by Jack London
he went into the Pile-Drivers' Home, the saloon at Seventh and
Pine. There it was his mortal mischance to encounter Otto Frank,
a striker who drove from the same stable. Not many minutes later
an ambulance was hurrying Henderson to the receiving hospital
with a fractured skull, while a patrol wagon was no less swiftly
carrying Otto Frank to the city prison.
Maggie Donahue it was, eyes shining with gladness, who told Saxon
of the happening.
"Served him right, too, the dirty scab," Maggie concluded.
"But his poor wife!" was Saxon's cry. "She's not strong. And then
the children. She'll never be able to take care of them if her
husband dies."
"An' serve her right, the damned slut!"
Saxon was both shocked and hurt by the Irishwoman's brutality.
But Maggie was implacable.
"'Tis all she or any woman deserves that'll put up an' live with
a scab. What about her children? Let'm starve, an' her man
a-takin' the food out of other children's mouths."
Mrs. Olsen's attitude was different. Beyond passive sentimental
pity for Henderson's wife and children, she gave them no thought,
her chief concern being for Otto Frank and Otto Frank's wife and
children--herself and Mrs. Frank being full sisters.
"If he dies, they will hang Otto," she said. "And then what will
poor Hilda do? She has varicose veins in both legs, and she never
can stand on her feet all day an' work for wages. And me, I
cannot help. Ain't Carl out of work, too?"
Billy had still another point of view.
"It will give the strike a black eye, especially if Henderson
croaks," he worried, when he came home. "They'll hang Frank on
record time. Besides, we'll have to put up a defense, an' lawyers
charge like Sam Hill. They'll eat a hole in our treasury you
could drive every team in Oakland through. An' if Frank hadn't
ben screwed up with whisky he'd never a-done it. He's the
mildest, good-naturedest man sober you ever seen."
Twice that evening Billy left the house to find out if Henderson
was dead yet. In the morning the papers gave little hope, and the
evening papers published his death. Otto Frank lay in jail
without bail. The Tribune demanded a quick trial and summary
execution, calling on the prospective jury manfully to do its
duty and dwelling at length on the moral effect that would be so
produced upon the lawless working class. It went further,
emphasizing the salutary effect machine guns would have on the
mob that had taken the fair city of Oakland by the throat.
And all such occurrences struck at Saxon personally. Practically
alone in the world, save for Billy, it was her life, and his, and
their mutual love-life, that was menaced. From the moment he left
the house to the moment of his return she knew no peace of mind.
Rough work was afoot, of which he told her nothing, and she knew
he was playing his part in it. On more than one occasion she
noticed fresh-broken skin on his knuckles. At such times he was
remarkably taciturn, and would sit in brooding silence or go
almost immediately to bed. She was afraid to have this habit of
reticence grow on him, and bravely she bid for his confidence.
She climbed into his lap and inside his arms, one of her arms
around his neck, and with the free hand she caressed his hair
back from the forehead and smoothed out the moody brows.
"Now listen to me, Billy Boy," she began lightly. "You haven't
been playing fair, and I won't have it. No!" She pressed his lips
shut with her fingers. "I'm doing the talking now, and because
you haven't been doing your share of the talking for some time.
You remember we agreed at the start to always talk things over. I
was the first to break this, when I sold my fancy work to Mrs.
Higgins without speaking to you about it. And I was very sorry. I
am still sorry. And I've never done it since. Now it's your turn.
You're not talking things over with me. You are doing things you
don't tell me about.
"Billy, you're dearer to me than anything else in the world. You
know that. We're sharing each other's lives, only, just now,
there's something you're not sharing. Every time your knuckles
are sore, there's something you don't share. If you can't trust
me, you can't trust anybody. And, besides, I love you so that no
matter what you do I'll go on loving you just the same."
Billy gazed at her with fond incredulity.
"Don't be a pincher," she teased. "Remember, I stand for whatever
you do."
"And you won't buck against me?" he queried.
