And here they were greeting Joe Smith as an old friend, and calling him

by a strange name! She turned her black Italian eyes upon Hal in

inquiry, and he felt a flush creeping over him. It was almost as

uncomfortable to be found out by North Valley as to be found out by

Western City!

The men talked about the rescue-work, and what Cartwright had been

telling of its progress. The fire was in one of the main passages, and

was burning out the timbering, spreading rapidly under the draft from

the reversed fan. There could be little hope of rescue in this part of

the mine, but the helmet-men would defy the heat and smoke in the burned

out passages. They knew how likely was the collapse of such portions of

the mine; but also they knew that men had been working here before the

explosion. “I must say they’re a game lot!” remarked Dicky.

A group of women and children were gathered about to listen, their

shyness overcome by their torturing anxiety for news. They made one

think of women in war-time, listening to the roar of distant guns and

waiting for the bringing in of the wounded. Hal saw Bob and Dicky glance

now and then at the ring of faces about them; they were getting

something of this mood, and that was a part of what he had desired for

them.

“Are the others coming out?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” said Bob. “I suppose they’re having breakfast. It’s time

we went in.”

“Won’t you come with us?” added Dicky.

“No, thanks,” replied Hal, “I’ve an engagement with the kid here.” And

he gave Little Jerry’s hand a squeeze. “But tell some of the other

fellows to come. They’ll be interested in these things.”

“All right,” said the two, as they moved away.

SECTION 19.

After allowing a sufficient time for the party in the dining-car to

finish breakfast, Hal went down to the tracks, and induced the porter to

take in his name to Percy Harrigan. He was hoping to persuade Percy to

see the village under other than company chaperonage; he heard with

dismay the announcement that the party had arranged to depart in the

course of a couple of hours.

“But you haven’t seen anything at all!” Hal protested.

“They won’t let us into the mine,” replied the other. “What else is

there we can do?”

“I wanted you to talk to the people and learn something about conditions

here. You ought not to lose this chance, Percy!”

“That’s all right, Hal, but you might understand this isn’t a convenient

time. I’ve got a lot of people with me, and I’ve no right to ask them to

wait.”

“But can’t they learn something also, Percy?”

“It’s raining,” was the reply; “and ladies would hardly care to stand

round in a crowd and see dead bodies brought out of a mine.”

Hal got the rebuke. Yes, he had grown callous since coming to North

Valley; he had lost that delicacy of feeling, that intuitive

understanding of the sentiments of ladies, which he would surely have

exhibited a short time earlier in his life. He was excited about this

disaster; it was a personal thing to him, and he lost sight of the fact

that to the ladies of the Harrigan party it was, in its details, merely

sordid and repelling. If they went out in the mud and rain of a

mining-village and stood about staring, they would feel that they were

exhibiting, not human compassion, but idle curiosity. The sights they

would see would harrow them to no purpose; and incidentally they would

be exposing themselves to distressing publicity. As for offering

sympathy to widows and orphans--well, these were foreigners mostly, who

could not understand what was said to them, and who might be more

embarrassed than helped by the intrusion into their grief of persons

from an alien world.

The business of offering sympathy had been reduced to a system by the

civilisation which these ladies helped to maintain; and, as it happened,

there was one present who was familiar with this system. Mrs. Curtis had

already acted, so Percy informed Hal; she had passed about a

subscription-paper, and in a couple of minutes over a thousand dollars

had been pledged. This would be paid by check to the “Red Cross,” whose

agents would understand how to distribute relief among such sufferers.

So the members of Percy’s party felt that they had done the proper and

delicate thing, and might go their ways with a quiet conscience.

“The world can’t stop moving just because there’s been a mine-disaster,”

said the Coal King’s son. “People have engagements they must keep.”

And he went on to explain what these engagements were. He himself had to

go to a dinner that evening, and would barely be able to make it. Bert

Atkins was to play a challenge match at billiards, and Mrs. Curtis was

to attend a committee meeting of a woman’s club. Also it was the last

Friday of the month; had Hal forgotten what that meant?

After a moment Hal remembered--the “Young People’s Night” at the country

club! He had a sudden vision of the white colonial mansion on the

mountain-side, with its doors and windows thrown wide, and the strains

of an orchestra floating out. In the ball-room the young ladies of

Percy’s party would appear--Jessie, his sweetheart, among them--gowned

in filmy chiffons and laces, floating in a mist of perfume and colour

and music. They would laugh and chatter, they would flirt and scheme

against one another for the sovereignty of the ball-room--while here in

North Valley the sobbing widows would be clutching their mangled dead in

their arms! How strange, how ghastly it seemed! How like the scenes one

read of on the eve of the French Revolution!

SECTION 20.

Percy wanted Hal to come away with the party. He suggested this

tactfully at first, and then, as Hal did not take the hint, he began to

press the matter, showing signs of irritation. The mine was open

now--what more did Hal want? When Hal suggested that Cartwright might

order it closed again, Percy revealed the fact that the matter was in

his father’s hands. The superintendent had sent a long telegram the

night before, and an answer was due at any moment. Whatever the answer

ordered would have to be done.

There was a grim look upon Hal’s face, but he forced himself to speak

politely. “If your father orders anything that interferes with the

rescuing of the men--don’t you see, Percy, that I have to fight him?”

“But how _can_ you fight him?”

“With the one weapon I have--publicity.”

“You mean--” Percy stopped, and stared.

“I mean what I said before--I’d turn Billy Keating loose and blow this

whole story wide open.”

“Well, by God!” cried young Harrigan. “I must say I’d call it damned

dirty of you! You said you’d not do it, if I’d come here and open the

mine!”

“But what good does it do to open it, if you close it again before the

men are out?” Hal paused, and when he went on it was in a sincere

attempt at apology. “Percy, don’t imagine I fail to appreciate the

embarrassments of this situation. I know I must seem a cad to you--more

than you’ve cared to tell me. I called you my friend in spite of all our

quarrels. All I can do is to assure you that I never intended to get

into such a position as this.”

“Well, what the hell did you want to come here for? You knew it was the

property of a friend--”

“That’s the question at issue between us, Percy. Have you forgotten our

arguments? I tried to convince you what it meant that you and I should

own the things by which other people have to live. I said we were

ignorant of the conditions under which our properties were worked, we

were a bunch of parasites and idlers. But you laughed at me, called me a

crank, an anarchist, said I swallowed what any muck-raker fed me. So I

said: ‘I’ll go to one of Percy’s mines! Then, when he tries to argue

with me, I’ll have him!’ That was the way the thing started--as a joke.

But then I got drawn into things. I don’t want to be nasty, but no man

with a drop of red blood in his veins could stay in this place a week

without wanting to fight! That’s why I want you to stay--you ought to

stay, to meet some of the people and see for yourself.”

“Well, I can’t stay,” said the other, coldly. “And all I can tell you is

that I wish you’d go somewhere else to do your sociology.”

“But where could I go, Percy? Somebody owns everything. If it’s a big

thing, it’s almost certain to be somebody we know.”

Said Percy, “If I might make a suggestion, you could have begun with the

coal-mines of the Warner Company.”

Hal laughed. “You may be sure I thought of that, Percy. But see the

situation! If I was to accomplish my purpose, it was essential that I

shouldn’t be known. And I had met some of my father’s superintendents in

his office, and I knew they’d recognise me. So I _had_ to go to some

other mines.”

“Most fortunate for the Warner Company,” replied Percy, in an ugly tone.

Hal answered, gravely, “Let me tell you, I don’t intend to leave the

Warner Company permanently out of my sociology.”

“Well,” replied the other, “all I can say is that we pass one of their

properties on our way back, and nothing would please me better than to

stop the train and let you off!”

SECTION 21.

Hal went into the drawing-room car. There were Mrs. Curtis and Reggie

Porter, playing bridge with Genevieve Halsey and young Everson. Bob

Creston was chatting with Betty Gunnison, telling her what he had seen

outside, no doubt. Bert Atkins was looking over the morning paper,

yawning. Hal went on, seeking Jessie Arthur, and found her in one of the

compartments of the car, looking out of the rain-drenched

window--learning about a mining-camp in the manner permitted to young

ladies of her class.

He expected to find her in a disturbed state of mind, and was prepared

to apologise. But when he met the look of distress she turned upon him,

he did not know just where to begin. He tried to speak casually--he had

heard she was going away. But she caught him by the hand, exclaiming:

“Hal, you are coming with us!”

He did not answer for a moment, but sat down by her. “Have I made you

suffer so much, Jessie?”

He saw tears start into her eyes. “Haven’t you _known_ you were making

me suffer? Here I was as Percy’s guest; and to have you put such

questions to me! What could I say? What do I know about the way Mr.

Harrigan should run his business?”

“Yes, dear,” he said, humbly. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have drawn you into

it. But the matter was so complicated and so sudden. Can’t you

understand that, and forgive me? Everything has turned out so well!”

But she did not think that everything had turned out well. “In the first

place, for you to be here, in such a plight! And when I thought you were

hunting mountain-goats in Mexico!”

He could not help laughing; but Jessie had not even a smile. “And

then--to have you drag our love into the thing, there before every one!”

“Was that really so terrible, Jessie?”

She looked at him with amazement. That he, Hal Warner, could have done

such a thing, and not realise how terrible it was! To put her in a

position where she had to break either the laws of love or the laws of

good-breeding! Why, it had amounted to a public quarrel. It would be the

talk of the town--there was no end to the embarrassment of it!

“But, sweetheart!” argued Hal. “Try to see the reality of this

thing--think about those people in the mine. You really _must_ do that!”

She looked at him, and noticed the new, grim lines that had come upon

his youthful face. Also, she caught the note of suppressed passion in

his voice. He was pale and weary looking, in dirty clothes, his hair

unkempt and his face only half washed. It was terrifying--as if he had

gone to war.

“Listen to me, Jessie,” he insisted. “I want you to know about these

things. If you and I are ever to make each other happy, you must try to

grow up with me. That was why I was glad to have you here--you would

have a chance to see for yourself. Now I ask you not to go without

seeing.”

“But I have to go, Hal. I can’t ask Percy Harrigan to stay and

inconvenience everybody!”

“You can stay without him. You can ask one of the ladies to chaperon

you.”

She gazed at him in dismay. “Why, Hal! What a thing to suggest!”

“Why so?”

“Think how it would look!”

“I can’t think so much about looks, dear--”

She broke in: “Think what Mamma would say!”

“She wouldn’t like it, I know--”

“She would be wild! She would never forgive either of us. She would

never forgive any one who stayed with me. And what would Percy say, if I

came here as his guest, and stayed to spy on him and his father? Don’t

you see how preposterous it would be?”

Yes, he saw. He was defying all the conventions of her world, and it

seemed to her a course of madness. She clutched his hands in hers, and

the tears ran down her cheeks.

“Hal,” she cried, “I can’t leave you in this dreadful place! You look

like a ghost, and a scarecrow, too! I want you to go and get some decent

clothes and come home on this train.”

But he shook his head. “It’s not possible, Jessie.”

“Why not?”

“Because I have a duty to do here. Can’t you understand, dear? All my

life, I’ve been living on the labour of coal-miners, and I’ve never

taken the trouble to go near them, to see how my money was got!”

“But, Hal! These aren’t your people! They are Mr. Harrigan’s people!”

“Yes,” he said, “but it’s all the same. They toil, and we live on their

toil, and take it as a matter of course.”

“But what can one _do_ about it, Hal?”

“One can understand it, if nothing else. And you see what I was able to

do in this case--to get the mine open.”

“Hal,” she exclaimed, “I can’t understand you! You’ve become so cynical,

you don’t believe in any one! You’re quite convinced that these

officials meant to murder their working people! As if Mr. Harrigan would

let his mines be run that way!”

“Mr. Harrigan, Jessie? He passes the collection plate at St. George’s!

That’s the only place you’ve ever seen him, and that’s all you know

about him.”

“I know what everybody says, Hal! Papa knows him, and my brothers--yes,

your own brother, too! Isn’t it true that Edward would disapprove what

you’re doing?”

“Yes, dear, I fear so.”

“And you set yourself up against them--against everybody you know! Is it

reasonable to think the older people are all wrong, and only you are

right? Isn’t it at least possible you’re making a mistake? Think about

it--honestly, Hal, for my sake!”

