XIV

John Dawson, organizer of the National Federation of Miners, picked his

way through the raw grayness of the Union Depot, in the muscle-cramped

crowd that came in on the day coaches of the 5:10, until he reached the

station itself. His eyes picked out the hesitant clot of four men off to

one side. "You the committee?"

Serrano introduced them briefly: Jack Bowden, state agent of the miners;

Ben Wilson and John McGue, of the strike committee. Dawson clenched each

hand in a vast paw, then beckoned them away from his two grips. "Wait a

minute." His alert eyes sieved the crowd. "See them two boys in gray

hats? They've followed me all the way from Wilmington. Hope they've had

a nice trip; I do love detectives...." He motioned them away. "Naw, I

carry my own." Adjusting the two big valises carefully, he smiled,

"Let's move."

They went out through the truck entrance, and across the gusty avenue,

clanging with cars filled with early workers. Depot idlers stared at the

group; the tall heavy-loaded man in the center would hold attention

anywhere.

Serrano stopped half a block away, at a flamboyant entrance displaying

"Mecca Hotel" in dirty white letters above. The clerk, a limp young man

without a collar, shoved over the tobacco-stained page. Dawson signed

it, forming each letter painstakingly. They walked up one flight to the

room.

Dawson looked around critically.

"Biggest room they have. They'll put in the other two beds to-day."

"Some of the boys may have to spend the night here. I'm glad it's near

the station, if any quick getaway has to be made." The organizer smiled,

his lips curling back over big front teeth; there was something

disquieting and unsmiling in the look.

Serrano got rid of the rest of the committee, and went into an elaborate

detail of the situation.

Dawson was able to help him out. "You'll find I know the land pretty

well. I worked three years in the West Adamsville mines; they ran me out

in the strike of '04. Who can you count on?"

He listened attentively, checking certain names in a thick yellow

notebook.

"I know this Jack Bowden kind. We find 'em all over. In West Virginia we

amputated a bunch like that. We've got 'em in Chicago, Indianapolis, New

York.... Give 'em a few days, and they'll show yellow; then it's easy to

fire 'em. Bowden looked fishy. These labor tin Jesuses make me sick!

Better than anybody else, and sold out in advance. Who's this Judson?"

The energetic bricklayer told of the recent convert, and the Arlington

Hall meeting.

"He can talk? We'll use him. But you can't trust them fellows too far.

I'm not a socialist, you know; don't believe in voting worth a damn.

Never got nowhere, never will get nowhere. But in a strike, they help."

They went over the morning paper. "Mmm--only a few hundred out----What's

the straight goods?"

"Over five hundred from the Judson mines, six fifty from the

Birrell-Florence, and about four hundred others from the mines on either

side. We haven't touched West Adamsville yet, or Irondale. If only the

furnaces could be called out...."

"Won't come. We can try; but mine strikes don't get 'em. No

organization. These men all joined?"

"Joined or joining."

"This says scabs from Pittsburgh.... No law to stop 'em?"

"Ben Spence, our lawyer, says there isn't. In the last street-car strike

we tried the law; the courts wouldn't enforce it."

"How do the boys feel?"

"They want to fight like hell. They'll stop the scabs."

"Got to be careful there. That sort of thing is dynamite; it blows both

ways. Company won't hear the committee?"

"Young Judson's father's the reason. Says he won't allow a union man in

his shop hereafter. No committees, nor nothing."

"Let's see the place."

They walked from the end of the car line. The roads through the property

had been made city streets, when Hillcrest Addition was thrown open to

the public, and the party could not be stopped. Dawson paused to shake

hands with the groups of pickets on the various cross roads. He had a

personal word for each, and a concentrated way of getting the details he

needed out of the incoherent members of the working body.

Joined by Ben Wilson and several of the pickets, they passed into the

company estate, and by the entrances to the gap drifts and the second

ramp. Only a few negroes were at work in the gap; it was not until the

second big slope that the white workers appeared. Dawson looked a

question at stocky Wilson, hardly up to his vest pocket.

"Convicts. Almost three hundred of them."

"Any niggers go out?"

"Half a dozen. You met one, Ed Cole, picketing by Thirtieth Street."

