XI.THE STRIKE.
“Having ears to hear, let them hear.”
Thesleep of young strength puts a wide distance between yesterday’s cares and to-day’s. The dawn that awoke Emma was gray, but it did not suggest the blight of ashes as had last night’s twilight. She was sure of the return of Jarlsen’s faculties, and she also knew that Quarry could have made no disturbance through the night. She was inclined to think that he meant to frighten them, and by daylight hisacts seemed more like very bad manners than like an attempt at murder.
In the morning, before setting out, she changed the bandage on Jarlsen’s hand. The wide burns were “guttering,” seaming up in red lines. She told him this, and though he made no reply she felt sure, with unshakable, feminine sureness, that he had heard. She led him out to his hammock and placed him in it. Quarry was haranguing Old Butte, and the sound of his voice seemed to make the Swede nervous. Emma was certain that he had heard him.
She had always liked the Pastures as a place to walk; the air was less flat than in the town; and it waspleasant to set one’s face against poverty and one’s feet toward a place where people were rich enough to pay rent. Bentley’s Place overtopped the city on an artificial and costly eminence. The little house that was placed like a lodge was the terminal station of the narrow-gauge railway. She knew herself to be two miles and three quarters from that, and a mile or more from the plant.
Usually she met the day squad coming out from the town, the men standing in the ore cars, the smoke from their pipes and the straining, overworked little engine blown behind them toward the town—like a message sent home, Emma thought. But to-day nocars passed, and she, being a child of toil, was quick to know that this meant a strike. She hurried on to her earnings, remembering that when men are out of work they have all day in which to spend their savings. Women see so little in strikes but higher wages until some one is dead.
When she reached the Bridge it was crowded with people. Men who had not worked at the plant for years were exhorting their fellows not to submit to tyranny. Many large words were being misused with great pride by those who never had a chance to talk except when the crowd was too busy to listen. The women were not very carefully dressed, having had notime for fastenings or strings. They, together with the children they brought with them, seemed to regard the occasion as one of festivity.
Nothing was denounced very definitely. One stranger was said to be a reporter, whereupon half a dozen people beset him, anxious to have their views in the paper. Emma could learn nothing from any of them. They used Quarry’s and Bowa’s names frequently, so that she forebore mentioning under whose roof the Englishman had passed the night.
Her shop was in the fourth house from the Bridge; a steep diagonal path ran from its back door to the Tracks. The men wereswarming to it before she was quite ready to have them, and many arrived by the rarely used footway. News came with them, and she found herself believing first one report and then another. Bowa came to be shaved; she was surprised at his thinking of a thing so incidental to a holiday toilet as a shave, but she supposed that he was resolved to die tidy, and said as much.
He could not be at the plant, he explained, and felt that he had no need to be there. His smile was exceedingly subtle, but his hands worked against his will in an embarrassed fashion.
The day wore on until about four o’clock. Her business had been immense, and she had listened to themany accounts and descriptions of the plant until she felt she knew it perfectly. In the centre was the powder house, where explosives were kept; on the city flank was the nutt and bolt factory, and very near, but south of it, the furnace. It was set on a steep “slide” of rock; its door, through which the furnace was fed, was on the summit side; and on the base side, lower on the slide by eight feet or more, was another door through which the “cinder” flew away at night into the darkness like a burning river. This door seems complicated on paper, though in fact its construction is simple. A skewer secures it at its upper edge—a skewer with a large loop at one end. Into thisloop the hook of the fire-tenders’ strange implement is thrust when the door is to be opened. “The Devil’s Crook” is what the men have named the long oak stick finished at one end with an iron hook. It does look like a thing wherewith to herd black sheep.
Emma was weary of constant exclamation and argument. It was time she ate; so she closed her door and “boiled her bottle,” allowing the men who were already in the shop to remain there. She saw Bowa get up from his chair and leave by the back door, silent and hurried. As was natural, Emma turned to the window to see what had caught his eye in the street.
Young Bentley had driven up inhis buggy; his liveried servant sat beside him, and the horse he drove plunged and shook with nervousness at being surrounded by a crowd of loud-voiced people. Bentley stood up in the little buggy, having given the reins to his man. “See here,” he said, addressing the crowd, “if we have a strike, you’d better remember that I can stand it, and you can’t. I’ve sent police to the plant to protect my property, and you had better stand by them; for the plant is the machine you make your bread with, and it’s the only thing you can work at. I’ve got lots of irons on the fire. Now some one has trifled with this road-bed, in the cut here, By the Bridge. I suppose you wantto make me lose my charter. I’m going to examine the damage now, and I hope you’ll come with me.”