She was looking at him pleadingly; and he leaned forward and took her

hand. “Jessie,” he said, his voice trembling, “I _know_ that these

working people are oppressed; I know it, because I have been one of

them! And I know that such men as Peter Harrigan, and even my own

brother, are to blame! And they’ve got to be faced by some one--they’ve

got to be made to see! I’ve come to see it clearly this summer--that’s

the job I have to do!”

She was gazing at him with her wide-open, beautiful eyes; underneath her

protests and her terror, she was thrilling with awe at this amazing

madman she loved. “They will _kill_ you!” she cried.

“No, dearest--you don’t need to worry about that--I don’t think they’ll

kill me.”

“But they shot at you!”

“No, they shot at Joe Smith, a miner’s buddy. They won’t shoot at the

son of a millionaire--not in America, Jessie.”

“But some dark night--”

“Set your mind at rest,” he said, “I’ve got Percy tied up in this, and

everybody knows it. There’s no way they could kill me without the whole

story’s coming out--and so I’m as safe as I would be in my bed at home!”

SECTION 22.

Hal was still possessed by his idea that Jessie must be taught--she must

have knowledge forced upon her, whether she would or no. The train would

not start for a couple of hours, and he tried to think of some use he

could make of that precious interval. He recalled that Rosa Minetti had

returned to her cabin to attend to her baby. A sudden vision came to him

of Jessie in that little home. Rosa was sweet and good, and assuredly

Little Jerry was a “winner.”

“Sweetheart,” he said, “I wish you’d come for a walk with me.”

“But it’s raining, Hal!”

“It won’t hurt you to spoil one dress; you have plenty.”

“I’m not thinking of that--”

“I _wish_ you’d come.”

“I don’t feel comfortable about it, Hal. I’m here as Percy’s guest, and

he mightn’t like--”

“I’ll ask him if he objects to your taking a stroll,” he suggested, with

pretended gravity.

“No, no! That would make it worse!” Jessie had no humour whatever about

these matters.

“Well, Vivie Cass was out, and some of the others are going. He hasn’t

objected to that.”

“I know, Hal. But he knows they’re all right.”

Hal laughed. “Come on, Jessie. Percy won’t hold you for my sins! You

have a long train journey before you, and some fresh air will be good

for you.”

She saw that she must make some concession to him, if she was to keep

any of her influence over him.

“All right,” she said, with resignation, and disappeared and returned

with a heavy veil over her face, to conceal her from prying reportorial

eyes; also an equipment of mackintosh, umbrella and overshoes, against

the rain. The two stole out of the car, feeling like a couple of

criminals.

Skirting the edge of the throng about the pit-mouth, they came to the

muddy, unpaved quarter in which the Italians had their homes; he held

her arm, steering her through the miniature sloughs and creeks. It was

thrilling to him to have her with him thus, to see her sweet face and

hear her voice full of love. Many a time he had thought of her here, and

told her in his imagination of his experiences!

He told her now--about the Minetti family, and how he had met Big and

Little Jerry on the street, and how they had taken him in, and then been

driven by fear to let him go again. He told his check-weighman story,

and was telling how Jeff Cotton had arrested him; but they came to the

Minetti cabin, and the terrifying narrative was cut short.

It was Little Jerry who came to the door, with the remains of breakfast

distributed upon his cheeks; he stared in wonder at the mysteriously

veiled figure. Entering, they saw Rosa sitting in a chair nursing her

baby. She rose in confusion; but she did not quite like to turn her back

upon her guests, so she stood trying to hide her breast as best she

could, blushing and looking very girlish and pretty.

Hal introduced Jessie, as an old friend who was interested to meet his

new friends, and Jessie threw back her veil and sat down. Little Jerry

wiped off his face at his mother’s command, and then came where he could

stare at this incredibly lovely vision.

“I’ve been telling Miss Arthur what good care you took of me,” said Hal

to Rosa. “She wanted to come and thank you for it.”

“Yes,” added Jessie, graciously. “Anybody who is good to Hal earns my

gratitude.”

Rosa started to murmur something; but Little Jerry broke in, with his

cheerful voice, “Why you call him Hal? His name’s Joe!”

“Ssh!” cried Rosa. But Hal and Jessie laughed--and so the process of

Americanising Little Jerry was continued.

“I’ve got lots of names,” said Hal. “They called me Hal when I was a kid

like you.”

“Did _she_ know you then?” inquired Little Jerry.

“Yes, indeed.”

“Is she your girl?”

Rosa laughed shyly, and Jessie blushed, and looked charming. She

realised vaguely a difference in manners. These people accepted the

existence of “girls,” not concealing their interest in the phenomenon.

“It’s a secret,” warned Hal. “Don’t you tell on us!”

“I can keep a secret,” said Little Jerry. After a moment’s pause he

added, dropping his voice, “You gotta keep secrets if you work in North

Valley.”

“You bet your life,” said Hal.

“My father’s a Socialist,” continued the other, addressing Jessie; then,

since one thing leads on to another, “My father’s a shot-firer.”

“What’s a shot-firer?” asked Jessie, by way of being sociable.

“Jesus!” exclaimed Little Jerry. “Don’t you know nothin’ about minin’?”

“No,” said Jessie. “You tell me.”

“You couldn’t get no coal without a shot-firer,” declared Little Jerry.

“You gotta get a good one, too, or maybe you bust up the mine. My

father’s the best they got.”

“What does he do?”

“Well, they got a drill--long, long, like this, all the way across the

room; and they turn it and bore holes in the coal. Sometimes they got

machines to drill, only we don’t like them machines, ’cause it takes the

men’s jobs. When they got the holes, then the shot-firer comes and sets

off the powder. You gotta have--” and here Little Jerry slowed up,

pronouncing each syllable very carefully--“per-miss-i-ble powder--what

don’t make no flame. And you gotta know just how much to put in. If you

put in too much, you smash the coal, and the miner raises hell; if you

don’t put in enough, you make too much work for him, an’ he raises hell

again. So you gotta get a good shot-firer.”

Jessie looked at Hal, and he saw that her dismay was mingled with

genuine amusement. He judged this a good way for her to get her

education, so he proceeded to draw out Little Jerry on other aspects of

coal-mining: on short weights and long hours, grafting bosses and

camp-marshals, company-stores and boarding-houses, Socialist agitators

and union organisers. Little Jerry talked freely of the secrets of the

camp. “It’s all right for you to know,” he remarked gravely. “You’re

Joe’s girl!”

“You little cherub!” exclaimed Jessie.

“What’s a cherub?” was Little Jerry’s reply.

SECTION 23.

So the time passed in a way that was pleasant. Jessie was completely won

by this little Dago mine-urchin, in spite of all his frightful

curse-words; and Hal saw that she was won, and was delighted by the

success of this experiment in social amalgamation. He could not read

Jessie’s mind, and realise that underneath her genuine delight were

reservations born of her prejudices, the instinctive cruelty of caste.

Yes, this little mine chap was a cherub, now; but how about when he grew

big? He would grow ugly and coarse-looking, in ten years one would not

know him from any other of the rough and dirty men of the village.

Jessie took the fact that common people grow ugly as they mature as a

proof that they are, in some deep and permanent way, the inferiors of

those above them. Hal was throwing away his time and strength, trying to

make them into something which Nature had obviously not intended them to

be! She decided to make that point to Hal on their way back to the

train. She realised that he had brought her here to educate her; like

all the rest of the world, she resented forcible education, and she was

not without hope that she might turn the tables and educate Hal.

Pretty soon Rosa finished nursing the baby, and Jessie remarked the

little one’s black eyes. This topic broke down the mother’s shyness, and

they were chatting pleasantly, when suddenly they heard sounds outside

which caused them to start up. It was a clamour of women’s voices; and

Hal and Rosa sprang to the door. Just now was a critical time, when

every one was on edge for news.

Hal threw open the door and called to those outside “What is it?” There

came a response, in a woman’s voice, “They’ve found Rafferty!”

“Alive?”

“Nobody knows yet.”

“Where?”

“In Room Seventeen. Eleven of them--Rafferty, and young Flanagan, and

Johannson, the Swede. They’re near dead--can’t speak, they say. They

won’t let anybody near them.”

Other voices broke in; but the one which answered Hal had a different

quality; it was a warm, rich voice, unmistakably Irish, and it held

Jessie’s attention. “They’ve got them in the tipple-room, and the women

want to know about their men, and they won’t tell them. They’re beatin’

them back like dogs!”

There was a tumult of weeping, and Hal stepped out of the cabin, and in

a minute or so he entered again, supporting on his arm a girl, clad in a

faded blue calico dress, and having a head of very conspicuous red hair.

She seemed half fainting, and kept moaning that it was horrible,

horrible. Hal led her to a chair, and she sank into it and hid her face

in her hands, sobbing, talking incoherently between her sobs.

Jessie stood looking at this girl. She felt the intensity of her

excitement, and shared it; yet at the same time there was something in

Jessie that resented it. She did not wish to be upset about things like

this, which she could not help. Of course these unfortunate people were

suffering; but--what a shocking lot of noise the poor thing was making!

A part of the poor thing’s excitement was rage, and Jessie realised

that, and resented it still more. It was as if it were a personal

challenge to her; the same as Hal’s fierce social passions, which so

bewildered and shocked her.

“They’re beatin’ the women back like dogs!” the girl repeated.

“Mary,” said Hal, trying to soothe her, “the doctors will be doing their

best. The women couldn’t expect to crowd about them!”

“Maybe they couldn’t; but that’s not it, Joe, and ye know it! They been

bringin’ up dead bodies, some they found where the explosion was--blown

all to pieces. And they won’t let anybody see them. Is that because of

the doctors? No, it ain’t! It’s because they want to tell lies about the

number killed! They want to count four or five legs to a man! And that’s

what’s drivin’ the women crazy! I saw Mrs. Zamboni, tryin’ to get into

the shed, and Pete Hanun caught her by the breasts and shoved her back.

‘I want my man!’ she screamed. ‘Well, what do you want him for? He’s all

in pieces!’ ‘I want the pieces!’ ‘What good’ll they do you? Are you

goin’ to eat him?’”

There were cries of horror now, even from Jessie; and the strange girl

hid her face in her hands and began to sob again. Hal put his hand

gently on her arm.

“Mary,” he pleaded, “it’s not so bad--at least they’re getting the

people out.”

“How do ye know what they’re doin’? They might be sealin’ up parts of

the mine down below! That’s what makes it so horrible--nobody knows

what’s happenin’! Ye should have heard poor Mrs. Rafferty screamin’.

Joe, it went through me like a knife. Just think, it’s been half an hour

since they brought him up, and the poor lady can’t be told if her man is

alive.”

SECTION 24.

Hal stood for a few moments in thought. He was surprised that such

things should be happening while Percy Harrigan’s train was in the

village. He was considering whether he should go to Percy, or whether a

hint to Cotton or Cartwright would not be sufficient.

“Mary,” he said, in a quiet voice, “you needn’t distress yourself so. We

can get better treatment for the women, I’m sure.”

But her sobbing went on. “What can ye do? They’re bound to have their

way!”

“No,” said Hal. “There’s a difference now. Believe me--something can be

done. I’ll step over and have a word with Jeff Cotton.”

He started towards the door; but there came a cry: “Hal!” It was Jessie,

whom he had almost forgotten in his sudden anger at the bosses.

At her protest he turned and looked at her; then he looked at Mary. He

saw the latter’s hands fall from her tear-stained face, and her

expression of grief give way to one of wonder. “Hal!”

“Excuse me,” he said, quickly. “Miss Burke, this is my friend, Miss

Arthur.” Then, not quite sure if this was a satisfactory introduction,

he added, “Jessie, this is my friend, Mary.”

Jessie’s training could not fail in any emergency. “Miss Burke,” she

said, and smiled with perfect politeness. But Mary said nothing, and the

strained look did not leave her face.

In the first excitement she had almost failed to notice this stranger;

but now she stared, and realisation grew upon her. Here was a girl,

beautiful with a kind of beauty hardly to be conceived of in a

mining-camp; reserved, yet obviously expensive--even in a mackintosh and

rubber-shoes. Mary was used to the expensiveness of Mrs. O’Callahan, but

here was a new kind of expensiveness, subtle and compelling, strangely

unconscious. And she laid claim to Joe Smith, the miner’s buddy! She

called him by a name hitherto unknown to his North Valley associates! It

needed no word from Little Jerry to guide Mary’s instinct; she knew in a

flash that here was the “other girl.”

