“You think I haven’t seen men killed? That I don’t expect it for myself during a strike like this?”
“That’s still no reason to invite trouble. If Fayte sees us …”
Johnny looked at her with the cynical, hopeful eyes of a waif. “I’d rather he saw us, pretty lady, than that you wouldn’t come to me.”
The strike had absorbed him till anything outside it was hazy, unreal. What mattered to him about her now was that she stand beside him in front of Fayte and the town, that a member of the privileged sided with the strikers.
And that wasn’t it at all. She cared for Johnny, the man, the wanderer, not for his obsession. If the workers’ demands had been negotiated privately, without fanfare, she believed, Phelps-Dodge would have acceded to most of them. What was going on wasn’t a battle for improved pay and conditions as much as it was a showdown between management and labor. Who was to have the whip hand in the mines, the men who owned them or those who worked there?
Chris didn’t see how that question could ever produce anything but strife. A successful answer must be to the benefit of both sides. Maybe if the workers had shares in the company, a fair voice in management … But she wasn’t a negotiator, a striker, or a manager. If Johnny, knowing the risk, wanted her to come to him on the picket line, she would.
XXV
On July 10 Phelps-Dodge held its first annual picnic. There were prizes, races, and free food, but only two hundred and twenty-five people attended. On July 11 sixty-seven IWWs were rounded up and shipped out of Jerome in cattle cars. With water but no food, they were turned loose at Jerome Junction, twenty-seven miles away, and warned not to come back.
Next day the headlines of the Bisbee Review screamed: WOMEN AND CHILDREN KEEP OFF STREETS TODAY. Beneath, down the center of the page, ran a letter from Sheriff Harry Wheeler announcing that a posse of twenty-two hundred Douglas and Bisbee citizens were going to arrest all strange men on charges of vagrancy. The park was closed to public meetings. Workers who didn’t return to their jobs would be dropped from the employed list: The paper said most of the strikers were Wobblies or foreigners, Austrians who were trying to sabotage the war effort because their loyalties were with the Kaiser.
Chris stared at the incredible words, scarcely able to believe them. Then, remembering Cananea, the marching workers with their dead, Cruz falling under Fayte’s gun, she realized the same thing, only much worse, could happen here.
With trembling hands, she picked up the telephone and phoned her father in Phoenix. He promised to call the governor at once and see what could be done, though he grimly added that he thought the strike was unjustified and that the Wobblies were begging to be martyred.
“They don’t just want a fair wage, Chris. They want an end to the wage system, a classless society; and though that sounds utopian, people being what they are, it won’t work.”
“I don’t know about that, Dad, but I do know most of the strikers live here and many have families. That posse’s going to be armed. It could be a small war.”
“I’ll do what I can,” he assured her. His tone sharpened. “Chris, you stay out of this, hear? You’ve been blind twice in your life. Isn’t that enough?”
“Third time’s the charm.” She hung up and went down the streets, where no other women walked, in search of Sheriff Wheeler. She found him outside the Pythian Castle, not far from the jail. He was a good-looking, strong-jawed young man who took off his hat at her approach and asked if he could help her. Surely she knew it wasn’t safe today to be outside.
“It’s safer for me than for the strikers.” His face hardened, but she went on, pleading. “Sheriff, the workers have a right not to work. They have a right to ask for better wages and conditions.”
“They can leave if they don’t like it,” he said brusquely. “We think they have dynamite and weapons. It’s my duty to protect property and law-abiding citizens.”
“Especially property?”
His weather-browned face flushed. “Ma’am, you better go home. Right now.”
They stared at each other. His eyes were implacable, his jaw firmly set. He believed he was doing the right thing, protecting the town from rabble-rousers who might explode into a looting, pillaging mob.
“I’ve called my father, Senator Revier—”
Wheeler’s eyes flickered with recognition. He cut in brutally. “Did you tell him, ma’am, what sort of company you’re keeping? I don’t care who you call! I’m here to keep order, and I will.”
