by Jack London
carried no visible weapons. The strikers, urging on from behind,
seemed content with yelling their rage and threats, and it
remained for the children to precipitate the conflict. From
across the street, between the Olsen and the Isham houses, came a
shower of stones. Most of these fell short, though one struck a
scab on the head. The man was no more than twenty feet away from
Saxon. He reeled toward her front picket fence, drawing a
revolver. With one hand he brushed the blood from his eyes and
with the other he discharged the revolver into the Isham house. A
Pinkerton seized his arm to prevent a second shot, and dragged
him along. At the same instant a wilder roar went up from the
strikers, while a volley of stones came from between Saxon's
house and Maggie Donahue's. The scabs and their protectors made a
stand, drawing revolvers. From their hard, determined
faces--fighting men by profession--Saxon could augur nothing but
bloodshed and death. An elderly man, evidently the leader, lifted
a soft felt hat and mopped the perspiration from the bald top of
his head. He was a large man, very rotund of belly and helpless
looking. His gray beard was stained with streaks of tobacco
juice, and he was smoking a cigar. He was stoop-shouldered, and
Saxon noted the dandruff on the collar of his coat,
One of the men pointed into the street, and several of his
companions laughed. The cause of it was the little Olsen boy,
barely four years old, escaped somehow from his mother and
toddling toward his economic enemies. In his right he bore a rock
so heavy that he could scarcely lift it. With this he feebly
threatened them. His rosy little face was convulsed with rage,
and he was screaming over and over "Dam scabs! Dam scabs! Dam
scabs!" The laughter with which they greeted him only increased
his fury. He toddled closer, and with a mighty exertion threw the
rock. It fell a scant six feet beyond his hand.
This much Saxon saw, and also Mrs. Olsen rushing into the street
for her child. A rattling of revolver-shots from the strikers
drew Saxon's attention to the men beneath her. One of them cursed
sharply and examined the biceps of his left arm, which hung
limply by his side. Down the hand she saw the blood beginning to
drip. She knew she ought not remain and watch, but the memory of
her fighting forefathers was with her, while she possessed no
more than normal human fear--if anything, less. She forgot her
child in the eruption of battle that had broken upon her quiet
street. And she forgot the strikers, and everything else, in
amazement at what had happened to the round-bellied,
cigar-smoking leader. In some strange way, she knew not how, his
head had become wedged at the neck between the tops of the
pickets of her fence. His body hung down outside, the knees not
quite touching the ground. His hat had fallen off, and the sun
was making an astounding high light on his bald spot. The cigar,
too, was gone. She saw he was looking at her. One hand, between
the pickets, seemed waving at her, and almost he seemed to wink
at her jocosely, though she knew it to be the contortion of
deadly pain.
Possibly a second, or, at most, two seconds, she gazed at this,
when she was aroused by Bert's voice. He was running along the
sidewalk, in front of her house, and behind him charged several
more strikers, while he shouted: "Come on, you Mohegans! We got
'em nailed to the cross!"
In his left hand he carried a pick-handle, in his right a
revolver, already empty, for he clicked the cylinder vainly
around as he ran. With an abrupt stop, dropping the pick-handle,
he whirled half about, facing Saxon's gate. He was sinking down,
when he straightened himself to throw the revolver into the face
of a scab who was jumping toward him. Then he began swaying, at
the same time sagging at the knees and waist. Slowly, with
infinite effort, he caught a gate picket in his right hand, and,
still slowly, as if lowering himself, sank down, while past him
leaped the crowd of strikers he had led.
It was battle without quarter--a massacre. The scabs and their
protectors, surrounded, backed against Saxon's fence, fought like
cornered rats, but could not withstand the rush of a hundred men.