Mary was seized with sudden acute consciousness of the blue calico

dress, patched at the shoulder and stained with grease-spots; of her

hands, big and rough with hard labour; of her feet, clad in shoes worn

sideways at the heel, and threatening to break out at the toes. And as

for Jessie, she too had the woman’s instinct; she too saw a girl who was

beautiful, with a kind of beauty of which she did not approve, but which

she could not deny--the beauty of robust health, of abounding animal

energy. Jessie was not unaware of the nature of her own charms, having

been carefully educated to conserve them; nor did she fail to make note

of the other girl’s handicaps--the patched and greasy dress, the big

rough hands, the shoes worn sideways. But even so, she realised that

“Red Mary” had a quality which she lacked--that beside this wild rose of

a mining-camp, she, Jessie Arthur, might possibly seem a garden flower,

fragile and insipid.

She had seen Hal lay his hand upon Mary’s arm, and heard her speak to

him. She called him Joe! And a sudden fear had leaped into Jessie’s

heart.

Like many girls who have been delicately reared, Jessie Arthur knew

more than she admitted, even to herself. She knew enough to realise

that young men with ample means and leisure are not always saints and

ascetics. Also, she had heard the remark many times made that these

women of the lower orders had “no morals.” Just what did such a remark

mean? What would be the attitude of such a girl as Mary

Burke--full-blooded and intense, dissatisfied with her lot in life--to

a man of culture and charm like Hal? She would covet him, of course; no

woman who knew him could fail to covet him. And she would try to steal

him away from his friends, from the world to which he belonged, the

future of happiness and ease to which he was entitled. She would have

powers--dark and terrible powers, all the more appalling to Jessie

because they were mysterious. Might they possibly be able to overcome

even the handicap of a dirty calico dress, of big rough hands and shoes

worn sideways?

These reflections, which have taken many words to explain, came to

Jessie in one flash of intuition. She understood now, all at once, the

incomprehensible phenomenon--that Hal should leave friends and home and

career, to come and live amid this squalor and suffering! She saw the

old drama of the soul of man, heaven and hell contending for mastery of

it; and she knew that she was heaven, and that this “Red Mary” was

hell.

She looked at Hal. He seemed to her so fine and true; his face was

frank, he was the soul of honourableness. No, it was impossible to

believe that he had yielded to such a lure! If that had been the case,

he would never have brought her to this cabin, he would never have

taken a chance of her meeting the girl. No; but he might be struggling

against temptation, he might be in the toils of it, and only half aware

of it. He was a man, and therefore blind; he was a dreamer, and it

would be like him to idealise this girl, calling her naïve and

primitive, thinking that she had no wiles! Jessie had come just in time

to save him! And she would fight to save him--using wiles more subtle

than those at the command of any mining-camp hussy!

SECTION 25.

It was the surging up in Jessie Arthur of that instinctive self, the

creature of hereditary cruelty, of the existence of which Hal had no

idea. She drew back, and there was a quiet _hauteur_ in her tone as she

spoke. “Hal, come here, please.”

He came; and she waited until he was close enough for intimacy, and then

said, “Have you forgotten you have to take me back to the train?”

“Can’t you come with me for a few minutes?” he pleaded. “It would have

such a good effect if you did.”

“I can’t go into that crowd,” she answered; and suddenly her voice

trembled, and the tears came into her sweet brown eyes. “Don’t you know,

Hal, that I couldn’t stand such terrible sights? This poor girl--she is

used to them--she is hardened! But I--I--oh, take me away, take me away,

dear Hal!” This cry of a woman for protection came with a familiar echo

to Hal’s mind. He did not stop to think--he was moved by it

instinctively. Yes, he had exposed the girl he loved to suffering! He

had meant it for her own good, but even so, it was cruel!

He stood close to her, and saw the love-light in her eyes; he saw the

tears, the trembling of her sensitive chin. She swayed to him, and he

caught her in his arms--and there, before these witnesses, she let him

press her to him, while she sobbed and whispered her distress. She had

been shy of caresses hitherto, watched and admonished by an experienced

mother; certainly she had never before made what could by the remotest

stretch of the imagination be considered an advance towards him. But now

she made it, and there was a cry of triumph in her soul as she saw that

he responded to it. He was still hers--and these low people should know

it, this “other girl” should know it!

Yet, in the midst of this very exultation, Jessie Arthur really felt the

grief she expressed for the women of North Valley; she really felt

horror at the story of Mrs. Zamboni’s “man”: so intricate is the soul of

woman, so puzzling that faculty, older than the ages, which enables her

to be hysterical, and at the same time to be guided in the use of that

hysteria by deep and infallible calculation.

But she made Hal realise that it was necessary for him to take her away.

He turned to Mary Burke and said, “Miss Arthur’s train is leaving in a

short time. I’ll have to take her hack, and then I’ll go to the

pit-mouth with you and see what I can do.”

“Very well,” Mary answered; and her voice was hard and cold. But Hal did

not notice this. He was a man, and not able to keep up with the emotions

of one woman--to say nothing of two women at the same time.

He took Jessie out, and all the way back to the train she fought a

desperate fight to get him away from here. She no longer even suggested

that he get decent clothing; she was willing for him to come as he was,

in his coal-stained mining-jumpers, in the private train of the Coal

King’s son. She besought him in the name of their affection. She

threatened him that if he did not come, this might be the last time they

would meet. She even broke down in the middle of the street, and let him

stand there in plain sight of miners’ wives and children, and of

possible newspaper reporters, holding her in his arms and comforting

her.

Hal was much puzzled; but he would not give way. The idea of going off

in Percy Harrigan’s train had come to seem morally repulsive to him; he

hated Percy Harrigan’s train, and Percy Harrigan also, he declared. And

Jessie saw that she was only making him unreasonable--that before long

he might be hating her. With her instinctive _savoir faire_, she brought

up his suggestion that she might find some one to chaperon her, and stay

with him at North Valley until he was ready to come away.

Hal’s heart leaped at that; he had no idea what was in her mind--the

certainty that no one of the ladies of the Harrigan party would run the

risk of offending her host by staying under such circumstances.

“You mean it, sweetheart?” he cried, happily.

She answered, “I mean that I love you, Hal.”

“All right, dear!” he said. “We’ll see if we can arrange it.”

But as they walked on, she managed, without his realising it, to cause

him to reflect upon the effect of her staying. She was willing to do it,

if it was what he wanted; but it would injure, perhaps irrevocably, his

standing with her parents. They would telegraph her to come at once; and

if she did not obey, they would come by the next train. So on, until at

last Hal was moved to withdraw his own suggestion. After all, what was

the use of her staying, if her mind was on the people at home, if she

would simply keep him in hot water? Before the conversation was over Hal

had become clear in his mind that North Valley was no place for Jessie

Arthur, and that he had been a fool to think he could bring the two

together.

She tried to get him to promise to leave as soon as the last man had

been brought out of the mine. He answered that he intended to leave

then, unless some new emergency should arise. She tried to get an

unqualified promise; and failing in that, when they had nearly got to

the train she suddenly made a complete surrender. Let him do what he

pleased--but let him remember that she loved him, that she needed him,

that she could not do without him. No matter what he might do, no matter

what people might say about him, she believed in him, she would stand by

him. Hal was deeply touched, and took her in his arms again and kissed

her tenderly under the umbrella, in the presence of the wondering stares

of several urchins with coal-smutted faces. He pledged anew his love for

her, assuring her that no amount of interest in mining-camps should ever

steal him from her.

Then he put her on the train, and shook hands with the departing guests.

He was so very sombre and harassed-looking that the young men forbore to

“kid” him as they would otherwise have done. He stood on the

station-platform and saw the train roll away--and felt, to his own

desperate bewilderment, that he hated these friends of his boyhood and

youth. His reason protested against it; he told himself there was

nothing they could do, no reason on earth for them to stay--and yet he

hated them. They were hurrying off to dance and flirt at the country

club--while he was going back to the pit-mouth, to try to get Mrs.

Zamboni the right to inspect the pieces of her “man”!

BOOK FOUR

THE WILL OF KING COAL

SECTION 1.

The pit of death was giving up its secrets. The hoist was busy, and

cage-load after cage-load came up, with bodies dead and bodies living

and bodies only to be classified after machines had pumped air into them

for a while. Hal stood in the rain and watched the crowd and thought

that he had never witnessed a scene so compelling to pity and terror.

The silence that would fall when any one appeared who might have news to

tell! The sudden shriek of anguish from some woman whose hopes were

struck dead! The moans of sympathy that ran through the crowd,

alternating with cheers at some good tidings, shaking the souls of the

multitude as a storm of wind shakes a reed-field!

And the stories that ran through the camp--brought up from the

underground world--stories of incredible sufferings, and of still more

incredible heroisms! Men who had been four days without food or water,

yet had resisted being carried out of the mine, proposing to stay and

help rescue others! Men who had lain together in the darkness and

silence, keeping themselves alive by the water which seeped from the

rocks overhead, taking turns lying face upwards where the drops fell, or

wetting pieces of their clothing and sucking out the moisture! Members

of the rescue parties would tell how they knocked upon the barriers, and

heard the faint answering signals of the imprisoned men; how madly they

toiled to cut through, and how, when at last a little hole appeared,

they heard the cries of joy, and saw the eyes of men shining from the

darkness, while they waited, gasping, for the hole to grow bigger, so

that water and food might be passed in!

In some places they were fighting the fire. Long lines of hose had been

sent down, and men were moving forward foot by foot, as the smoke and

steam were sucked out ahead of them by the fan. Those who did this work

were taking their lives in their hands, yet they went without

hesitation. There was always hope of finding men in barricaded rooms

beyond.

Hal sought out Jeff Cotton at the entrance to the tipple-room, which had

been turned into a temporary hospital. It was the first time the two had

met since the revelation in Percy’s car, and the camp-marshal’s face

took on a rather sheepish grin. “Well, Mr. Warner, you win,” he

remarked; and after a little arguing he agreed to permit a couple of

women to go into the tipple-room and make a list of the injured, and go

out and give the news to the crowd. Hal went to the Minettis to ask Mary

Burke to attend to this; but Rosa said that Mary had gone out after he

and Miss Arthur had left, and no one knew where she was. So Hal went to

Mrs. David, who consented to get a couple of friends, and do the work

without being called a “committee.” “I won’t have any damned

committees!” the camp-marshal had declared.

So the night passed, and part of another day. A clerk from the office

came to Hal with a sealed envelope, containing a telegram, addressed in

care of Cartwright. “I most urgently beg of you to come home at once. It

will be distressing to Dad if he hears what has happened, and it will

not be possible to keep the matter from him for long.”

As Hal read, he frowned; evidently the Harrigans had got busy without

delay! He went to the office and telephoned his answer. “Am planning to

leave in a day or two. Trust you will make an effort to spare Dad until

you have heard my story.”

This message troubled Hal. It started in his mind long arguments with

his brother, and explanations and apologies to his father. He loved the

old man tenderly. What a shame if some emissary of the Harrigans were to

get to him to upset him with misrepresentations!

Also these ideas had a tendency to make Hal homesick; they brought more

vividly to his thoughts the outside world, with its physical

allurements--there being a limit to the amount of unwholesome meals and

dirty beds and repulsive sights a man of refinement can force himself to

endure. Hal found himself obsessed by a vision of a club dining-room,

with odours of grilled steaks and hot rolls, and the colours of salads

and fresh fruits and cream. The conviction grew suddenly strong in him

that his work in North Valley was nearly done!

Another night passed, and another day. The last of the bodies had been

brought out, and the corpses shipped down to Pedro for one of those big

wholesale funerals which are a feature of mine-life. The fire was out,

and the rescue-crews had given place to a swarm of carpenters and

timbermen, repairing the damage and making the mine safe. The reporters

had gone; Billy Keating having clasped Hal’s hand, and promised to meet

him for luncheon at the club. An agent of the “Red Cross” was on hand,

and was feeding the hungry out of Mrs. Curtis’s subscription-list. What

more was there for Hal to do--except to bid good-bye to his friends, and

assure them of his help in the future?

First among these friends was Mary Burke, whom he had had no chance to

talk to since the meeting with Jessie. He realised that Mary had been

deliberately avoiding him. She was not in her home, and he went to

inquire at the Rafferties’, and stopped for a good-bye chat with the old

woman whose husband he had saved.

