grew gossipy, in a detached way. "Ah ain't got none of 'em. Jim he die fu'st, Miss' Mary; he die w'en de mine oxploded. De Lawd tuk him fu'st; he wuz a good chile. Den Babe. He wuz mah baby; dey shot him. Dat wuz two. Den Will an' Diana dey die, w'en de house burn down. Dey shoot dem too. Dey wuz good chillun too, Miss' Mary. Ah ain't ben 'specially a sinful 'ooman; Ah s'pose dey desu'ved it somehow, Ah caint figger out.... Dat makes ... yessum, dat makes fo'. Tom he die; he wuz ole, it wuz his time. Dat lef' Ed. De las' time dey bruk up dem strikers, dey shoot Ed." She gulped, closed her eyes a minute.
"I—I hadn't heard."
"No'm. Ed wuz diff'runt. Ed he kill a man. A white man. But de jedge tu'n him loose. Dey wuzn't nothin' wrong dar, de jedge he say. Dey made Ed a depity. Den dey kill him....
"Ah tole dem boys, Miss' Mary, Ah tole 'em a powerful time ago, hit wuzn't no nigger's business ter meddle in white folkses' fusses. Dey seed diff'runt. De Lawd done tuk 'em all, 'cep' me. Ah ain't got no business here, Miss' Mary. Ain't got no folkses here. Ah got two brudders in Macon, Georgy. So Ah'se movin'."
Mary bit her lips, to steady her words, to force back the tears that insistently crept down her own cheeks. "Anything that Mr. Judson can do for you, Stella——"
The negress dug around in the littered bulge of the handbag the mistress had given her, and brought up a greasy leather-covered book. "Dis here's Diana's bank book, what she save f'um her wu'k. Ah thought maybe Mr. Judson could git me de money. Dar's thuhty fo' dollars, she tole me. An' Ah got Tom's benefit money f'um de Galileum Fishermens, it comed in a letter." She discovered the creased check, and handed it over. "Den Ah'll have some money over w'en Ah gits to Macon; dey'll be gladder to see me; you know how it is, Miss' Mary. An' if Peter could drive me 'n' mah stuff to de depot, if he wuzn't too busy——"
"Of course I'll see that you have Peter. What day are you leaving?"
"Sad'day. De train goes at two erclock."
"I'll see that he gets there in plenty of time."
Stella's eyes roamed unconcernedly around the shining rows of aluminum pans; she sighed with satisfaction. "How's Miss Susie an' Miss Nell?"
"Both doing finely. Susie's living in Detroit, you know; and Nell is studying art in her neighborhood."
The old mammy leaned forward. "Ah seed Mistuh Hollis w'en he wuz heah las' monf. He do make a fine sojer, Miss' Mary."
"We are both proud of him. And now with Ned visiting in Jackson, there are only two of us here."
"Mistuh Pelham ain't come roun' much, is he? He doan't git along wid his paw, do he?... Dat's what mah boys dey say, in dat union...."
Mary breathed out heavily. "They do not agree on everything, Stella."
Stella's eyes rounded with satisfaction; with the intimate impertinence native to negroes who have grown old in confidential employ, she nodded her head proudly. "Mah boys dey got along finely wid deir paw, Miss' Mary. Thank you kin'ly, ma'am, fuh speakin' to Mr. Judson."
Finally the trunks and boxes were packed, with the help of neighbors from Lilydale. Brother Adams' boys got most of her sons' clothes, except the newest suits; these she folded into the bottom of the biggest trunk for future emergencies. Peter was on hand, at Mr. Judson's orders, to crate such of the furniture as she wished to take; although many of the extra things went to this friend and that.... There did not seem much use in taking everything.
Babe's cap with the new mining lamp, Diana's school books and framed diploma, the old family Bible, Ed's re-shined deputy's badge, were wrapped carefully together.
At length the last package was hoisted onto the wagon, and after laying the shoebox of lunch on the seat Peter was to occupy, and taking a final drink of spring water, she clambered carefully up to the driver's bench. Peter hopped up with gray-haired, cricket-like agility, clucked sharply, and the horses jogged off.
They drove behind the crest, on the circling road above Lilydale. Peter chuckled to himself.
"What you laughin' at?"
"Ah'se thinkin', sistuh Stella, dat you sho' buried a passel er people in dis place."
She nodded in complacency. "Six of 'em, Peter, six of 'em."
He chuckled on. "Dey gwineter plant you nex', sistuh Stella."
"Dey gotter kill me fu'st."
She looked back, as the road turned into the viaduct for Adamsville, and sighed heavily. She remembered the arrival in the city ... the wait in the office of the Galilean Fishermen, while the children ate up all the cold fish sandwiches and speckled bananas Tom had gotten for their lunch. All gone. All gone. Unbidden, fragmentary pictures of the romping, frolicking boys, sober Diana, came.... Jim crying, when the hatchet chopped his foot.... Babe's round face.... Ed's face, and the others, in their pine-wood coffins.... Tom's kindly smile. All gone. A weak tear welled from under each old eyelid.
She looked around cautiously to see if Peter was noticing. No, he was drowsing forward, letting the horses choose their own way.
She undid quietly the end of the box of lunch, and took out a sandwich. Real chicken breast! The sisters of the Zion Church certainly did do things up in style.
The visit of the president of the National Steel Company was the floodtide of the year to Adamsville. On Paul Judson, both as President of the Commercial Club and through his connection with the mining companies, fell the largest share of the reflected glamor from the guest's powerful personality.
After the luncheon at the new Steelmen's Club, the party crowded into cars, to inspect the region's mineral development.
"Eight solid miles of mountain here," Paul's inclusive gesture swept the stretch from Hazelton to far beyond North Adamsville up the valley, "five other locations within a ten mile radius ... seventeen camps in all."