Clubs and pick-handles were swinging, revolvers were exploding,
and cobblestones were flung with crushing effect at arm's
distance. Saxon saw young Frank Davis, a friend of Bert's and a
father of several months' standing, press the muzzle of his
revolver against a scab's stomach and fire. There were curses and
snarls of rage, wild cries of terror and pain. Mercedes was
right. These things were not men. They were beasts, fighting over
bones, destroying one another for bones.
JOBS ARE BONES; JOBS ARE BONES. The phrase was an incessant
iteration in Saxon's brain. Much as she might have wished it, she
was powerless now to withdraw from the window. It was as if she
were paralyzed. Her brain no longer worked. She sat numb,
staring, incapable of anything save seeing the rapid horror
before her eyes that flashed along like a moving picture film
gone mad. She saw Pinkertons, special police, and strikers go
down. One scab, terribly wounded, on his knees and begging for
mercy, was kicked in the face. As he sprawled backward another
striker, standing over him, fired a revolver into his chest,
quickly and deliberately, again and again, until the weapon was
empty. Another scab, backed over the pickets by a hand clutching
his throat, had his face pulped by a revolver butt. Again and
again, continually, the revolver rose and fell, and Saxon knew
the man who wielded it--Chester Johnson. She had met him at
dances and danced with him in the days before she was married. He
had always been kind and good natured. She remembered the Friday
night, after a City Hall band concert, when he had taken her and
two other girls to Tony's Tamale Grotto on Thirteenth street. And
after that they had all gone to Pabst's Cafe and drunk a glass of
beer before they went home. It was impossible that this could be
the same Chester Johnson. And as she looked, she saw the
round-bellied leader, still wedged by the neck between the
pickets, draw a revolver with his free hand, and, squinting
horribly sidewise, press the muzzle against Chester's side. She
tried to scream a warning. She did scream, and Chester looked up
and saw her. At that moment the revolver went off, and he
collapsed prone upon the body of the scab. And the bodies of
three men hung on her picket fence.
Anything could happen now. Quite without surprise, she saw the
strikers leaping the fence, trampling her few little geraniums
and pansies into the earth as they fled between Mercedes' house
and hers. Up Pine street, from the railroad yards, was coming a
rush of railroad police and Pinkertons, firing as they ran. While
down Pine street, gongs clanging, horses at a gallop, came three
patrol wagons packed
with police. The strikers were in a trap.
The only way out was between the houses and over the back yard
fences. The jam in the narrow alley prevented them all from
escaping. A dozen were cornered in the angle between the front of
her house and the steps. And as they had done, so were they done
by. No effort was made to arrest. They were clubbed down and shot
down to the last man by the guardians of the peace who were
infuriated by what had been wreaked on their brethren.
It was all over, and Saxon, moving as in a dream, clutching the
banister tightly, came down the front steps. The round-bellied
leader still leered at her and fluttered one hand, though two big
policemen were just bending to extricate him. The gate was off
its hinges, which seemed strange, for she had been watching all
the time and had not seen it happen.
Bert's eyes were closed. His lips were blood-flecked, and there
was a gurgling in his throat as if he were trying to say
something. As she stooped above him, with her handkerchief
brushing the blood from his cheek where some one had stepped on
him, his eyes opened. The old defiant light was in them. He did
not know her. The lips moved, and faintly, almost reminiscently,
he murmured, "The last of the Mohegans, the last of the
Mohegans." Then he groaned, and the eyelids drooped down again.
He was not dead. She knew that, the chest still rose and fell,
and the gurgling still continued in his throat.
She looked up. Mercedes stood beside her. The old woman's eyes
were very bright, her withered cheeks flushed.
"Will you help me carry him into the house?" Saxon asked.
Mercedes nodded, turned to a sergeant of police, and made the
request to him. The sergeant gave a swift glance at Bert, and his
eyes were bitter and ferocious as he refused.
"To hell with'm. We'll care for our own."
"Maybe you and I can do it," Saxon said.
"Don't be a fool." Mercedes was beckoning to Mrs. Olsen across
the street. "You go into the house, little mother that is to be.