Rafferty was going to pull through. His wife had been allowed in to see

him, and tears rolled down her shrunken cheeks as she told about it. He

had been four days and nights blocked up in a little tunnel, with no

food or water, save for a few drops of coffee which he had shared with

other men. He could still not speak, he could hardly move a hand; but

there was life in his eyes, and his look had been a greeting from the

soul she had loved and served these thirty years and more. Mrs. Rafferty

sang praises to the Rafferty God, who had brought him safely through

these perils; it seemed obvious that He must be more efficient than the

Protestant God of Johannson, the giant Swede, who had lain by Rafferty’s

side and given up the ghost.

But the doctor had stated that the old Irishman would never be good to

work again; and Hal saw a shadow of terror cross the sunshine of Mrs.

Rafferty’s rejoicing. How could a doctor say a thing like that? Rafferty

was old, to be sure; but he was tough--and could any doctor imagine how

hard a man would try who had a family looking to him? Sure, he was not

the one to give up for a bit of pain now and then! Besides him, there

was only Tim who was earning; and though Tim was a good lad, and worked

steady, any doctor ought to know that a big family could not be kept

going on the wages of one eighteen-year-old pit-boy. As for the other

lads, there was a law that said they were too young to work. Mrs.

Rafferty thought there should be some one to put a little sense into the

heads of them that made the laws--for if they wanted to forbid children

to work in coal-mines, they should surely provide some other way to feed

the children.

Hal listened, agreeing sympathetically, and meantime watching her, and

learning more from her actions than from her words. She had been

obedient to the teachings of her religion, to be fruitful and multiply;

she had fed three grown sons into the maw of industry, and had still

eight children and a man to care for. Hal wondered if she had ever

rested a single minute of daylight in all her fifty-four years.

Certainly not while he had been in her house! Even now, while praising

the Rafferty God and blaming the capitalist law-makers, she was getting

a supper, moving swiftly, silently, like a machine. She was lean as an

old horse that has toiled across a desert; the skin over her cheek-bones

was tight as stretched rubber, and cords stood out in her wrists like

piano-wires.

And now she was cringing before the spectre of destitution. He asked

what she would do about it, and saw the shadow of terror cross her face

again. There was one recourse from starvation, it seemed--to have her

children taken from her, and put in some institution! At the mention of

this, one of the special nightmares of the poor, the old woman began to

sob and cry again that the doctor was wrong; he would see, and Hal would

see--Old Rafferty would be back at his job in a week or two!

SECTION 2.

Hal went out on the street again. It was the hour which would have been

sunset in a level region; the tops of the mountains were touched with a

purple light, and the air was fresh and chill with early fall. Down the

darkening streets he saw a gathering of men; there was shouting, and

people running towards the place, so he hurried up, with the thought in

his mind, “What’s the matter now?” There were perhaps a hundred men

crying out, their voices mingling like the sound of waves on the sea. He

could make out words: “Go on! Go on! We’ve had enough of it! Hurrah!”

“What’s happened?” he asked, of some one on the outskirts; and the man,

recognising him, raised a cry which ran through the throng: “Joe Smith!

He’s the boy for us! Come in here, Joe! Give us a speech!”

But even while Hal was asking questions, trying to get the situation

clear, other shouts had drowned out his name. “We’ve had enough of them

walking over us!” And somebody cried, more loudly, “Tell us about it!

Tell it again! Go on!”

A man was standing upon the steps of a building at one side. Hal stared

in amazement; it was Tim Rafferty. Of all people in the world--Tim, the

light-hearted and simple, Tim of the laughing face and the merry Irish

blue eyes! Now his sandy hair was tousled and his features distorted

with rage. “Him near dead!” he yelled. “Him with his voice gone, and

couldn’t move his hand! Eleven years he’s slaved for them, and near

killed in an accident that’s their own fault--every man in this crowd

knows it’s their own fault, by God!”

“Sure thing! You’re right!” cried a chorus of voices “Tell it all!”

“They give him twenty-five dollars and his hospital expenses--and

what’ll his hospital expenses be? They’ll have him out on the street

again before he’s able to stand. You know that--they done it to Pete

Cullen!”

“You bet they did!”

“Them damned lawyers in there--gettin’ ’em to sign papers when they

don’t know what they’re doin’. An’ me that might help him can’t get

near! By Christ, I say it’s too much! Are we slaves, or are we dogs,

that we have to stand such things?”

“We’ll stand no more of it!” shouted one. “We’ll go in there and see to

it ourselves!”

“Come on!” shouted another. “To hell with their gunmen!”

Hal pushed his way into the crowd. “Tim!” he cried. “How do you know

this?”

“There’s a fellow in there seen it.”

“Who?”

“I can’t tell you--they’d fire him; but it’s somebody you know as well

as me. He come and told me. They’re beatin’ me old father out of

damages!”

“They do it all the time!” shouted Wauchope, an English miner at Hal’s

side. “That’s why they won’t let us in there.”

“They done the same thing to my father!” put in another voice. Hal

recognised Andy, the Greek boy.

“And they want to start Number Two in the mornin’!” yelled Tim. “Who’ll

go down there again? And with Alec Stone, him that damns the men and

saves the mules!”

“We’ll not go back in them mines till they’re safe!” shouted Wauchope.

“Let them sprinkle them--or I’m done with the whole business.”

“And let ’em give us our weights!” cried another. “We’ll have a

check-weighman, and we’ll get what we earn!”

So again came the cry, “Joe Smith! Give us a speech, Joe! Soak it to

’em! You’re the boy!”

Hal stood helpless, dismayed. He had counted his fight won--and here was

another beginning! The men were looking to him, calling upon him as the

boldest of the rebels. Only a few of them knew about the sudden change

in his fortunes.

Even while he hesitated, the line of battle had swept past him; the

Englishman, Wauchope, sprang upon the steps and began to address the

throng. He was one of the bowed and stunted men, but in this emergency

he developed sudden lung-power. Hal listened in astonishment; this

silent and dull-looking fellow was the last he would have picked for a

fighter. Tom Olson had sounded him out, and reported that he would hear

nothing, so they had dismissed him from mind. And here he was, shouting

terrible defiance!

“They’re a set of robbers and murderers! They rob us everywhere we turn!

For my part, I’ve had enough of it! Have you?”

There was a roar from every one within reach of his voice. They had all

had enough.

“All right, then--we’ll fight them!”

“Hurrah! Hurrah! We’ll have our rights!”

Jeff Cotton came up on the run, with “Bud” Adams and two or three of the

gunmen at his heels. The crowd turned upon them, the men on the

outskirts clenching their fists, showing their teeth like angry dogs.

Cotton’s face was red with rage, but he saw that he had a serious matter

in hand; he turned and went for more help--and the mob roared with

delight. Already they had begun their fight! Already they had won their

first victory!

SECTION 3.

The crowd moved down the street, shouting and cursing as it went. Some

one started to sing the Marseillaise, and others took it up, and the

words mounted to a frenzy:

“To arms! To arms, ye brave!

March on, march on, all hearts resolved

On victory or death!”

There were the oppressed of many nations in this crowd; they sang in a

score of languages, but it was the same song. They would sing a few

bars, and the yells of others would drown them out. “March on! March on!

All hearts resolved!” Some rushed away in different directions to spread

the news, and very soon the whole population of the village was on the

spot; the men waving their caps, the women lifting up their hands and

shrieking--or standing terrified, realising that babies could not be fed

upon revolutionary singing.

Tim Rafferty was raised up on the shoulders of the crowd and made to

tell his story once more. While he was telling it, his old mother came

running, and her shrieks rang above the clamour: “Tim! Tim! Come down

from there! What’s the matter wid ye?” She was twisting her hands

together in an agony of fright; seeing Hal, she rushed up to him. “Get

him out of there, Joe! Sure, the lad’s gone crazy! They’ll turn us out

of the camp, they’ll give us nothin’ at all--and what’ll become of us?

Mother of God, what’s the matter with the b’y?” She called to Tim again;

but Tim paid no attention, if he heard her. Tim was on the march to

Versailles!

Some one shouted that they would go to the hospital to protect the

injured men from the “damned lawyers.” Here was something definite, and

the crowd moved in that direction, Hal following with the stragglers,

the women and children, and the less bold among the men. He noticed some

of the clerks and salaried employés of the company; presently he saw

Jeff Cotton again, and heard him ordering these men to the office to get

revolvers.

“Big Jack” David came along with Jerry Minetti, and Hal drew back to

consult with them. Jerry was on fire. It had come--the revolt he had

been looking forward to for years! Why were they not making speeches,

getting control of the men and organising them?

Jack David voiced uncertainty. They had to consider if this outburst

could mean anything permanent.

Jerry answered that it would mean what they chose to make it mean. If

they took charge, they could guide the men and hold them together.

Wasn’t that what Tom Olson had wanted?

No, said the big Welshman, Olson had been trying to organise the men

secretly, as preliminary to a revolt in all the camps. That was quite

another thing from an open movement, limited to one camp. Was there any

hope of success for such a movement? If not, they would be foolish to

start, they would only be making sure of their own expulsion.

Jerry turned to Hal. What did he think?

And so at last Hal had to speak. It was hard for him to judge, he said.

He knew so little about labour matters. It was to learn about them that

he had come to North Valley. It was a hard thing to advise men to submit

to such treatment as they had been getting; but on the other hand, any

one could see that a futile outbreak would discourage everybody, and

make it harder than ever to organise them.

So much Hal spoke; but there was more in his mind, which he could not

speak. He could not say to these men, “I am a friend of yours, but I am

also a friend of your enemy, and in this crisis I cannot make up my mind

to which side I owe allegiance. I’m bound by a duty of politeness to the

masters of your lives; also, I’m anxious not to distress the girl I am

to marry!” No, he could not say such things. He felt himself a traitor

for having them in his mind, and he could hardly bring himself to look

these men in the eye. Jerry knew that he was in some way connected with

the Harrigans; probably he had told the rest of Hal’s friends, and they

had been discussing it and speculating about the meaning of it. Suppose

they should think he was a spy?

So Hal was relieved when Jack David spoke firmly. They would only be

playing the game of the enemy if they let themselves be drawn in

prematurely. They ought to have the advice of Tom Olson.

Where was Olson? Hal asked; and David explained that on the day when Hal

had been thrown out of camp, Olson had got his “time” and set out for

Sheridan, the local headquarters of the union, to report the situation.

He would probably not come back; he had got his little group together,

he had planted the seed of revolt in North Valley.

They discussed back and forth the problem of getting advice. It was

impossible to telephone from North Valley without everything they said

being listened to; but the evening train for Pedro left in a few

minutes, and “Big Jack” declared that some one ought to take it. The

town of Sheridan was only fifteen or twenty miles from Pedro, and there

would be a union official there to advise them; or they might use the

long distance telephone, and persuade one of the union leaders in

Western City to take the midnight train, and be in Pedro next morning.

Hal, still hoping to withdraw himself, put this task off on Jack David.

They emptied out the contents of their pockets, so that he might have

funds enough, and the big Welshman darted off to catch the train. In the

meantime Jerry and Hal agreed to keep in the background, and to seek out

the other members of their group and warn them to do the same.

SECTION 4.

This programme was a convenient one for Hal; but as he was to find

almost at once, it had been adopted too late. He and Jerry started after

the crowd, which had stopped in front of one of the company buildings;

and as they came nearer they heard some one making a speech. It was the

voice of a woman, the tones rising clear and compelling. They could not

see the speaker, because of the throng, but Hal recognised her voice,

and caught his companion by the arm. “It’s Mary Burke!”

Mary Burke it was, for a fact; and she seemed to have the crowd in a

kind of frenzy. She would speak one sentence, and there would come a

roar from the throng; she would speak another sentence, and there would

come another roar. Hal and Jerry pushed their way in, to where they

could make out the words of this litany of rage.

“Would they go down into the pit themselves, do ye think?”

“They would not!”

“Would they be dressed in silks and laces, do ye think?”

“They would not!”

“Would they have such fine soft hands, do ye think?”

“They would not!”

“Would they hold themselves too good to look at ye?”

“They would not! They would not!”