She hadn’t heard steps behind her and whirled at Fayte’s voice. “I know this lady, Sheriff. I’ll see her home.”
“Good.” The sheriff looked relieved. “See if you can’t talk sense into her, Mr. Riordan.”
If she objected, she thought, Wheeler would turn a blind eye to any force Fayte might use, or even help him. In angry silence, she walked till they were out of Wheeler’s sight past Brewery Gulch.
“You don’t need to come any farther,” she said.
He smiled. “I told the sheriff I’d take you home.”
His tone was pleasant, yet something in it chilled her. She glanced desperately around, but no one was near. If anyone had been, who’d interfere with a deputy enforcing the sheriff’s order to keep off the streets? He set his hand under her elbow, moving her forward. She had to either walk or struggle. The latter would only make a public spectacle for those watching from behind curtained windows.
He turned into Opera Drive. So he’d found out where she lived. As they approached her house, dread seized her, a physical horror of this man.
“Fayte, please—”
He drew her inexorably up the steps, opened the door, brought her inside her own house. As she pushed frantically at his binding arms, he swept her up and carried her back to her bedroom.
She fought him then, but he only laughed.
When at last he pulled on his clothes, Chris kept her eyes shut. Soiled by his sweat and smell, she felt she could never get them off her. Fayte sat down heavily by her and lifted her head between his hands.
“I still want you, Chris. I’d like to marry you again.”
“You can say that—after what you’ve done?” Twisting from him, she turned and retched. “I wonder if there’s any chance Wheeler would arrest you for rape?”
“Not after you’ve been carrying on with that damned Wobblie.”
“My father—”
“The senator can’t shoot half as well as I can. You know that. You’ll keep your mouth shut for his sake.” His eyes traveled deliberately over her. “I’ll be back.”
“If you are, I’ll kill you!”
“Got a gun? How ferocious you’ve gotten, sweetheart.”
She moved for the bedside table in the same instant he did, but his arm blocked her as he opened the drawer and slipped her revolver into his pocket. His teeth showed in a white flash.
“If you don’t want to see me, you can always leave town. I understand that’s what you’ve been invited to do.”
“I’m staying right here. And I’ll make sure your posse gets the credit for whatever it does.”
“Thanks,” he said mockingly.
When he was gone, she filled the tub. Sobbing, desperate to get the memory of him off her, she washed herself, rinsed, and washed again, but her nostrils still detected his faint acrid odor. She longed for Sant but knew she mustn’t call him. He’d want to take her away; if he stayed for her sake, he could get hurt.
She was certainly not going to be in this house when Fayte came back. Putting overnight necessities into a shopping bag, she called Nicodemus, but he was lying on a neighbor’s garage roof and loftily pretended not to hear. She put out fresh water and food for him, then went to the Silver King Hotel and took a room.
“I’d like one near a fire escape,” she told the clerk, who fortunately didn’t know her, so she registered as O’Shea. “I’m nervous of fires.”
He smiled indulgently and handed her a key. “Here you are, ma’am. Better stay
in today. There may be trouble with the Wobblies.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Oh, the word is Sheriff Wheeler’s going to round them all up and ship them out of here on the train. They’re supposed to have weapons and dynamite, so it could be quite a fracas.”
At least Wheeler didn’t intend mass lynching. Chris was sure Johnny didn’t have a gun, but some of the other strikers might. She wanted to go see him on the picket line but knew that any woman would be turned back.
Any woman.
She laughed out loud as she saw a way to be with Johnny, to elude Fayte. Going downstairs, she smiled prettily at the clerk and explained that her younger brother wanted her to buy him some clothes. Since it wasn’t safe for women to be out, could he send someone to do the errand for her? She’d make it worth their time.
“Jed’ll be glad to do it,” said the clerk heartily, motioning over a boy of thirteen or fourteen who was polishing the windows. “Just tell him what you want, ma’am.”
An hour later Jed was happily conscious of the dollar in his pocket, while a youngster in stiff new Levi’s, boots, and blue work shirt was climbing down the fire escape.