This is bad for you. We'll carry him in. Mrs. Olsen is coming,
and we'll get Maggie Donahue."
Saxon led the way into the back bedroom which Billy had insisted
on furnishing. As she opened the door, the carpet seemed to fly
up into her face as with the force of a blow, for she remembered
Bert had laid that carpet. And as the women placed him on the bed
she recalled that it was Bert and she, between them, who had set
the bed up one Sunday morning.
And then she felt very queer, and was surprised to see Mercedes
regarding her with questioning, searching eyes. After that her
queerness came on very fast, and she descended into the hell of
pain that is given to women alone to know. She was supported,
half-carried, to the front bedroom. Many faces were about
her--Mercedes, Mrs. Olsen, Maggie Donahue. It seemed she must ask
Mrs. Olsen if she had saved little Emil from the street, but
Mercedes cleared Mrs. Olsen out to look after Bert, and Maggie
Donahue went to answer a knock at the front door. From the street
came a loud hum of voices, punctuated by shouts and commands, and
from time to time there was a clanging of the gongs of ambulances
and patrol wagon's. Then appeared the fat, comfortable face of
Martha Shelton, and, later, Dr. Hentley came. Once, in a clear
interval, through the thin wall Saxon heard the high opening
notes of Mary's hysteria. And, another time, she heard Mary
repeating over and over. "I'll never go back to the laundry.
Never. Never."
CHAPTER X
Billy could never get over the shock, during that period, of
Saxon's appearance. Morning after morning, and evening after
evening when he came home from work, he would enter the room
where she lay and fight a royal battle to hide his feelings and
make a show of cheerfulness and geniality. She looked so small
lying there so small and shrunken and weary, and yet so
child-like in her smallness. Tenderly, as he sat beside her, he
would take up her pale hand and stroke the slim, transparent arm,
marveling at the smallness and delicacy of the bones.
One of her first questions, puzzling alike to Billy and Mary,
was:
"Did they save little Emil Olsen?"
And when she told them how he had attacked, singlehanded, the
whole twenty-four fighting men, Billy's face glowed with
appreciation.
"The little cuss!" he said. "That's the kind of a kid to be proud
of."
He halted awkwardly, and his very evident fear that he had hurt
her touched Saxon. She put her hand out to his.
"Billy," she began; then waited till Mary left the room.
"I never asked before--not that it matters . . . now. But I waited
for you to tell me. Was it . . . ?"
He shook his head.
"No; it was a girl. A perfect little girl. Only . . . it was too
soon."
She pressed his hand, and almost it was she that sympathized with
him in his affliction.
"I never told you, Billy--you were so set on a boy; but I
planned, just the same, if it was a girl, to call her Daisy. You
remember, that was my mother's name."
He nodded his approbation.
"Say, Saxon, you know I did want a boy like the very dickens . . .
well, I don't care now. I think I'm set just as hard on a girl,
an', well, here's hopin' the next will be called . . . you wouldn't
mind, would you?"
"What?"
"If we called it the same name, Daisy?"
"Oh, Billy! I was thinking the very same thing."
Then his face grew stern as he went on.
"Only there ain't goin' to be a next. I didn't know what havin'
children was like before. You can't run any more risks like
that."
"Hear the big, strong, afraid-man talk!" she jeered, with a wan
smile. "You don't know anything about it. How can a man? I am a
healthy, natural woman. Everything would have been all right this
time if . . . if all that fighting hadn't happened. Where did they
bury Bert?"
"You knew?"
"All the time. And where is Mercedes? She hasn't been in for two
days."
"Old Barry's sick. She's with him."
He did not tell her that the old night watchman was dying, two
thin walls and half a dozen feet away.
Saxon's lips were trembling, and she began to cry weakly,
clinging to Billy's hand with both of hers.
"I--I can't help it," she sobbed. "I'll be all right in a minute. . . .