And Mary swept on: “If only ye’d stand together, they’d come to ye on

their knees to ask for terms! But ye’re cowards, and they play on your

fears! Ye’re traitors, and they buy ye out! They break ye into pieces,

they do what they please with ye--and then ride off in their private

cars, and leave gunmen to beat ye down and trample on your faces! How

long will ye stand it? How long?”

The roar of the mob rolled down the street and back again. “We’ll not

stand it! We’ll not stand it!” Men shook their clenched fists, women

shrieked, even children shouted curses. “We’ll fight them! We’ll slave

no more for them!”

And Mary found a magic word. “We’ll have a union!” she shouted. “We’ll

get together and stay together! If they refuse us our rights, we’ll know

what to answer--we’ll have a _strike!_”

There was a roar like the crashing of thunder in the mountains. Yes,

Mary had found the word! For many years it had not been spoken aloud in

North Valley, but now it ran like a flash of gunpowder through the

throng. “Strike! Strike! Strike! Strike!” It seemed as if they would

never have enough of it. Not all of them had understood Mary’s speech,

but they knew this word, “Strike!” They translated and proclaimed it in

Polish and Bohemian and Italian and Greek. Men waved their caps, women

waved their aprons--in the semi-darkness it was like some strange kind

of vegetation tossed by a storm. Men clasped one another’s hands, the

more demonstrative of the foreigners fell upon one another’s necks.

“Strike! Strike! Strike!”

“We’re no longer slaves!” cried the speaker. “We’re men--and we’ll live

as men! We’ll work as men--or we’ll not work at all! We’ll no longer be

a herd of cattle, that they can drive about as they please! We’ll

organise, we’ll stand together--shoulder to shoulder! Either we’ll win

together, or we’ll starve and die together! And not a man of us will

yield, not a man of us will turn traitor! Is there anybody here who’ll

scab on his fellows?”

There was a howl, which might have come from a pack of wolves. Let the

man who would scab on his fellows show his dirty face in that crowd!

“Ye’ll stand by the union?”

“We’ll stand by it!”

“Ye’ll swear?”

“We’ll swear!”

She flung her arms to heaven with a gesture of passionate adjuration.

“Swear it on your lives! To stick to the rest of us, and never a man of

ye give way till ye’ve won! Swear! _Swear!_”

Men stood, imitating her gesture, their hands stretched up to the sky.

“We swear! We swear!”

“Ye’ll not let them break ye! Ye’ll not let them frighten ye!”

“No! No!”

“Stand by your word, men! Stand by it! ’Tis the one chance for your

wives and childer!” The girl rushed on--exhorting with leaping words and

passionate out-flung arms--a tall, swaying figure of furious rebellion.

Hal listened to the speech and watched the speaker, marvelling. Here was

a miracle of the human soul, here was hope born of despair! And the

crowd around her--they were sharing the wonderful rebirth; their waving

arms, their swaying forms responded to Mary as an orchestra to the baton

of a leader.

A thrill shook Hal--a thrill of triumph! He had been beaten down

himself, he had wanted to run from this place of torment; but now there

was hope in North Valley--now there would be victory, freedom!

Ever since he had come to the coal-country, the knowledge had been

growing in Hal that the real tragedy of these people’s lives was not

their physical suffering, but their mental depression--the dull,

hopeless misery in their minds. This had been driven into his

consciousness day by day, both by what he saw and by what others told

him. Tom Olson had first put it into words: “Your worst troubles are

inside the heads of the fellows you’re trying to help!” How could hope

be given to men in this environment of terrorism? Even Hal himself,

young and free as he was, had been brought to despair. He came from a

class which is accustomed to say, “Do this,” or “Do that,” and it will

be done. But these mine-slaves had never known that sense of power, of

certainty; on the contrary, they were accustomed to having their efforts

balked at every turn, their every impulse to happiness or achievement

crushed by another’s will.

But here was this miracle of the human soul! Here was hope in North

Valley! Here were the people rising--and Mary Burke at their head! It

was his vision come true--Mary Burke with a glory in her face, and her

hair shining like a crown of gold! Mary Burke mounted upon a snow-white

horse, wearing a robe of white, soft and lustrous--like Joan of Arc, or

a leader in a suffrage parade! Yes, and she was at the head of a host,

he had the music of its marching in his ears!

Underneath Hal’s jesting words had been a real vision, a real faith in

this girl. Since that day when he had first discovered her, a wild rose

of the mining-camp taking in the family wash, he had realised that she

was no pretty young working-girl, but a woman with a mind and a

personality. She saw farther, she felt more deeply than the average of

these wage-slaves. Her problem was the same as theirs, yet more complex.

When he had wanted to help her and had offered to get her a job, she had

made clear that what she craved was not merely relief from drudgery, but

a life with intellectual interest. So then the idea had come to him that

Mary should become a teacher, a leader of her people. She loved them,

she suffered for them and with them, and at the same time she had a mind

that was capable of seeking out the causes of their misery. But when he

had gone to her with plans of leadership, he had been met by her

corroding despair; her pessimism had seemed to mock his dreams, her

contempt for these mine-slaves had belittled his efforts in their behalf

and in hers.

And now, here she was taking up the role he had planned for her! Her

very soul was in this shouting throng, he thought. She had lived the

lives of these people, shared their every wrong, been driven to

rebellion with them. Being a mere man, Hal missed one important point

about this startling development; he did not realise that Mary’s

eloquence was addressed, not merely to the Rafferties and the Wauchopes,

and the rest of the North Valley mine-slaves, but to a certain

magazine-cover girl, clad in a mackintosh and a pale green hat and a

soft and filmy and horribly expensive motoring veil!

SECTION 5.

Mary’s speech was brought to a sudden end. A group of the men had moved

down the street, and there arose a disturbance there. The noise of it

swelled louder, and more people began to move in that direction. Mary

turned to look, and all at once the whole throng surged down the street.

The trouble was at the hospital. In front of this building was a porch,

and on it Cartwright and Alec Stone were standing, with a group of the

clerks and office-employés, among whom Hal saw Predovich, Johnson, the

postmaster, and Si Adams. At the foot of the steps stood Tim Rafferty,

with a swarm of determined men at his back. He was shouting, “We want

them lawyers out of there!”

The superintendent himself had undertaken to parley with him. “There are

no lawyers in here, Rafferty.”

“We don’t trust you!” And the crowd took up the cry: “We’ll see for

ourselves!”

“You can’t go into this building,” declared Cartwright.

“I’m goin’ to see my father!” shouted Tim. “I’ve got a right to see my

father, ain’t I?”

“You can see him in the morning. You can take him away, if you want to.

We’ve no desire to keep him. But he’s asleep now, and you can’t disturb

the others.”

“You weren’t afraid to disturb them with your damned lawyers!” And there

was a roar of approval--so loud that Cartwright’s denial could hardly be

heard.

“There have been no lawyers near him, I tell you.”

“It’s a lie!” shouted Wauchope. “They been in there all day, and you

know it. We mean to have them out.”

“Go on, Tim!” cried Andy, the Greek boy, pushing his way to the front.

“Go on!” cried the others; and thus encouraged, Rafferty started up the

steps.

“I mean to see my father!” As Cartwright caught him by the shoulder, he

yelled, “Let me go, I say!”

It was evident that the superintendent was trying his best not to use

violence; he was ordering his own followers back at the same time that

he was holding the boy. But Tim’s blood was up; he shoved forward, and

the superintendent, either striking him or trying to ward off a blow,

threw him backwards down the steps. There was an uproar of rage from the

throng; they surged forward, and at the same time some of the men on the

porch drew revolvers.

The meaning of that situation was plain enough. In a moment more the mob

would be up the steps, and there would be shooting. And if once that

happened, who could guess the end? Wrought up as the crowd was, it might

not stop till it had fired every company building, perhaps not until it

had murdered every company representative.

Hal had resolved to keep in the back-ground, but he saw that to keep in

the back-ground at that moment would be an act of cowardice, almost a

crime. He sprang forward, his cry rising above the clamour. “Stop, men!

Stop!”

There was probably no other man in North Valley who could have got

himself heeded at that moment. But Hal had their confidence, he had

earned the right to be heard. Had he not been to prison for them, had

they not seen him behind the bars? “Joe Smith!” The cry ran from one end

of the excited throng to the other.

Hal was fighting his way forward, shoving men to one side, imploring,

commanding silence. “Tim Rafferty! Wait!” And Tim, recognising the

voice, obeyed.

Once clear of the press, Hal sprang upon the porch, where Cartwright did

not attempt to interfere with him.

“Men!” he cried. “Hold on a moment! This isn’t what you want! You don’t

want a fight!” He paused for an instant; but he knew that no mere

negative would hold them at that moment. They must be told what they did

want. Just now he had learned the particular words that would carry, and

he proclaimed them at the top of his voice: “What you want is a union! A

_strike!_”

He was answered by a roar from the crowd, the loudest yet. Yes, that was

what they wanted! A strike! And they wanted Joe Smith to organise it, to

lead it. He had been their leader once, he had been thrown out of camp

for it. How he had got back they were not quite clear--but here he was,

and he was their darling. Hurrah for him! They would follow him to hell

and back!

And wasn’t he the boy with the nerve! Standing there on the porch of the

hospital, right under the very noses of the bosses, making a union

speech to them, and the bosses never daring to touch him! The crowd,

realising this situation, went wild with delight. The English-speaking

men shouted assent to his words; and those who could not understand,

shouted because the others did.

They did not want fighting--of course not! Fighting would not help them!

What would help them was to get together, and stand a solid body of free

men. There would be a union committee, able to speak for all of them, to

say that no man would go to work any more until justice was secured!

They would have an end to the business of discharging men because they

asked for their rights, of blacklisting men and driving them out of the

district because they presumed to want what the laws of the state

awarded them!

SECTION 6.

How long could a man expect to stand on the steps of a company building,

with a super and a pit-boss at his back, and organise a union of

mine-workers? Hal realised that he must move the crowd from that

perilous place.

“You’ll do what I say, now?” he demanded; and when they agreed in

chorus, he added the warning: “There’ll be no fighting! And no drinking!

If you see any man drunk to-night, sit on him and hold him down!”

They laughed and cheered. Yes, they would keep straight. Here was a job

for sober men, you bet!

“And now,” Hal continued, “the people in the hospital. We’ll have a

committee go in and see about them. No noise--we don’t want to disturb

the sick men. We only want to make sure nobody else is disturbing them.

Some one will go in and stay with them. Does that suit you?”

Yes, that suited them.

“All right,” said Hal. “Keep quiet for a moment.”

And he turned to the superintendent. “Cartwright,” said he, “we want a

committee to go in and stay with our people.” Then, as the

superintendent started to expostulate, he added, in a low voice, “Don’t

be a fool, man! Don’t you see I’m trying to save your life?”

The superintendent knew how bad it would be for discipline to let Hal

carry his point with the crowd; but also he saw the immediate

danger--and he was not sure of the courage and shooting ability of

book-keepers and stenographers.

“Be quick, man!” exclaimed Hal. “I can’t hold these people long. If you

don’t want hell breaking loose, come to your senses.”

“All right,” said Cartwright, swallowing his dignity.

And Hal turned to the men and announced the concession. There was a

shout of triumph.

“Now, who’s to go?” said Hal, when he could be heard again; and he

looked about at the upturned faces. There Were Tim and Wauchope, the

most obvious ones; but Hal decided to keep them under his eye. He

thought of Jerry Minetti and of Mrs. David--but remembered his agreement

with “Big Jack,” to keep their own little group in the back-ground. Then

he thought of Mary Burke; she had already done herself all the harm she

could do, and she was a person the crowd would trust. He called her, and

called Mrs. Ferris, an American woman in the crowd. The two came up the

steps, and Hal turned to Cartwright.

“Now, let’s have an understanding,” he said. “These people are going in

to stay with the sick men, and to talk to them if they want to, and

nobody’s going to give them any orders but the doctors and nurses. Is

that right?”

“All right,” said the superintendent, sullenly.

“Good!” said Hal. “And for God’s sake have a little sense and stand by

your word; this crowd has had all it can endure, and if you do any more

to provoke it, the consequences will be on you. And while you’re about

it, see that the saloons are closed and kept closed until this trouble

is settled. And keep your people out of the way--don’t let them go about

showing their guns and making faces.”

Without waiting to hear the superintendent’s reply, Hal turned to the

throng, and held up his hand for silence. “Men,” he said, “we have a big

job to do--we’re going to organise a union. And we can’t do it here in

front of the hospital. We’ve made too much noise already. Let’s go off

quietly, and have our meeting on the dump in back of the power-house.