"How can I? I'm not your boss, Billy. I wouldn't boss you for
anything in the world. And if you'd let me boss you, I wouldn't
love you half as much."
He digested this slowly, and finally nodded.
"An' you won't be mad?"
"With you? You've never seen me mad yet. Now come on and be
generous and tell me how you hurt your knuckles. It's fresh
to-day. Anybody can see that."
"All right. I'll tell you how it happened." He stopped and
giggled with genuine boyish glee at some recollection. "It's like
this. You won't be mad, now? We gotta do these sort of things to
hold our own. Well, here's the show, a regular movin' picture
except for file talkin'. Here's a big rube comin' along, hayseed
stickin' out all over, hands like hams an' feet like Mississippi
gunboats. He'd make half as much again as me in size an' he's
young, too. Only he ain't lookin' for trouble, an' he's as
innocent as . . . well, he's the innocentest scab that ever come
down the pike an' bumped into a couple of pickets. Not a regular
strike-breaker, you see, just a big rube that's read the bosses'
ads an' come a-humpin' to town for the big wages.
"An' here's Bud Strothers an' me comin' along. We always go in
pairs that way, an' sometimes bigger bunches. I flag the rube.
'Hello,' says I, 'lookin' for a job?' 'You bet,' says he. 'Can
you drive?' 'Yep.' 'Four horses!' 'Show me to 'em,' says he. 'No
josh, now,' says I; 'you're sure wantin' to drive?' 'That's what
I come to town for,' he says. 'You're the man we're lookin' for,'
says I. 'Come along, an' we'll have you busy in no time.'
"You see, Saxon, we can't pull it off there, because there's Tom
Scanlon--you know, the red-headed cop only a couple of blocks
away an' pipin' us off though not recognizin' us. So away we go,
the three of us, Bud an' me leadin' that boob to take our jobs
away from us I guess nit. We turn into the alley back of
Campwell's grocery. Nobody in sight. Bud stops short, and the
rube an' me stop.
"'I don't think he wants to drive,' Bud says, considerin'. An'
the rube says quick, 'You betcher life I do.' 'You're dead sure
you want that job?' I says. Yes, he's dead sure. Nothin's goin'
to keep him away from that job. Why, that job's what he come to
town for, an' we can't lead him to it too quick.
"'Well, my friend,' says I, 'it's my sad duty to inform you that
you've made a mistake.' 'How's that?' he says. 'Go on,' I
says;
'you're standin' on your foot.' And, honest to God, Saxon, that
gink looks down at his feet to see. 'I don't understand,' says
he. 'We're goin' to show you,' says I.
"An' then--Biff! Bang! Bingo! Swat! Zooie! Ker-slambango-blam!
Fireworks, Fourth of July, Kingdom Come, blue lights,
sky-rockets, an' hell fire--just like that. It don't take long
when you're scientific an' trained to tandem work. Of course it's
hard on the knuckles. But say, Saxon, if you'd seen that rube
before an' after you'd thought he was a lightnin' change artist.
Laugh? You'd a-busted."
Billy halted to give vent to his own mirth. Saxon forced herself
to join with him, but down in her heart was horror. Mercedes was
right. The stupid workers wrangled and snarled over jobs. The
clever masters rode in automobiles and did not wrangle and snarl.
They hired other stupid ones to do the wrangling and snarling for
them. It was men like Bert and Frank Davis, like Chester Johnson
and Otto Frank, like Jelly Belly and the Pinkertons, like
Henderson and all the rest of the scabs, who were beaten up,
shot, clubbed, or hanged. Ah, the clever ones were very clever.
Nothing happened to them. They only rode in their automobiles.
"'You big stiffs,' the rube snivels as he crawls to his feet at
the end," Billy was continuing. "'You think you still want that
job?' I ask. He shakes his head. Then I read'm the riot act
'They's only one thing for you to do, old hoss, an' that's beat
it. D'ye get me? Beat it. Back to the farm for YOU. An' if you
come monkeyin' around town again, we'll be real mad at you. We
was only foolin' this time. But next time we catch you your own
mother won't know you when we get done with you.'