A red-faced Irishman walked out of a knot of workers and greeted the

tall organizer. "Hello, Dawson. Remember me?"

"Your mug's familiar. Lemme see--your name's Hewin, ain't it?"

The superintendent grinned. "You ought to remember it. You beat hell out

of me in the Coalstock strike for staying on as foreman."

"Scab then, eh, and still at it." Dawson's tolerance had a touch

promising danger.

"That's what you'd call it. I'm in charge here. Mind your own business,

or I'm not the one who'll get beat up this time." He turned with

grinning ugliness and climbed back to the opening.

They cut over to the railroad track, and entered Hewintown by the back

way. Dawson studied the land carefully. "That's the way they'd bring the

train from Pittsburgh, of course. And that's a pretty narrow cut beyond

that dinky little house. Who lives there?"

"Mr. Judson, the vice-president."

"This ain't no place for a mine-owner."

Dawson's comment on the shack town was a string of profanity. "Even in

West Virginia they had better dumps than those! I wouldn't let my pig

live there. Company houses, as always."

"Yes."

"This crew out?"

"All but two or three. The convict stockade is on the next hill; the

niggers live in Adamsville, or in Lilydale, over yonder." His pudgy

fingers pointed through the trees to the south.

They passed company detectives and guards, in clusters of two or three,

at every corner. "These always here?"

"Most of them new."

"We'll help 'em earn their money.... Take me by number three, and the

hospital you mentioned. I want to see it all."

They were not allowed to go down this ramp; guards with shotguns refused

to allow any ingress. "You might get blowed up too, buddy."

Serrano left them, to pass around the word of the meeting that night.

Dawson listened to the vivid hatred of the company all the way down the

hill. A vigorous nod punctuated his opinion. "That's what they are; a

bunch of lousy murderers. It's no worse here than other places; you've

got to fight for what you get, anywhere. Pretty bunch of uglies here

already! And when they try to run in Pittsburgh scabs----" He did not

finish.

The momentum of the strike grew day by day. Most of the papers continued

unfriendly; but the _Register_, which made a point of claiming to stand

for the man in the shop as well as the man in the office, insisted that

public sentiment was with the strikers, especially because of the recent

memory of the accident horror.

The packed meetings in Arlington Hall were reported favorably in this

paper; and they were emotional successes. John Dawson was not a graceful

speaker; but his harsh bellow meant business, and his imperative

magnetism shone through the awkwardest gesturings. Bowden contributed

suave appeals, and Big John Pooley, the state president, took the floor

the second night to remind that organized labor stood behind their

efforts. "I am sure," he boasted, "that you will win, and even sooner

than you expect. You have the companies practically beaten now."

Serrano turned to Dawson, puzzled. "What's he getting at, with that

stuff?"

The enormous organizer looked at him searchingly. "If you watch a snake

hole, you're liable to see the snake crawl out sooner or later."

During the rest of Pooley's speech, the huge organizer, head sprawled

back against the wall, chin upraised, studied the speaker with a hungry

intentness, as if investigating for that weak spot he had found every

man to possess. The bricklayer chairman phrased and rephrased to himself

his introduction for the next speaker, one of the negro miners. It was

always risky, this opening the union doors to the black workers. Of

course, as a socialist Serrano always urged it, arguing that labor's

only safety lay in having this convenient surplus labor force within its

own ranks, as protection against black scabbing; but there was some

division in the local about it, and the southern unionist took slowly to

the idea; occasional revivals of racial intolerance, based upon dislike

of sharing work with the darker cousin, split unions and federations,

delaying solidified strength for years and decades.

Pooley ended with lame vehemence; and the voice of the Italian chairman

thundered another plea for labor's unity, introducing a black man to

show that no boundaries of nation or race counted in the centuries' long

battle. "I'm going to call on Will Cole to speak to you. Will is a black

man, who was in Number Eight entry when the dynamite murder took place.

His dead comrades talk to you through his living lips. Come on, Will,

tell us why you don't look for a pay check this week."