Does that suit you?”

They answered that it suited them; and Hal, having seen the two women

passed safely into the hospital, sprang down from the porch to lead the

way. Jerry Minetti came to his side, trembling with delight; and Hal

clutched him by the arm and whispered, excitedly, “Sing, Jerry! Sing

them some Dago song!”

SECTION 7.

They got to the place appointed without any fighting. And meantime Hal

had worked out in his mind a plan for communicating with this polyglot

horde. He knew that half the men could not understand a word of English,

and that half the remainder understood very little. Obviously, if he was

to make matters clear to them, they must be sorted out according to

nationality, and a reliable interpreter found for each group.

The process of sorting proved a slow one, involving no end of shouting

and good-natured jostling--Polish here, Bohemian here, Greek here,

Italian here! When this job had been done, and a man found from each

nationality who understood enough English to translate to his fellows,

Hal started in to make a speech. But before he had spoken many

sentences, pandemonium broke loose. All the interpreters started

interpreting at the same time--and at the top of their lungs; it was

like a parade with the bands close together! Hal was struck dumb; then

he began to laugh, and the various audiences began to laugh; the orators

stopped, perplexed--then they too began to laugh. So wave after wave of

merriment rolled over the throng; the mood of the assembly was changed

all at once, from rage and determination to the wildest hilarity. Hal

learned his first lesson in the handling of these hordes of child-like

people, whose moods were quick, whose tempers were balanced upon a fine

point.

It was necessary for him to make his speech through to the end, and then

move the various audiences apart, to be addressed by the various

interpreters. But then arose a new difficulty. How could any one control

these floods of eloquence? How be sure that the message was not being

distorted? Hal had been warned by Olson of company detectives who posed

as workers, gaining the confidence of men in order to incite them to

violence. And certainly some of these interpreters were violent-looking,

and one’s remarks sounded strange in their translations!

There was the Greek orator, for example; a wild man, with wild hair and

eyes, who tore all his passions to tatters. He stood upon a barrel-head,

with the light of two pit-lamps upon him, and some two score of his

compatriots at his feet; he waved his arms, he shook his fists, he

shrieked, he bellowed. But when Hal, becoming uneasy, went over and

asked another English-speaking Greek what the orator was saying, the

answer was that he was promising that the law should be enforced in

North Valley!

Hal stood watching this perfervid little man, a study in the

possibilities of gesture. He drew back his shoulders and puffed out his

chest, almost throwing himself backwards off the barrel-head; he was

saying that the miners would be able to live like men. He crouched down

and bowed his head, moaning; he was telling them what would happen if

they gave up. He fastened his fingers in his long black hair and began

tugging desperately; he pulled, and then stretched out his empty hands;

he pulled again, so hard that it almost made one cry out with pain to

watch him. Hal asked what that was for; and the answer was, “He say,

‘Stand by union! Pull one hair, he come out; pull all hairs, no come

out’!” It carried one back to the days of Aesop and his fables!

Tom Olson had told Hal something about the technique of an organiser,

who wished to drill these ignorant hordes. He had to repeat and repeat,

until the dullest in his audience had grasped his meaning, had got into

his head the all-saving idea of solidarity. When the various orators had

talked themselves out, and the audiences had come back to the

cinder-heap, Hal made his speech all over again, in words of one

syllable, in the kind of pidgin-English which does duty in the camps.

Sometimes he would stop to reinforce it with Greek or Italian or Slavish

words he had picked up. Or perhaps his eloquence would inflame some one

of the interpreters afresh, and he would wait while the man shouted a

few sentences to his compatriots. It was not necessary to consider the

possibility of boring any one, for these were patient and long-suffering

men, and now desperately in earnest.

They were going to have a union; they were going to do the thing in

regular form, with membership cards and officials chosen by ballot. So

Hal explained to them, step by step. There was no use organising unless

they meant to stay organised. They would choose leaders, one from each

of the principal language groups; and these leaders would meet and draw

up a set of demands, which would be submitted in mass-meeting, and

ratified, and then presented to the bosses with the announcement that

until these terms were granted, not a single North Valley worker would

go back into the pits.

Jerry Minetti, who knew all about unions, advised Hal to enroll the men

at once; he counted on the psychological effect of having each man come

forward and give in his name. But here at once they met a difficulty

encountered by all would-be organisers--lack of funds. There must be

pencils and paper for the enrollment; and Hal had emptied his pockets

for Jack David! He was forced to borrow a quarter, and send a messenger

off to the store. It was voted by the delegates that each member as he

joined the union should be assessed a dime. There would have to be some

telegraphing and telephoning if they were going to get help from the

outside world.

A temporary committee was named, consisting of Tim Rafferty, Wauchope

and Hal, to keep the lists and the funds, and to run things until

another meeting could be held on the morrow; also a body-guard of a

dozen of the sturdiest and most reliable men were named to stay by the

committee. The messenger came back with pads and pencils, and sitting on

the ground by the light of pit-lamps, the interpreters wrote down the

names of the men who wished to join the union, each man in turn pledging

his word for solidarity and discipline. Then the meeting was declared

adjourned till daylight of the morrow, and the workers scattered to

their homes to sleep, with a joy and sense of power such as few of them

had ever known in their lives before.

SECTION 8.

The committee and its body-guard repaired to the dining-room of

Reminitsky’s, where they stretched themselves out on the floor; no one

attempted to interfere with them, and while the majority snored

peacefully, Hal and a small group sat writing out the list of demands

which were to be submitted to the bosses in the morning. It was arranged

that Jerry should go down to Pedro by the early morning train, to get

into touch with Jack David and the union officials, and report to them

the latest developments. Because the officials were sure to have

detectives following them, Hal warned Jerry to go to MacKellar’s house,

and have MacKellar bring “Big Jack” to meet him there. Also Jerry must

have MacKellar get the _Gazette_ on the long distance phone, and tell

Billy Keating about the strike.

A hundred things like this Hal had to think of; his head was a-buzz with

them, so that when he lay down to sleep he could not. He thought about

the bosses, and what they might be doing. The bosses would not be

sleeping, he felt sure!

And then came thoughts about his private-car friends; about the

strangeness of this plight into which he had got himself! He laughed

aloud in a kind of desperation as he recalled Percy’s efforts to get him

away from here. And poor Jessie! What could he say to her now?

The bosses made no move that night; and when morning came, the strikers

hurried to the meeting-place, some of them without even stopping for

breakfast. They came tousled and unkempt, looking anxiously at their

fellows, as if unable to credit the memory of the bold thing they had

done on the night before. But finding the committee and its body-guard

on hand and ready for business, their courage revived, they felt again

the wonderful sentiment of solidarity which had made men of them. Pretty

soon speech-making began, and cheering and singing, which brought out

the laggards and the cowards. So in a short while the movement was in

full swing, with practically every man, woman and child among the

workers present.

Mary Burke came from the hospital, where she had spent the night. She

looked weary and bedraggled, but her spirit of battle had not slumped.

She reported that she had talked with some of the injured men, and that

many of them had signed “releases,” whereby the company protected itself

against even the threat of a lawsuit. Others had refused to sign, and

Mary had been vehement in warning them to stand out. Two other women

volunteered to go to the hospital, in order that she might have a chance

to rest; but Mary did not wish to rest, she did not feel as if she could

ever rest again.

The members of the newly-organised union proceeded to elect officers.

They sought to make Hal president, but he was shy of binding himself in

that irrevocable way, and succeeded in putting the honour off on

Wauchope. Tim Rafferty was made treasurer and secretary. Then a

committee was chosen to go to Cartwright with the demands of the men. It

included Hal, Wauchope, and Tim; an Italian named Marcelli, whom Jerry

had vouched for; a representative of the Slavs and one of the

Greeks--Rusick and Zammakis, both of them solid and faithful men.

Finally, with a good deal of laughter and cheering, the meeting voted to

add Mary Burke to this committee. It was a new thing to have a woman in

such a role, but Mary was the daughter of a miner and the sister of a

breaker-boy, and had as good a right to speak as any one in North

Valley.

SECTION 9.

Hal read the document which had been prepared the night before. They

demanded the right to have a union without being discharged for it. They

demanded a check-weighman, to be elected by the men themselves. They

demanded that the mines should be sprinkled to prevent explosions, and

properly timbered to prevent falls. They demanded the right to trade at

any store they pleased. Hal called attention to the fact that every one

of these demands was for a right guaranteed by the laws of the state;

this was a significant fact, and he urged the men not to include other

demands. After some argument they voted down the proposition of the

radicals, who wanted a ten per cent. increase in wages. Also they voted

down the proposition of a syndicalist-anarchist, who explained to them

in a jumble of English and Italian that the mines belonged to them, and

that they should refuse all compromise and turn the bosses out

forthwith.

While this speech was being delivered, young Rovetta pushed his way

through the crowd and drew Hal to one side. He had been down by the

railroad-station and seen the morning train come in. From it had

descended a crowd of thirty or forty men, of that “hard citizen” type

which every miner in the district could recognise at the first glance.

Evidently the company officials had been keeping the telephone-wires

busy that night; they were bringing in, not merely this train-load of

guards, but automobile loads from other camps--from the Northeastern

down the canyon, and from Barela, in a side canyon over the mountain.

Hal told this news to the meeting, which received it with howls of rage.

So that was the bosses’ plan! Hot-heads sprang upon the cinder-heap,

half a dozen of them trying to make speeches at once. The leaders had to

suppress these too impetuous ones by main force; once more Hal gave the

warning of “No fighting!” They were going to have faith in their union;

they were going to present a solid front to the company, and the company

would learn the lesson that intimidation would not win a strike.

So it was agreed, and the committee set out for the company’s office,

Wauchope carrying in his hand the written demands of the meeting. Behind

the committee marched the crowd in a solid mass; they packed the street

in front of the office, while the heroic seven went up the steps and

passed into the building. Wauchope made inquiry for Mr. Cartwright, and

a clerk took in the message.

They stood waiting; and meanwhile, one of the office-people, coming in

from the street, beckoned to Hal. He had an envelope in his hand, and

gave it over without a word. It was addressed, “Joe Smith,” and Hal

opened it, and found within a small visiting card, at which he stared.

“Edward S. Warner, Jr.”!

For a moment Hal could hardly believe the evidence of his eyesight.

Edward in North Valley! Then, turning the card over, he read, in his

brother’s familiar handwriting, “I am at Cartwright’s house. I must see

you. The matter concerns Dad. Come instantly.”

Fear leaped into Hal’s heart. What could such a message mean?

He turned quickly to the committee and explained. “My father’s an old

man, and had a stroke of apoplexy three years ago. I’m afraid he may be

dead, or very ill. I must go.”

“It’s a trick!” cried Wauchope excitedly.

“No, not possibly,” answered Hal. “I know my brother’s handwriting. I

must see him.”

“Well,” declared the other, “we’ll wait. We’ll not see Cartwright until

you get back.”

Hal considered this. “I don’t think that’s wise,” he said. “You can do

what you have to do just as well without me.”

“But I wanted you to do the talking!”

“No,” replied Hal, “that’s your business, Wauchope. You are the

president of the union. You know what the men want, as well as I do; you

know what they complain of. And besides, there’s not going to be any

need of talking with Cartwright. Either he’s going to grant our demands

or he isn’t.”

They discussed the matter back and forth. Mary Burke insisted that they

were pulling Hal away just at the critical moment! He laughed as he

answered. She was as good as any man when it came to an argument. If

Wauchope showed signs of weakening, let her speak up!

SECTION 10.

So Hal hurried off, and climbed the street which led to the

superintendent’s house, a concrete bungalow set upon a little elevation

overlooking the camp. He rang the bell, and the door opened, and in the

entrance stood his brother.

Edward Warner was eight years older than Hal; the perfect type of the

young American business man. His figure was erect and athletic, his

features were regular and strong, his voice, his manner, everything

about him spoke of quiet decision, of energy precisely directed. As a

rule, he was a model of what the tailor’s art could do, but just now

there was something abnormal about his attire as well as his manner.

Hal’s anxiety had been increasing all the way up the street. “What’s the

matter with Dad?” he cried.

“Dad’s all right,” was the answer--“that is, for the moment.”

“Then what--?”