Knots of volunteers guarded the city park and clustered around saloons and rooming houses. Chris didn’t see Fayte or Wheeler. The tension of a storm waiting to break charged the heat of the afternoon.
Chris’s head felt light and strange without the hair she’d cropped with shears Jed had purchased. She wore a straw hat pulled low and believed that to a casual eye she’d pass for a rather girlish boy.
Johnny knew her at once, though. As she trudged up the slope to the mine, he left the pickets and hurried forward. “Chris! What on earth—”
“Women aren’t supposed to be out today.” With difficulty she kept from catching his hands or reaching up to touch that curly red-brown hair. “Johnny, they’re going to ship you all out tomorrow. Why don’t you go now?”
His gray eyes were incredulous. “I helped start this. Got to stay with the men. You know that.”
She was ashamed. “Then I’m staying with you,” she said.
“You can’t!”
“Why do you think I cut off my hair?”
“Oh, pretty lady!” He gazed at her, between distress and mockery, before he completely sobered. “Chris, there may be killing. This isn’t for you. Why, you’re not even sure the strike’s justified! Go along home.” He put his hand on her shoulder and grinned coaxingly. “Maybe by the time your hair grows, I’ll be back.”
She shook her head. “I’m staying with you.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t bear to wait behind a door while that posse does whatever it’s going to do.”
His mouth quirked. “You could if you didn’t know me.”
“But I do know you.”
He sighed, but his thin body seemed to grow more substantial, become more firmly put together. “All right. Let’s find a picket sign just your size.”
Most of the pickets went home at dusk, but a few stayed on, including Johnny and Chris. When shifts changed at midnight, there was jeering back and forth between the strikers and men who’d gone on working. “Call me scab all you want,” shouted one burly miner. “Scabbed is what you’re gonna be when Wheeler gets through with you! Goddamn sabotaging Wobblies!”
Soon it was still again. Only a few lights burned in town. Chris huddled close to Johnny; at that altitude nights were cool even in July. He didn’t talk to her, but off and on he played softly, sometimes sang a little. Not IWW songs, but “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “Bonnie Annie Laurie,” “The Gypsy Laddie,” and the one he’d sung when they’d first met, when he’d asked for food.
“Who’s goin’ to be your man tonight …”
She shivered and stayed close to him. Now and then she drowsed; but when she jerked awake, Johnny was always sitting up, either playing or gazing into the night.
The gray fingers of dawn appeared on the horizon, changed to peach, and rose as the darkness shrank away. Johnny got up, went over to the other pickets, and began to sing “Joe Hill.”
“‘Joe Hill ain’t dead,’ he says to me,
‘Joe Hill ain’t never died.
Where workingmen are out on strike
Joe Hill is at their side.
Joe Hill is at their side.’”
The pickets began to sing with him, softly, then with fervor. “Look!” called someone. “They’re coming! Wheeler’s men!”
“What’ll we do?” whispered a young miner next to Chris.
“Let them arrest us,” Johnny said. “Don’t give them an excuse to use those guns.”
“Come on, you Wobs!” shouted the leader. “We’re gonna give you a free ride out of Arizona!”
Gesturing with rifles and pistols, the deputies hustled the pickets along the railroad track toward Warren, a mile away, and herded them into the fenced, board-sided baseball diamond where other prisoners were being cooped. Chris managed to slip in among the confused crowd without being spotted by the deputies. A few miners stared at her in momentary surprise, but they were too worried about their own fates to trouble about a rich man’s daughter.
The whole scene was nightmarishly unbelievable. The posse had seven machine guns in addition to their smaller weapons. Several times, Chris saw Fayte bringing in strikers and turned so he wouldn’t see her face.
There was the sound of a distant shot, then several more. In a few minutes word buzzed through guards and prisoners that a deputy named McRae had been shot by a miner named Chew, who’d been instantly killed. As well as searching for strikers, the posse was hunting for the arms and ammunition they thought the IWW had cached, but nothing was found.