They laughed at the rude jesting at the invariable boomerang effect of

their sole weapon of protest--a laugh that quieted to respect, as the

grimy overalled negro was urged up the side steps and to the center of

the stage. His eyes blinked at the dazzle of the lighting until the

whites showed; his shoulders hunched deprecatingly. He could not speak

to them as man to man, that he knew; the difference in color was ever in

his mind, and in his audience's.

"Ah'm only a nigger," he began diffidently. "You-all white folks don't

want niggers in yo' unions, you-all don't want us to wu'k whar you do.

Some er you don't lak us havin' our own union. An' niggers is crazy too;

Ah kaint make dat wu'thless gang in number two come out, nohow.

"But Ah come out. You-all know Jim Cole was in Number Six when de mine

oxploded; you-all know he's dead now. Ah live on dat mountain, same as

Mister Judson. Dere ain't no more reason why me 'n' mah brudder should a

got killed in dem mines dan why he should'a. Ah done jined dis union,

an' Ah'll die befo' Ah'll scab. An' any scab dat comes mah way had

better have his ears all aroun' his haid!"

They chuckled at the conclusion, but it made its effect. "When you all

unite, white and black, you can snap your fingers at all the Paul

Judsons in the world!" Serrano never lost a chance to drive home a

point.

Next afternoon's headlines promised the arrival of a trainload of

workers during the night. This lent an added air of uncertainty to the

meeting following. Dawson's pleas to the men to hold fast, to convert

the scabs with arguments, not bricks, were as strong as ever; but

despite the ample audience, even he was a little upset by the fact that

the whole Bowden-Pooley crowd were absent from their stage seats.

When he got around to Machinists' Hall later in the same evening, for

the conference over the next day's activities, he found the state labor

organization present in full force. The ornate double rows of

mahogany-stained chairs, arranged in a hollow diamond shape, to

accommodate the fraternities that met in the hall, with raised seats at

the four points of the diamond for the officers, were half filled with

the Pooley followers. Dawson called the meeting to order.

Jack Bowden rose, spit carefully into the shiny brass cuspidor, placed

there to preserve the long-haired red carpet, and began. "Men, the

strike is won! We've been in consultation with Mr. Judson and Mr. Kane,

and the whole thing is to be called off to-morrow morning! They agree to

consider every one of our demands, provided only we don't insist on the

demand for unionization. We can't win, with this trainload of detectives

and workers from up north; I think we're lucky to beat 'em this way." He

turned to Dawson. "You've done mighty fine work, John Dawson; and the

state treasury of the mining union will be glad to foot your bill comin'

here and goin' back."

Dawson was out of the chair, his throat palpitating, almost too choked

to get out a word. "I've been waiting for you and your kind to show your

hands, Bowden. I'm glad you've done it this soon. Did Mr. Judson say he

would grant all demands, except unionization?"

Pooley shifted his lame leg, and spoke up. "Mr. Kane it was we talked to

to-night."

Dawson's clear-thrown tones fired the next question at him. "Did Mr.

Kane promise to grant every demand, except only unionization?"

"He said they'd consider 'em. It's the best----"

"It's nothing, and you know it! Fire me and the real union men who are

making the trouble, and turn the whole thing over to you yellow-livered

double-dealers--a fine way to run a strike! With us gone, and the

strike broken, _then_ your Mr. Kane, who isn't even a boss, would agree

to _consider_ the demands. Are you damned fools, or plain ordinary

crooks?"

He paused for a moment. Bowden started to reply, but was checked by fear

of injury, as Dawson took one tremendous step toward him. Pelham Judson,

seated to the right, caught his eye. "If that there Judson's son had

spilled this soft-soap, I could get it; you might expect it from he and

his class." Pelham winced at the scorn. "But you--a union card dirtied

in your pocket, you, a Judas to your kind--you got no place in a room

with decent men."

Pooley tried to bolster up Bowden's pallid protest, blustering, "You

look here, Dawson. The State Federation of Labor----"

"Damn the State Federation of Labor! If any organization, labor or

otherwise, stands in the way of our beatin' a fight, we'll smash it!