He jumped to the ground and began to descend the steps leading to the road-bed in the cut, over which the Bridge is. No one followed him, but with admirable nerve he neither hesitated nor quickened his pace.
Emma remembered that Jarlsen had liked him, and that he had called to ask for him once By the Tracks and twice on the Pastures. No Bentley had visited the Pastures before, and Emma felt the distinction keenly. She opened the door and went out, merely observing to the bystanders that they “hed no spring.”
Before she got to the stair’s head about six men had followed her, looking deeply ashamed of each other, but at present firm in their duty. Emma let them pass her, and slipped into the advancing crowd.
Bowa and three companions were standing on the tracks by two overturned ore cars. They seemed more sheepish than defiant, and Emma noticed with pride how neat Bowa looked as he tried not to flinch under Bentley’s contemptuous gaze. The rails were torn up for about twenty yards, and in the silence that preceded Bentley’s first words Emma realized that this meant prison.
“Did you do that?” he said atlength. Then turning to the men at his back, he said very pleasantly, “I think we can put this right with”—his voice grew suddenly louder—“two more to help us.”
Two Soot City police appeared, and very quietly secured Bowa and his friends. They were too surprised to make any resistance, and went silent and sullen at Bentley’s curt bidding. Some one cried, “Shame!” at the plant owner. Martha Long answered “Nonsense!” very loud. But her tears fell for Bowa, and she pleaded for him in words.
“Mr. Bentley,” she said, “he was put up to that. He’s young for the shadder of a prison to fall on him. He’s as mild as new milk, and he’shad his taste, and he won’t want no more.”
“Martha,” Bentley answered, “I think making an example of a workman is making a martyr of him and an enemy of his labour organization. I don’t want any strikes, so I’ll probably let him off; but I wouldn’t promise any one.”
Martha went away well comforted, and Emma, when the darkness had fallen, set out for home. She considered the strike was over, and laughed as she made herself pictures of Quarry’s discomfiture; his plans would be henceforth unheeded, and, as he had not succeeded, the men would not fear him, and not fearing meant, under such conditions, shunning. Shehad had a diverting day; the silver jingled in her pocket, and her wish was that Jarlsen might have ears to hear all about it.
The cottage was dark, but before she came within a hundred yards of it, while it yet stood out black and square against the dark east, she heard Jarlsen calling, “Emma, hurry, girl!—Emma, girl, hurry!”
She ran to him, stumbling and in dread, and groped in the darkness of the room with tender hands that feared—she longed to know just what.
“I’m all right,” he said; “but listen. Speak to me; I can hear. I’ve heard ever since we moved. I’ve wanted to say so, but I wanted to go on hearing your father talkto Quarry. I’ve heard it all. I’m done with secrets; I’m pretty near done with theirs. Speak to me, Emma; I can prove it.”
“I’m so bursting-out happy, I can’t talk much,” said she.
Her speech followed her in his voice. “I’m so bursting-out happy, I can’t talk much.’ But I can hear! Emma, Quarry and your poppa have been setting it up since we came here, and I was afraid to say I heard, for fear two couldn’t keep a secret. Emma, we want the plant’s pension, and we’re going to get it!
“You’re going now,” he said, “to run out to the plant—to run your best; when you get there, go to the furnace. If you keep right on Bythe Tracks, nobody’ll mind you. Quarry’s bought the furnace-minders, and they’re going to leave for the station to report a disturbance in the factory. The Devil’s Crook is in the little house by the furnace; it is by the door. You take it as you pass—no one’ll be there—and when you see a light in the factory you open the centre door and make a flare, for the police can’t see in the dark. You’ll catch ’em; O Emma, hurry! I’ve got a good chance to fix Quarry, and he didn’t warn me of that blast, or I wouldn’t be here now. He put his flag behind his back when he saw me come, and I walked right on. Hurry, Emma girl! Don’t burn yourself!”
Emma could feel that he wanted to go himself. She caught up her shawl. “Is it the powder house?” she asked.
“For God’s sake,” he said loudly, “get started! Of course it is!”
She ran out into the wide darkness. She was racing death, and she knew it.