The Valley of the Moon Jack London

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The Valley of the Moon Jack London Page 22

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
/>   the street. One hundred dollars a month! She moistened her lips

  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

 

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