We're going to win, do you get me? You keep out. As for you, Bowden----"

He came close to the local agent, bending down from his towering six

feet and a half to bring his face near the other's. "You better get out,

before I have the national office down on your neck. This is final: from

now on, you stay out. We'll run the strike without any talk from you. Go

back and tell your Mr. Kane that there's a bunch here he can't double

cross, or buy out! Now git!"

Three times the suave agent started to speak. His fingers wandered

uncertainly up and down the shiny buttons of his fancy vest, his eyes

glanced away from the brutal dominance in the huge face before him. At

last he turned to Pooley. "Goin', John?"

Pooley noted the cringe, and his nostrils lifted slightly. He spoke

definitely. "There's no hard feelin' about this, Dawson? You understand

that----"

"Yes, I understand." The sudden burst of anger had gone; there was a

vast patience in every syllable. "I understand; you needn't explain." He

turned dispassionately to the others. "Now, boys, what's the reports for

to-day?"

The work was finally done; they started out. At the door they were

stopped by half a dozen newspaper men, who had been held up by the

doorman until the conference was over. "Anything special for to-morrow,

Mr. Dawson?"

The big miner grinned amicably. "You might say everything's coming our

way. With twenty two hundred men out, and five of the mines stopped,

things are lookin' up."

The reporter for the _Advertiser_ pushed out a question. "Did you advise

violence in stopping these workers from the North?"

"Good God, no, man! That's the very thing I'm fighting against. You

heard me--in every speech. We're law abiding. If there's any lawbreaking

to be done, let the companies do it." He smiled grimly. "They're itching

for us to give 'em an excuse to bring on the militia, as they did in

'04, when they massacred the miners. They'll fail; we'll fight within

the law."

He scribbled vigorously. "Is it true you were driven out of Montana and

West Virginia, and almost lynched in Michigan?"

Dawson's neck swelled, his eyes smouldered. "Yes, it's true, every bit

of it. And I was driven out of this state in '04. I expect it in my

business. You might say things is changing, and it may be Mr. Paul

Judson who's driven out next time."

There was a chorus of appreciation from the committee.

"I guess that's all."

One reporter--it was Charley Brant, of the _Register_--called Pelham

aside. "Gotten any word from the mountain recently ... to-night?"

"No; why?"

"That trainload of workers is arriving; there's trouble, rioting or

something."

"Are you sure?" Excitement blazed in his face. "Tell John Dawson so."

He called him over at once.

"We got a phone message from a man on the ground. It's on the mineral

line, halfway between Mr. Judson's house and the viaduct, if you know

where that is. Our man said it was serious."

"I'm going." Dawson sliced his words off briskly.

"Use my car; it's quicker," snapped Pelham.

Jensen, McGue, Dawson, and the reporter got inside; two others of the

committee hung to the running boards.

Pelham drove at top speed out the Thirty-Eighth Street road, and circled

around the crest. "I know the place," he explained. "We'd better come up

from behind, if anything's doing. They might stop us."

He turned from the county road to a cool country lane cutting through

tall long-leaf pine, in the middle of Shadow Valley. The car's lights

danced unreally on the crowding trunks ahead, the wheels slipped and

skidded over the sprinkling of carpeting needles. He whisked to the

right, and took the hill toward the mountain. They had heard no noise as

yet.

Up a gravelly hogback to a level a hundred feet from the tracks,--and

they were in the midst of it. The uncertain rumble from men massed

blackly in front of and all around the stalled engine's headlight, broke

over them; they saw the train, somber and illy lit, stopped midway of

the deep cut through the next chert hill--an ideal place for an

ambuscade.

They heard single voices, broken by the spurty wind. Then the men in

front of the car dissolved, into the blackness on both sides of the

track. Now they could see the piled mound of huge stones, cross ties,

tree trunks, which had stopped the engine. Close below the headlight was

a moving shadow they finally made out as company men, they could not

tell how many. The red gleam of the headlight on dull metal shone on the

far side. Before the mound of rocks and stumps two men still stood.

"Get off that track," the words came clearer now, from one of the men

just below the headlight. "Or we shoot."

It happened so quickly that they hardly had time to get out of the car.

A voice came from one of the two upon the track, the pleasant, velvety

richness of a negro voice. "Ah reckon Ah kin walk on dis track ef Ah

wants to."