"An'--say!--you oughta seen'm beat it. I bet he's goin' yet. Ah'
when he gets back to Milpitas, or Sleepy Hollow, or wherever he
hangs out, an' tells how the boys does things in Oakland, it's
dollars to doughnuts they won't be a rube in his district that'd
come to town to drive if they offered ten dollars an hour."
"It was awful," Saxon said, then laughed well-simulated
appreciation.
"But that was nothin'," Billy went on. "A bunch of the boys
caught another one this morning. They didn't do a thing to him.
My goodness gracious, no. In less'n two minutes he was the worst
wreck they ever hauled to the receivin' hospital. The evenin'
papers gave the score: nose broken, three bad scalp wounds, front
teeth out, a broken collarbone, an' two broken ribs. Gee! He
certainly got all that was comin' to him. But that's nothin'.
D'ye want to know what the Frisco teamsters did in the big strike
before the Earthquake? They took every scab they caught an' broke
both his arms with a crowbar. That was so he couldn't drive, you
see. Say, the hospitals was filled with 'em. An' the teamsters
won that strike, too."
"But is it necessary, Billy, to be so terrible? I know they're
scabs, and that they're taking the bread out of the strikers'
children's mouths to put in their own children's mouths, and that
it isn't fair and all that; but just the same is it necessary to
be so . . . terrible?"
"Sure thing," Billy answered confidently. "We just gotta throw
the fear of God into them--when we can do it without bein'
caught."
"And if you're caught?"
"Then the union hires the lawyers to defend us, though that ain't
much good now, for the judges are pretty hostyle, an' the papers
keep hammerin' away at them to give stiffer an' stiffer
sentences. Just the same, before this strike's over there'll be a
whole lot of guys a-wishin' they'd never gone scabbin'."
Very cautiously, in the next half hour, Saxon tried to feel out
her husband's attitude, to find if he doubted the rightness of
the violence he and his brother teamsters committed. But Billy's
ethical sanction was rock-bedded and profound. It never entered
his head that he was not absolutely right. It was the game.
Caught in its tangled meshes, he could see no other way to play
it than the way all men played it. He did not stand for dynamite
and murder, however. But then the unions did not stand for such.
Quite naive was his explanation that dynamite and murder did not
pay; that such actions always brought down the condemnation of
the public and broke the strikes. But the healthy beating up of a
scab, he contended--the "throwing of the fear of God into a
scab," as he expressed it--was the only right and proper thing to
do.
"Our folks never had to do such things," Saxon said finally.
"They never had strikes nor scabs in those times."
"You bet they didn't," Billy agreed "Them was the good old days.
I'd liked to a-lived then." He drew a long breath and sighed.
"But them times will never come again."
"Would you have liked living in the country?" Saxon asked.
"Sure thing."
"There's lots of men living in the country now," she suggested.
"Just the same I notice them a-hikin' to town to get our jobs,"
was his reply.
CHAPTER XII
A gleam of light came, when Billy got a job driving a grading
team for the contractors of the big bridge then building at
Niles. Before he went he made certain that it was a union job.
And a union job it was for two days, when the concrete workers
threw down their tools. The contractors, evidently prepared for
such happening, immediately filled the places of the concrete men
with nonunion Italians. Whereupon the carpenters, structural
ironworkers and teamsters walked out; and Billy, lacking train
fare, spent the rest of the day in walking home.
"I couldn't work as a scab," he concluded his tale.
"No," Saxon said; "you couldn't work as a scab."
But she wondered why it was that when men wanted to work, and
there was work to do, yet they were unable to work because their
unions said no. Why were there unions? And, if unions had to be,
why were not all workingmen in them? Then there would be no
scabs, and Billy could work every day. Also, she wondered where
she was to get a sack of flour, for she had long since ceased the
extravagance of baker's bread. And so many other of the
neighborhood women had done this, that the little Welsh baker had
closed up shop and gone away, taking his wife and two little
daughters with him. Look where she would, everybody was being
hurt by the industrial strife.