Our little girl, Billy. Think of it! And I never saw her!"
She was still lying on her bed, when, one evening, Mary saw fit
to break out in bitter thanksgiving that she had escaped, and was
destined to escape, what Saxon had gone through.
"Aw, what are you talkin' about?" Billy demanded. "You'll get
married some time again as sure as beans is beans."
"Not to the best man living," she proclaimed. "And there ain't no
call for it. There's too many people in the world now, else why
are there two or three men for every j
ob? And, besides, havin'
children is too terrible."
Saxon, with a look of patient wisdom in her face that became
glorified as she spoke, made answer:
"I ought to know what it means. I've been through it, and I'm
still in the thick of it, and I want to say to you right now, out
of all the pain and the ache and the sorrow, that it is the most
beautiful, wonderful thing in the world."
As Saxon's strength came back to her (and when Doctor Hentley had
privily assured Billy that she was sound as a dollar), she
herself took up the matter of the industrial tragedy that had
taken place before her door. The militia had been called out
immediately, Billy informed her, and was encamped then at the
foot of Pine street on the waste ground next to the railroad
yards. As for the strikers, fifteen of them were in jail. A house
to house search had been made in the neighborhood by the police,
and in this way nearly the whole fifteen, all wounded, had been
captured. It would go hard with them, Billy foreboded gloomily.
The newspapers were demanding blood for blood, and all the
ministers in Oakland had preached fierce sermons against the
strikers. The railroad had filled every place, and it was well
known that the striking shopmen not only would never get their
old jobs back but were blacklisted in every railroad in the
United States. Already they were beginning to scatter. A number
had gone to Panama, and four were talking of going to Ecuador to
work in the shops of the railroad that ran over the Andes to
Quito.
With anxiety keenly concealed, she tried to feel out Billy's
opinion on what had happened.
"That shows what Bert's violent methods come to," she said.
He shook his head slowly and gravely.
"They'll hang Chester Johnson, anyway," he answered indirectly.
"You know him. You told me you used to dance with him. He was
caught red-handed, lyin' on the body of a scab he beat to death.
Old Jelly Belly's got three bullet holes in him, but he ain't
goin' to die, and he's got Chester's number. They'll hang'm on
Jelly Belly's evidence. It was all in the papers. Jelly Belly
shot him, too, a-hangin' by the neck on our pickets."
Saxon shuddered. Jelly Belly must be the man with the bald spot
and the tobacco-stained whiskers.
"Yes," she said. "I saw it all. It seemed he must have hung there
for hours."
"It was all over, from first to last, in five minutes."
"It seemed ages and ages."
"I guess that's the way it seemed to Jelly Belly, stuck on the
pickets," Billy smiled grimly. "But he's a hard one to kill. He's
been shot an' cut up a dozen different times. But they say now
he'll be crippled for life--have to go around on crutches, or in
a wheel-chair. That'll stop him from doin' any more dirty work
for the railroad. He was one of their top gun-fighters--always up
to his ears in the thick of any fightin' that was goin' on. He
never was leery of anything on two feet, I'll say that much
for'm."
"Where does he live?" Saxon inquired.
"Up on Adeline, near Tenth--fine neighborhood an' fine
two-storied house. He must pay thirty dollars a month rent. I
guess the railroad paid him pretty well."
"Then he must be married?"
"Yep. I never seen his wife, but he's got one son, Jack, a
passenger engineer. I used to know him. He was a nifty boxer,
though he never went into the ring. An' he's got another son
that's teacher in the high school. His name's Paul. We're about
the same age. He was great at baseball. I knew him when we was
kids. He pitched me out three times hand-runnin' once, when the
Durant played the Cole School."
Saxon sat back in the Morris chair, resting and thinking. The
problem was growing more complicated than ever. This elderly,
round-bellied, and bald-headed gunfighter, too, had a wife and
family. And there was Frank Davis, married barely a year and with