“My wife’s going to have a baby!” one boyish miner protested. “Who’s going to take care of her if they send me away?”
“My old mother depends on me,” muttered another.
An older man seemed to be dazed and kept shaking his graying head. “It ain’t fair! This is America! They can’t do this!”
A Ford parked at the corner, and the driver got out and stood for a long time watching the prisoners. Sant! Chris almost shouted his name, then remembered where she was and swallowed her outcry. He could get her out of the bullpen, but she could do that herself just by revealing her identity. Sant couldn’t stop this deportation, though. No use getting him mixed up in it.
Her father must have phoned him, and Sant had driven down to look after her. He’d worry when he couldn’t find her, but eventually she’d be on a boxcar with Johnny, the train would take them somewhere, and she could let her family know she was safe.
Still, when Sant got back in his car and drove toward town, she felt abandoned and had to fight back tears.
Armed deputies formed two rows through which strikers were made to pass as they were loaded into waiting cattle cars and boxcars. They were asked if they’d go back to work. Those who agreed were released. The others were herded into cars that smelled of dung.
Johnny played his guitar and sang till the waiting men and those on the boxcars joined in fervently.
“You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.”
Fayte came through the prisoners to Johnny. Chris faded behind some men. “We don’t want you on this train,” Fayte said. “Come on, songbird. Sheriff Wheeler’s told me to give you a ride out of town.”
“I want to go with my friends.”
“So you can keep them stirred up?” Fayte prodded Johnny with a pistol. “Get moving, Wob.”
Slowly, Johnny moved through the prisoners. Chris followed, though she kept out of Fayte’s view. Sant’s Ford was back. He was scanning the crowd in the diamond. Someone must have told him she’d been seeing one of the strikers. As they cleared the fringe of strikers, Johnny turned around.
“Let me stay with the others.”
“No. You’re
the head of the snake, maybe its heart. Without you, it won’t rattle long!”
“They’ll think I made some deal with you.” Johnny’s voice rose. Chris had never seen him afraid, but he felt fear now. “They’ll think I sold out.”
Fayte chuckled. “That’s exactly what we’ll tell ’em, songbird. Maybe next time they won’t listen to you damn Wobblies.” He nudged Johnny with the gun. “Get going.”
Johnny walked a few steps. Then he turned suddenly, dropping his guitar as he sprang for Fayte. Fayte’s gun and another guard’s roared at the same time.
Slammed backward, Johnny put his hands over his side. Blood poured between his fingers, pumped from the wound in his throat, as he fell.
Chris ran toward him, hat dropping off as she fell on her knees to lift him. His eyes opened.
“Pretty lady.”
He coughed. Blood poured from his mouth as he died in her arms.
Tomochic Cananea. Blood. Darkness. The blue of the sky went black as she felt Fayte’s hands gripping her. But as he called her name, there was Sheriff Wheeler’s angry voice demanding what Fayte was trying to do, and there were Sant’s hands and Sant’s voice.
It was late September. Chris, Nicodemus in her lap, had been sitting on the porch with Talitha when the baby stirred, tugging at her vitals. Johnny’s baby, the stranger’s seed, rooted in her as any drifting seed will try to find a warm rich place to nestle and rest and produce its kind.
“The babe?” asked Talitha. Her eyes were bright blue at seventy-seven and, for all they had looked on, were still unwavering.
Chris nodded.
“When are you going to marry Sant?”
“I can’t, Grande.”
“Why? Because another man got you with child? That child’s going to need a father. Sant would be a good one.”
“It wouldn’t be fair.”
“Fair, fiddlesticks!” Talitha leaned forward. “That boy loves you, always has, always will. And you love him. Or haven’t you realized that?”
“I know I love him.” Whatever she’d had for Johnny had been transformed into tenderness for his baby, the will to make sure part of him lived on and loved and laughed, grew up strong and well. “But I—I’ve been married once. And now there’s this baby. Sant should have someone young and fresh and new—”
Harvest of Fury Page 37