“Peter Harrigan’s on his way back from the East. He’s due in Western

City to-morrow. You can see that something will be the matter with Dad

unless you quit this business at once.”

Hal had a sudden reaction from his fear. “So that’s all!” he exclaimed.

His brother was gazing at the young miner, dressed in sooty blue

overalls, his face streaked with black, his wavy hair all mussed. “You

wired me you were going to leave here, Hal!”

“So I was; but things happened that I couldn’t foresee. There’s a

strike.”

“Yes; but what’s that got to do with it?” Then, with exasperation in his

voice, “For God’s sake, Hal, how much farther do you expect to go?”

Hal stood for a few moments, looking at his brother. Even in a tension

as he was, he could not help laughing. “I know how all this must seem to

you, Edward. It’s a long story; I hardly know how to begin.”

“No, I suppose not,” said Edward, drily.

And Hal laughed again. “Well, we agree that far, at any rate. What I was

hoping was that we could talk it all over quietly, after the excitement

was past. When I explain to you about conditions in this place--”

But Edward interrupted. “Really, Hal, there’s no use of such an

argument. I have nothing to do with conditions in Peter Harrigan’s

camps.”

The smile left Hal’s face. “Would you have preferred to have me

investigate conditions in the Warner camps?” Hal had tried to suppress

his irritation, but there was simply no way these two could get along.

“We’ve had our arguments about these things, Edward, and you’ve always

had the best of me--you could tell me I was a child, it was presumptuous

of me to dispute your assertions. But now--well, I’m a child no longer,

and we’ll have to meet on a new basis.”

Hal’s tone, more than his words, made an impression. Edward thought

before he spoke. “Well, what’s your new basis?”

“Just now I’m in the midst of a strike, and I can hardly stop to

explain.”

“You don’t think of Dad in all this madness?”

“I think of Dad, and of you too, Edward; but this is hardly the time--”

“If ever in the world there was a time, this is it!”

Hal groaned inwardly. “All right,” he said, “sit down. I’ll try to give

you some idea how I got swept into this.”

He began to tell about the conditions he had found in this stronghold of

the “G. F. C.” As usual, when he talked about it, he became absorbed in

its human aspects; a fervour came into his tone, he was carried on, as

he had been when he tried to argue with the officials in Pedro. But his

eloquence was interrupted, even as it had been then; he discovered that

his brother was in such a state of exasperation that he could not listen

to a consecutive argument.

It was the old, old story; it had been thus as far back as Hal could

remember. It seemed one of the mysteries of nature, how she could have

brought two such different temperaments out of the same parentage.

Edward was practical and positive; he knew what he wanted in the world,

and he knew how to get it; he was never troubled with doubts, nor with

self-questioning, nor with any other superfluous emotions; he could not

understand people who allowed that sort of waste in their mental

processes. He could not understand people who got “swept into things.”

In the beginning, he had had with Hal the prestige of the elder brother.

He was handsome as a young Greek god, he was strong and masterful;

whether he was flying over the ice with sure, strong strokes, or cutting

the water with his glistening shoulders, or bringing down a partridge

with the certainty and swiftness of a lightning stroke, Edward was the

incarnation of Success. When he said that one’s ideas were “rot,” when

he spoke with contempt of “mollycoddles”--then indeed one suffered in

soul, and had to go back to Shelley and Ruskin to renew one’s courage.

The questioning of life had begun very early with Hal; there seemed to

be something in his nature which forced him to go to the roots of

things; and much as he looked up to his wonderful brother, he had been

made to realise that there were sides of life to which this brother was

blind. To begin with, there were religious doubts; the distresses of

mind which plague a young man when first it dawns upon him that the

faith he has been brought up in is a higher kind of fairy-tale. Edward

had never asked such questions, apparently. He went to church, because

it was the thing to do; more especially because it was pleasing to the

young lady he wished to marry to have him put on stately clothes, and

escort her to a beautiful place of music and flowers and perfumes, where

she would meet her friends, also in stately clothes. How abnormal it

seemed to Edward that a young man should give up this pleasant custom,

merely because he could not be sure that Jonah had swallowed a whale!

But it was when Hal’s doubts attacked his brother’s week-day

religion--the religion of the profit-system--that the controversy

between them had become deadly. At first Hal had known nothing about

practical affairs, and it had been Edward’s duty to answer his

questions. The prosperity of the country had been built up by strong

men; and these men had enemies--evil-minded persons, animated by

jealousy and other base passions, seeking to tear down the mighty

structure. At first this devil-theory had satisfied the boy; but later

on, as he had come to read and observe, he had been plagued by doubts.

In the end, listening to his brother’s conversation, and reading the

writings of so-called “muck-rakers,” the realisation was forced upon him

that there were two types of mind in the controversy--those who thought

of profits, and those who thought of human beings.

Edward was alarmed at the books Hal was reading; he was still more

alarmed when he saw the ideas Hal was bringing home from college. There

must have been some strange change in Harrigan in a few years; no one

had dreamed of such ideas when Edward was there! No one had written

satiric songs about the faculty, or the endowments of eminent

philanthropists!

In the meantime Edward Warner Senior had had a paralytic stroke, and

Edward Junior had taken charge of the company. Three years of this had

given him the point of view of a coal-operator, hard and set for a

life-time. The business of a coal-operator was to buy his labour cheap,

to turn out the maximum product in the shortest time, and to sell the

product at the market price to parties whose credit was satisfactory. If

a concern was doing that, it was a successful concern; for any one to

mention that it was making wrecks of the people who dug the coal, was to

be guilty of sentimentality and impertinence.

Edward had heard with dismay his brother’s announcement that he meant to

study industry by spending his vacation as a common labourer. However,

when he considered it, he was inclined to think that the idea might not

be such a bad one. Perhaps Hal would not find what he was looking for;

perhaps, working with his hands, he might get some of the nonsense

knocked out of his head!

But now the experiment had been made, and the revelation had burst upon

Edward that it had been a ghastly failure. Hal had not come to realise

that labour was turbulent and lazy and incompetent, needing a strong

hand to rule it; on the contrary, he had become one of these turbulent

ones himself! A champion of the lazy and incompetent, an agitator, a

fomenter of class-prejudice, an enemy of his own friends, and of his

brother’s business associates!

Never had Hal seen Edward in such a state of excitement. There was

something really abnormal about him, Hal realised; it puzzled him

vaguely while he talked, but he did not understand it until his brother

told how he had come to be here. He had been attending a dinner-dance at

the home of a friend, and Percy Harrigan had got him on the telephone at

half past eleven o’clock at night. Percy had had a message from

Cartwright, to the effect that Hal was leading a riot in North Valley;

Percy had painted the situation in such lurid colours that Edward had

made a dash and caught the midnight train, wearing his evening clothes,

and without so much as a tooth-brush with him!

Hal could hardly keep from bursting out laughing. His brother, his

punctilious and dignified brother, alighting from a sleeping-car at

seven o’clock in the morning, wearing a dress suit and a silk hat! And

here he was, Edward Warner Junior, the fastidious, who never paid less

than a hundred and fifty dollars for a suit of clothes, clad in a

“hand-me-down” for which he had expended twelve dollars and forty-eight

cents in a “Jew-store” in a coal-town!

SECTION 11.

But Edward would not stop for a single smile; his every faculty was

absorbed in the task he had before him, to get his brother out of this

predicament, so dangerous and so humiliating. Hal had come to a town

owned by Edward’s business friends, and had proceeded to meddle in their

affairs, to stir up their labouring people and imperil their property.

That North Valley was the property of the General Fuel Company--not

merely the mines and the houses, but likewise the people who lived in

them--Edward seemed to have no doubt whatever; Hal got only exclamations

of annoyance when he suggested any other point of view. Would there have

been any town of North Valley, if it had not been for the capital and

energy of the General Fuel Company? If the people of North Valley did

not like the conditions which the General Fuel Company offered them,

they had one simple and obvious remedy--to go somewhere else to work.

But they stayed; they got out the General Fuel Company’s coal, they took

the General Fuel Company’s wages--

“Well, they’ve stopped taking them now,” put in Hal.

All right, that was their affair, replied Edward. But let them stop

because they wanted to--not because outside agitators put them up to it.

At any rate, let the agitators not include a member of the Warner

family!

The elder brother pictured old Peter Harrigan on his way back from the

East; the state of unutterable fury in which he would arrive, the storm

he would raise in the business world of Western City. Why, it was

unimaginable, such a thing had never been heard of! “And right when

we’re opening up a new mine--when we need every dollar of credit we can

get!”

“Aren’t we big enough to stand off Peter Harrigan?” inquired Hal.

“We have plenty of other people to stand off,” was the answer. “We don’t

have to go out of our way to make enemies.”

Edward spoke, not merely as the elder brother, but also as the money-man

of the family. When the father had broken down from over-work, and had

been changed in one terrible hour from a driving man of affairs into a

childish and pathetic invalid, Hal had been glad enough that there was

one member of the family who was practical; he had been perfectly

willing to see his brother shoulder these burdens, while he went off to

college, to amuse himself with satiric songs. Hal had no

responsibilities, no one asked anything of him--except that he would not

throw sticks into the wheels of the machine his brother was running.

“You are living by the coal industry! Every dollar you spend comes from

it--”

“I know it! I know it!” cried Hal. “That’s the thing that torments me!

The fact that I’m living upon the bounty of such wage-slaves--”

“Oh, cut it out!” cried Edward. “That’s not what I mean!”

“I know--but it’s what _I_ mean! From now on I mean to know about the

people who work for me, and what sort of treatment they get. I’m no

longer your kid-brother, to be put off with platitudes.”

“You know ours are union mines, Hal--”

“Yes, but what does that mean? How do we work it? Do we give the men

their weights?”

“Of course! They have their check-weighmen.”

“But then, how do we compete with the operators in this district, who

pay for a ton of three thousand pounds?”

“We manage it--by economy.”

“Economy? I don’t see Peter Harrigan wasting anything here!” Hal paused

for an answer, but none came. “Do we buy the check-weighmen? Do we bribe

the labour leaders?”

Edward coloured slightly. “What’s the use of being nasty, Hal? You know

I don’t do dirty work.”

“I don’t mean to be nasty, Edward; but you must know that many a

business-man can say he doesn’t do dirty work, because he has others do

it for him. What about politics, for instance? Do we run a machine, and

put our clerks and bosses into the local offices?”

Edward did not answer, and Hal persisted, “I mean to know these things!

I’m not going to be blind any more!”

“All right, Hal--you can know anything you want; but for God’s sake, not

now! If you want to be taken for a man, show a man’s common sense!

Here’s Old Peter getting back to Western City to-morrow night! Don’t you

know that he’ll be after me, raging like a mad bull? Don’t you know that

if I tell him I can do nothing--that I’ve been down here and tried to

pull you away--don’t you know he’ll go after Dad?”

Edward had tried all the arguments, and this was the only one that

counted. “You must keep him away from Dad!” exclaimed Hal.

“You tell me that!” retorted the other. “And when you know Old Peter!

Don’t you know he’ll get at him, if he has to break down the door of the

house? He’ll throw the burden of his rage on that poor old man! You’ve

been warned about it clearly; you know it may be a matter of life and

death to keep Dad from getting excited. I don’t know what he’d do; maybe

he’d fly into a rage with you, maybe he’d defend you. He’s old and weak,

he’s lost his grip on things. Anyhow, he’d not let Peter abuse you--and

like as not he’d drop dead in the midst of the dispute! Do you want to

have that on your conscience, along with the troubles of your workingmen

friends?”

SECTION 12.

Hal sat staring in front of him, silent. Was it a fact that every man

had something in his life which palsied his arm, and struck him helpless

in the battle for social justice?

When he spoke again, it was in a low voice. “Edward, I’m thinking about

a young Irish boy who works in these mines. He, too, has a father; and

this father was caught in the explosion. He’s an old man, with a wife

and seven other children. He’s a good man, the boy’s a good boy. Let me

tell you what Peter Harrigan has done to them!”

“Well,” said Edward, “whatever it is, it’s all right, you can help them.

They won’t need to starve.”

“I know,” said Hal, “but there are so many others; I can’t help them

all. And besides, can’t you see, Edward--what I’m thinking about is not

charity, but _justice_. I’m sure this boy, Tim Rafferty, loves his

father just exactly as much as I love my father; and there are other old

men here, with sons who love them--”

“Oh, Hal, for Christ’s sake!” exclaimed Edward, in a sort of explosion.