"You black----"

He did not finish. From the deeper shadow below the tender, two rifles

popped together, with a thin hollow noise, like playthings. There was a

shrieking medley from all sides. For one instant, etched black against

the light thrown by the unwinking eye of the engine, the two figures

stood. One of the negroes plunged wildly to the side, clattering and

tumbling down the seventy foot fill to the bottom of the sharp

declivity. The other stood alone, a black break on the lighted area. He

screamed once like a kicked dog. He slid to the ground. His body huddled

across a rail.

"God!" Dawson exploded. Tumbling out of the car, they started pelting

toward the track.

They stopped, still thirty feet from the lighted area, as half a dozen

men plunged toward them, scattering to the safety of the woods. One

came at them--Ben Wilson, who should have been with the committee.

"For God's sake, don't go there--they're shooting to kill----"

Dawson caught him by the collar, shook him bitterly. "What hell of a

mess is this! We've got to stop it----"

Wilson made a gesture of hopeless exultation, touched with something

sublime. "You can't stop it now!"

Dawson stared at him in amazement.

The cries became louder, from all around the motionless train; they

looked back. Protected by the guns under the headlights, a line of

hesitating men were cursed forward to where the obstacle lay crudely

across the tracks. The leader of the guards, rifle cached on his left

forearm, pointed this way and that.

The reluctant line of workers burrowed into the mound. Boulders of ore,

a broken wagon, old cross-ties were pulled out and sent bounding into

the seventyfoot gulley, each starting a rocketing train of pebbles and

rocks after it. The front row of gunmen had moved silently forward, and

menaced the threatening darkness.

Suddenly there was a shock of breaking glass, and a herd scream from the

front car just behind the tender. A cloudburst of stones rained against

the length of the train from the gap's crests on both sides. Windows

were caved in, rocks bounced noisily off the roof, there were gulped

outcries from the penned men inside the cars. At a command, the rifles

flared wildly toward the tops of the cut.

Wilson pulled out a pistol, dropped to his knees, aimed carefully at the

leader of the gunmen, standing awkwardly in the exposing glare.

Dawson jerked the pistol from his hand, and sent the man tottering

sideways. "Not that way."

The track was cleared now. Even the first negro's body was laid

hurriedly on the south-bound rail. But the wild bombardment of the train

had had its effect. The bewildered engineer started backing into the

gap, in whose deeper shadows the reinforced strikers had further

advantage.

One boulder, two-thirds the height of a man, was sent lumbering down,

gathering momentum. It leapt against the side of a car; for a moment the

car tottered. The head gunman, seeing his men deserted by the train,

stumbled down the cross-ties toward it.

"Hey, stop! Damn you, stop, I say!"

His voice cracked; he began again.

It was a rout for the company forces, a clear victory for the strikers.

Then with a whirr like giant mechanical wings the belated guard

automobiles, four of them, swung around the curving crest of the road

fifty feet behind and above the cut. The trees and underbrush had been

cleared for just this purpose. The huge searchlights, one to each car,

wavered, then poured their blinding flood on the dark gap summits.

"Oh, God! The deppities----"

The light itself seemed to stagger those who had been triumphant in the

dark. They diverged sharply from the point of advantage. Those on the

far side cleared back toward the east. Those on the near side halted

uncertainly for a fatal second, before they ran toward the two ends of

the cut.

"Let 'em have it!"

An intermittent sheet of flame broke from the guard automobiles. The

defenseless workers stopped and tumbled grotesquely. To Dawson's

horrified imagination it seemed that more than a dozen lay flat and

twitching in the hellish flare of the searchlights.

"Come on!"

"Got 'im, Jim!"

"Take that, you damned----"

With savage yells the new attackers, firing whenever they saw a moving

target, covered the slope, and halted above the train.

"Hey, there," bellowed the man in the lead, addressing the train crew

below. "Whatcher stop for?"

"We're going on."

"Why 'n' cher go on, then?" he parroted in irritation.

The whistle wailed, the engine and cars shuddered forward toward

Hewintown. The first attack was over.

"Well," Dawson led the way back to the low gray car hidden in the

shadows. "Hell's loose this time!"