"It's a big plant, Mr. Judson."
"It's the largest in the South, sir. Coal yonder," he indicated the valley beyond Shadow Mountain, "only nine miles as the crow flies. The cheapest iron and steel region in the world. They don't grow that close together in Pittsburgh, the Lakes, or anywhere."
"A wonderful opportunity.... We're prepared to talk business."
"So are we." Both smiled the comprehending smile of men of achievement.
Sam Ross and urbane Judge Florence took the visitor for a round of the patent tipples. "We're just getting over a little strike in these mines," the Judge expanded.
"I've followed it. Came out all right, didn't it?"
"Oh, yes. But do you know, those fellows hung out for over a year! And they were beaten from the start."
"I know. In the Colorado trouble——" Reminiscences came in opulent detail.
Governor Tennant, a member of the receiving party, stayed behind for a word with Paul. "Did Jerry Florence speak to you for me?"
"Not yet...."
"He will, when he has the chance. My second term's up next year, Paul. The state wants a business governor. Adamsville hasn't had her chance for five terms.... Would you?..."
The owner of the mines drove his hands into his pockets, clenched to mask the sudden exhilaration. His voice remained unthrilled. "It's out of my line, Bob.... I doubt if it could go through."
"Not a doubt of it. The primary's the election, remember; we can make the papers and the politicians so insistent, that you can't refuse. You'd hardly have opposition."
"I'll see what the Judge thinks.... You'll hear from me by Friday."
"The offer stands."
The people's executive motored after the guest cars.
Paul Judson stood alone on the old cottage crest, surveying the overnight growth of the city toward his mountain. The houses on East Highlands had lapped closer and closer, until they broke in a spray over the foothills of the ore-rich summit.
Managing vice-president of the biggest mining business in the state, third largest land-owner in Bragg County, governor after next January! Well, he had gotten where he had planned, sixteen uneven years ago.
He recalled vaguely the vision that he had had, when he had sat on the same crest beside Nathaniel Guild, and decided to purchase. He would bring the city, and the state, to the feet of the mountain.... He had done it.
The jutting enginehouse smokestacks, the ramp offices to the right, the snarl and screech of the loaded cars on the narrow-gauge lines, forced themselves into his attention. Not a scene of beauty; and there was a charred desolation where Hillcrest Cottage had once spread its graceful lines.
It was not the dream he had had. A man dreamed blindly; life brought to pass a substitute instead of the sought goal. It was a necessary process; since dreams must conflict, and the restless shift of things constantly opened new possibilities, closed old ones. No, it was not what he had pictured.... There was no son beside him now, to take up the work in turn and pass it on to endless Judsons. Pelham.... Hollis in service, too pleased with the work to give it up.... Ned already determined to be a surgeon....
But it was a magnificent achievement.
Musing, he walked over the grayed site of the old house. His toe met an obstacle jutting in the grass. He poked it up with his cane. It was the fused handle of the Bohemian glass epergne which had been grandfather Judson's. He slipped it into his pocket to show Mary.
His wife, her face lined and colorless, as if from too many hours and years spent indoors, listened with intent attention to his account of the afternoon. Two sickly spots of color glowed at what the governor had said.
"But ... it will mean a hard contest, will it not?"
"I don't think so. The primary is the only chance for a real fight; and the Tennant crowd will stop that in advance. You'll have to brighten up a bit, Mary. You ought to do more entertaining...."
"I'm not very strong, Paul."
His gruff "Nonsense!" was the prelude to the further account of the planned amalgamation with National Steel. "We're still to have control of this district; Florence and I will be elected directors. It had to come; competition is waste; coöperation is the modern method."
His wife sat with her eyes intent upon the melted fragment of colored glass in her hand. She turned it this way and that, up before the fading light, seeking what semblance of the colorful old token of Jackson life remained in it, what part was merely a charred, dead fragment of happier beauty.
"So I thought," he continued, unaware of her absorption, "that we could entertain the visiting gentlemen and their wives at dinner to-morrow evening."
A pinched expression of pain crossed her face. "You have not realized, Paul, that I am frailer this spring than any time since Ned was born...."
"I mean at the Steelmen's Club, not here. It won't be any trouble...."
"I can make the effort."
"You must see Dr. Giles. I had a talk with him about you; he says it's only nerves. If you'd quit thinking about that old fool that shot himself in my office, and those niggers that fooled around the place until they got shot.... There's nothing really wrong with you. Nell must give up the art school; you need someone to look after you."
"She doesn't want to come; she's happier there."
"You ask Dr. Giles." He went on with elaborate suggestions about the dinner; Mary Judson laid down the blackened, fused handle of glass; then held it again against the darkened light without. Hardly a glint of color remained.... That night she laid it away upon a closet shelf in one of the unused rooms of the great house.
By Friday, after a long talk with Judge Florence, Paul had made up his mind. He had his secretary wire the governor to run back to Adamsville for a consultation; he sent word to Robert Kane, who had left the directorate to succeed Pelham as state mining inspector, to meet him half an hour before the governor was due. No chance that either would fail the engagement; one crook of his little finger, and the state came at his bidding. The iron mountain had given that power to its iron master—a magnetism repellent but irresistible.
When the two builders of the mining strength rose to meet the governor, there was a subdued glitter of expectation in the eye of the younger man. He took the governor's hand with a new assurance.
Bob Tennant—"Whiskey-barrel Tennant"—had sought his accustomed solace on the ride up from Jackson; his face was flushed brick-red, although his tones were still straight.
"Well, Paul—am I in the presence of the next governor?" He essayed a satisfactory bow with oldtime courtliness.
"... Yes," Paul answered slowly.
"That's great, old man!"