He had no other words to express his impatience. “Do you expect to take

all the troubles in the world on your shoulders?” And he sprang up and

caught the other by the arm. “Boy, you’ve got to come away from here!”

Hal got up, without answering. He seemed irresolute, and his brother

started to draw him towards the door. “I’ve got a car here. We can get a

train in an hour--”

Hal saw that he had to speak firmly. “No, Edward,” he said. “I can’t

come just yet.”

“I tell you you _must_ come!”

“I can’t. I made these men a promise!”

“In God’s name--what are these men to you? Compared with your own

father!”

“I can’t explain it, Edward. I’ve talked for half an hour, and I don’t

think you’ve even heard me. Suffice it to say that I see these people

caught in a trap--and one that my whole life has helped to make. I can’t

leave them in it. What’s more, I don’t believe Dad would want me to do

it, if he understood.”

The other made a last effort at self-control. “I’m not going to call you

a sentimental fool. Only, let me ask you one plain question. What do you

think you can _do_ for these people?”

“I think I can help to win decent conditions for them.”

“Good God!” cried Edward; he sighed, in his agony of exasperation. “In

Peter Harrigan’s mines! Don’t you realise that he’ll pick them up and

throw them out of here, neck and crop--the whole crew, every man in the

town, if necessary?”

“Perhaps,” answered Hal; “but if the men in the other mines should join

them--if the big union outside should stand by them--”

“You’re dreaming, Hal! You’re talking like a child! I talked to the

superintendent here; he had telegraphed the situation to Old Peter, and

had just got an answer. Already he’s acted, no doubt.”

“Acted?” echoed Hal. “How do you mean?” He was staring at his brother in

sudden anxiety.

“They were going to turn the agitators out, of course.”

“_What?_ And while I’m here talking!”

Hal turned toward the door. “You knew it all the time!” he exclaimed.

“You kept me here deliberately!”

He was starting away, but Edward sprang and caught him. “What could you

have done?”

“Turn me loose!” cried Hal, angrily.

“Don’t be a fool, Hal! I’ve been trying to keep you out of the trouble.

There may be fighting.”

Edward threw himself between Hal and the door, and there was a sharp

struggle. But the elder man was no longer the athlete, the young bronzed

god; he had been sitting at a desk in an office, while Hal had been

doing hard labour. Hal threw him to one side, and in a moment more had

sprung out of the door, and was running down the slope.

SECTION 13.

Coming to the main street of the village, Hal saw the crowd in front of

the office. One glance told him that something had happened. Men were

running this way and that, gesticulating, shouting. Some were coming in

his direction, and when they saw him they began to yell to him. The

first to reach him was Klowoski, the little Pole, breathless; gasping

with excitement. “They fire our committee!”

“Fire them?”

“Fire ’em out! Down canyon!” The little man was waving his arms in wild

gestures; his eyes seemed about to start out of his head. “Take ’em off!

Whole bunch fellers--gunmen! People see them--come out back door. Got

ever’body’s arm tied. Gunmen fellers hold ’em, don’t let ’em holler,

can’t do nothin’! Got them cars waitin’--what you call?--”

“Automobiles?”

“Sure, got three! Put ever’body in, quick like that--they go down road

like wind! Go down canyon, all gone! They bust our strike!” And the

little Pole’s voice ended in a howl of despair.

“No, they won’t bust our strike!” exclaimed Hal. “Not yet!”

Suddenly he was reminded of the fact that his brother had followed

him--puffing hard, for the run had been strenuous. He caught Hal by the

arm, exclaiming, “Keep out of this, I tell you!”

Thus while Hal was questioning Klowoski, he was struggling

half-unconsciously, to free himself from his brother’s grasp. Suddenly

the matter was forced to an issue, for the little Polack emitted a cry

like an angry cat, and went at Edward with fingers outstretched like

claws. Hal’s dignified brother would have had to part with his dignity,

if Hal had not caught Klowoski’s onrush with his other arm. “Let him

alone!” he said. “It’s my brother!” Whereupon the little man fell back

and stood watching in bewilderment.

Hal saw Androkulos running to him. The Greek boy had been in the street

back of the office, and had seen the committee carried off; nine people

had been taken--Wauchope, Tim Rafferty, and Mary Burke, Marcelli,

Zammakis and Rusick, and three others who had served as interpreters on

the night before. It had all been done so quickly that the crowd had

scarcely realised what was happening.

Now, having grasped the meaning of it, the men were beside themselves

with rage. They shook their fists, shouting defiance to a group of

officials and guards who were visible upon the porch of the

office-building. There was a clamour of shouts for revenge.

Hal could see instantly the dangers of the situation; he was like a man

watching the burning fuse of a bomb. Now, if ever, this polyglot horde

must have leadership--wise and cool and resourceful leadership.

The crowd, discovering his presence, surged down upon him like a wave.

They gathered round him, howling. They had lost the rest of their

committee, but they still had Joe Smith. Joe Smith! Hurrah for Joe! Let

the gunmen take him, if they could! They waved their caps, they tried to

lift him upon their shoulders, so that all could see him.

There was clamour for a speech, and Hal started to make his way to the

steps of the nearest building, with Edward holding on to his coat.

Edward was jostled; he had to part with his dignity--but he did not part

with his brother. And when Hal was about to mount the steps, Edward made

a last desperate effort, shouting into his ear, “Wait a minute! Wait!

Are you going to try to talk to this mob?”

“Of course. Don’t you see there’ll be trouble if I don’t?”

“You’ll get yourself killed! You’ll start a fight, and get a lot of

these poor devils shot! Use your common sense, Hal; the company has

brought in guards, and they are armed, and your people aren’t.”

“That’s exactly why I have to speak!”

The discussion was carried on under difficulties, the elder brother

clinging to the younger’s arm, while the younger sought to pull free,

and the mob shouted with a single voice, “Speech! Speech!” There were

some near by who, like Klowoski, did not relish having this stranger

interfering with their champion, and showed signs of a disposition to

“mix in”; so at last Edward gave up the struggle, and the orator mounted

the steps and faced the throng.

SECTION 14.

Hal raised his arms as a signal for silence.

“Boys,” he cried, “they’ve kidnapped our committee. They think they’ll

break our strike that way--but they’ll find they’ve made a mistake!”

“They will! Right you are!” roared a score of voices.

“They forget that we’ve got a union. Hurrah for our North Valley union!”

“Hurrah! Hurrah!” The cry echoed to the canyon-walls.

“And hurrah for the big union that will back us--the United Mine-Workers

of America!”

Again the yell rang out; again and again. “Hurrah for the union! Hurrah

for the United Mine-Workers!” A big American miner, Ferris, was in the

front of the throng, and his voice beat in Hal’s ears like a

steam-siren.

“Boys,” Hal resumed, when at last he could be heard, “use your brains a

moment. I warned you they would try to provoke you! They would like

nothing better than to start a scrap here, and get a chance to smash our

union! Don’t forget that, boys, if they can make you fight, they’ll

smash the union, and the union is our only hope!”

Again came the cry: “Hurrah for the union!” Hal let them shout it in

twenty languages, until they were satisfied.

“Now, boys,” he went on, at last, “they’ve shipped out our committee.

They may ship me out in the same way--”

“No, they won’t!” shouted voices in the crowd. And there was a bellow of

rage from Ferris. “Let them try it! We’ll burn them in their beds!”

“But they _can_ ship me out!” argued Hal. “You _know_ they can beat us

at that game! They can call on the sheriff, they can get the soldiers,

if necessary! We can’t oppose them by force--they can turn out every

man, woman and child in the village, if they choose. What we have to get

clear is that even that won’t crush our union! Nor the big union

outside, that will be backing us! We can hold out, and make them take us

back in the end!”

Some of Hal’s friends, seeing what he was trying to do, came to his

support. “No fighting! No violence! Stand by the union!” And he went on

to drive the lesson home; even though the company might evict them, the

big union of the four hundred and fifty thousand mine-workers of the

country would feed them, it would call out the rest of the workers in

the district in sympathy. So the bosses, who thought to starve and cow

them into submission, would find their mines lying permanently idle.

They would be forced to give way, and the tactics of solidarity would

triumph.

So Hal went on, recalling the things Olson had told him, and putting

them into practice. He saw hope in their faces again, dispelling the

mood of resentment and rage.

“Now, boys,” said he, “I’m going in to see the superintendent for you.

I’ll be your committee, since they’ve shipped out the rest.”

The steam-siren of Ferris bellowed again: “You’re the boy! Joe Smith!”

“All right, men--now mind what I say! I’ll see the super, and then I’ll

go down to Pedro, where there’ll be some officers of the United

Mine-workers this morning. I’ll tell them the situation, and ask them to

back you. That’s what you want, is it?”

That was what they wanted. “Big union!”

“All right. I’ll do the best I can for you, and I’ll find some way to

get word to you. And meantime you stand firm. The bosses will tell you

lies, they’ll try to deceive you, they’ll send spies and trouble-makers

among you--but you hold fast, and wait for the big union.”

Hal stood looking at the cheering crowd. He had time to note some of the

faces upturned to him. Pitiful, toil-worn faces they were, each making

its separate appeal, telling its individual story of deprivation and

defeat. Once more they were transfigured, shining with that wonderful

new light which he had seen for the first time the previous evening. It

had been crushed for a moment, but it flamed up again; it would never

die in the hearts of men--once they had learned the power it gave.

Nothing Hal had yet seen moved him so much as this new birth of

enthusiasm. A beautiful, a terrible thing it was!

Hal looked at his brother, to see how he had been moved. What he saw on

his brother’s face was satisfaction, boundless relief. The matter had

turned out all right! Hal was coming away!

Hal turned again to the men; somehow, after his glance at Edward, they

seemed more pitiful than ever. For Edward typified the power they were

facing--the unseeing, uncomprehending power that meant to crush them.

The possibility of failure was revealed to Hal in a flash of emotion,

overwhelming him. He saw them as they would be, when no leader was at

hand to make speeches to them. He saw them waiting, their life-long

habit of obedience striving to reassert itself; a thousand fears

besetting them, a thousand rumours preying upon them--wild beasts set on

them by their cunning enemies. They would suffer, not merely for

themselves, but for their wives and children--the very same pangs of

dread that Hal suffered when he thought of one old man up in Western

City, whose doctors had warned him to avoid excitement.

If they stood firm, if they kept their bargain with their leader, they

would be evicted from their homes, they would face the cold of the

coming winter, they would face hunger and the black-list. And he,

meantime--what would he be doing? What was his part of the bargain? He

would interview the superintendent for them, he would turn them over to

the “big union”--and then he would go off to his own life of ease and

pleasure. To eat grilled steaks and hot rolls in a perfectly appointed

club, with suave and softly-moving servitors at his beck! To dance at

the country club with exquisite creatures of chiffon and satin, of

perfume and sweet smiles and careless, happy charms! No, it was too

easy! He might call that his duty to his father and brother, but he

would know in his heart that it was treason to life; it was the devil,

taking him onto a high mountain and showing him all the kingdoms of the

earth!

Moved by a sudden impulse, Hal raised his hands once more. “Boys,” he

said, “we understand each other now. You’ll not go back to work till the

big union tells you. And I, for my part, will stand by you. Your cause

is my cause, I’ll go on fighting for you till you have your rights, till

you can live and work as men! Is that right?”

“That’s right! That’s right!”

“Very good, then--we’ll swear to it!” And Hal raised his hands, and the

men raised theirs, and amid a storm of shouts, and a frantic waving of

caps, he made them the pledge which he knew would bind his own

conscience. He made it deliberately, there in his brother’s presence.

This was no mere charge on a trench, it was enlisting for a war! But

even in that moment of fervour, Hal would have been frightened had he

realised the period of that enlistment, the years of weary and desperate

conflict to which he was pledging his life.

SECTION 15.

Hal descended from his rostrum, and the crowds made way for him, and

with his brother at his side he went down the street to the office

building, upon the porch of which the guards were standing. His progress

was a triumphal one; rough voices shouted words of encouragement in his

ears, men jostled and fought to shake his hand or to pat him on the

back; they even patted Edward and tried to shake his hand, because he

was with Hal, and seemed to have his confidence. Afterwards Hal thought

it over and was merry. Such an adventure for Edward!