One afternoon came a caller at her door, and that evening came
Billy with dubious news. He had been approached that day. All he
had to do, he told Saxon, was to say the word, and he could go
into the stable as foreman at one hundred dollars a month.
The nearness of such a sum, the possibility of it, was almost
stunning to Saxon, sitting at a supper which consisted of boiled
potatoes, warmed-over beans, and a small dry onion which they
were eating raw. There was neither bread, coffee, nor butter. The
onion Billy had pulled from his pocket, having picked it up in
and fought for control.
"What made them offer it to you?" she questioned.
"That's easy," was his answer. "They got a dozen reasons. The guy
the boss has had exercisin' Prince and King is a dub. King has
gone lame in the shoulders. Then they're guessin' pretty strong
that I'm the party that's put a lot of their scabs outa
commission. Macklin's ben their foreman for years an' years--why
I was in knee pants when he was foreman. Well, he's sick an' all
in. They gotta have somebody to take his place. Then, too, I've
been with 'em a long time. An' on top of that, I'm the man for
the job. They know I know horses from the ground up. Hell, it's
all I'm good for, except sluggin'."
"Think of it, Billy!" she broathed. "A hundred dollars a month! A
hundred dollars a month!"
"An' throw the fellows down," he said.
It was not a question. Nor was it a statement. It was anything
Saxon chose to make of it. They looked at each other. She waited
for him to speak; but he continued merely to look. It came to her
that she was facing one of the decisive moments of her life, and
she gripped herself to face it in all coolness. Nor would Billy
proffer her the slightest help. Whatever his own judgment might
be, he masked it with an expressionless face. His eyes betrayed
nothing. He looked and waited.
"You . . . you can't do that, Billy," she said finally. "You can't
throw the fellows down."
His hand shot out to hers, and his face was a sudden, radiant
dawn.
"Put her there!" he cried, their hands meeting and clasping.
"You're the truest true blue wife a man ever had. If all the
other fellows' wives was like you, we could win any strike we
tackled."
"What would you have done if you weren't married, Billy?"
"Seen 'em in hell first."
"Than it doesn't make any difference being married. I've got to
stand by you in everything you stand for. I'd be a nice wife if I
didn't."
She remembered her caller of the afternoon, and knew the moment
was too propitious to let pass.
"There was a man here this afternoon, Billy. He wanted a room. I
told him I'd speak to you. He said he would pay six dollars a
month for the back bedroom. That would pay half a month's
installment on the furniture and buy a sack of flour, and we're
all out of flour."
Billy's old hostility to the idea was instantly uppermost, and
Saxon watched him anxiously.
"Some scab in the shops, I suppose?"
"No; he's firing on the freight run to San Jose. Harmon, he said
his name was, James Harmon. They've just transferred him from the
Truckee division. He'll sleep days mostly, he said; and that's
why he wanted a quiet house without children in it."
In the end, with much misgiving, and only after Saxon had
insistently pointed out how little work it entailed on her, Billy
consented, though he continued to protest, as an afterthought:
"But I don't want you makin' beds for any man. It ain't right,
Saxon. I oughta take care of you."
"And you would," she flashed back at him, "if you'd take the
foremanship. Only you can't. It wouldn't be right. And if I'm to
stand by you it's only fair to let me do what I can."
James Harmon proved even less a bother than Saxon had
anticipated. For a fireman he was scrupulously clean, always
washing up in the roundhouse before he came home. He used the key
to the kitchen door, coming and going by the back steps. To Saxon
he barely said how-do-you-do or good day; and, sleeping in the
day time and working at night, he was in the house a week before
Billy laid eyes on him.
Billy had taken to coming home later and later, and to going out
after supper by himself. He did not offer to tell Saxon where he
went. Nor did she ask. For that matter it required little