The Lawless

by John Jakes

  On a chance, he gazed west along the side of the hill. Sure enough, there was the man from the depot. All at once Gideon felt uneasy.

  The man from the depot was making his way in Gideon’s direction, moving steadily but with no apparent haste. Gideon checked the second man again. He was coming down the hillside to intersect the path of the first. As the two appeared and disappeared behind shifting groups of people, Gideon understood the reason for the yellow bandannas.

  Easy identification in what could become a very confused situation.

  The men were searching for someone; their movements were too deliberate for it to be otherwise. They studied faces as they walked, and they didn’t do it casually. For a moment he thought the men might be after him, but that was ridiculous. Even though his editorials had repeatedly criticized the Pennsylvania Railroad and its tame legislators in Harrisburg, right now Tom Scott had more important things to worry about than trailing an unfriendly journalist. Gideon could only conclude the two men were detectives sent to the hill to spot those fomenting violence. Spot them and, later, testify against them in a trial.

  “Bread or blood! BREAD OR BLOOD!”

  The continuous chanting had grown louder. The Philadelphia militiamen had fixed their bayonets and were advancing slowly toward the mob blocking the crossing. Gideon glanced over his shoulder. The men in yellow bandannas were still drifting his way, but paying no attention to him.

  In the midst of all the noise, he suddenly had a good thought for the opening of the dispatch he’d write when the day was over. He flipped to a new page on his pad and scribbled:

  Citizens of Pittsburgh sometimes call their city hell with the lid off, and not always in jest. When the fires of the steel mills light the evening sky, the metaphor is seen to be an apt one. Today, the widening railroad strike gave the phrase a new, grimmer meaning—

  He put a squiggle beneath the last word, then made a face. He was as shameless as any ambulance-chasing cub on the Union staff. Writing of disaster before it happened, as if it were certain to happen.

  But it was. An angry roar came from those blocking the crossing, and from the thousands on the hillside. He had a feeling some of them weren’t sure why they were shouting—or even why they were present. He passed three such men, all drunk as owls and stumbling against one another. One of the men had a pistol in his belt.

  The Philadelphia militiamen at the front of the hollow square had reached the crossing. They began to poke at the nearest civilians with their bayonets. Very lightly—very cautiously—barely touching an arm here, a shoulder there. But probing, jabbing, nonetheless.

  An officer again ordered the civilians to clear the crossing. The bayonets thrust and jabbed. Some of the workers fell back. The men who’d climbed atop the four coal cars watched the bayonets flashing and grew angry. One of them threw a lump of coal.

  The coal struck a militiaman’s head, knocking his black-plumed hat off. The soldiers on either side of him spun and glared at the men on the four coal cars. Somehow, just that attention incited the men. From the cars there suddenly came a barrage of coal.

  This is the start, Gideon thought. He saw it in almost every sunlit face, and heard it in the chant for bread or blood. The militiamen dodged the chunks of coal. Their officers bawled orders to keep them from firing at their attackers.

  While Gideon was gloomily studying the scene, his eye was drawn to a slab-jawed fellow at the bottom of the slope. The man was gazing up at him. Just as Gideon noticed him, he started to climb a footpath, heading in Gideon’s direction.

  Gideon’s heart pounded. Exactly like the two who had again vanished in the hillside crowds, the man wore a bright yellow bandanna.

  ii

  There was a great deal to keep track of simultaneously, and Gideon’s glance kept flying from one spot to another—first to the crossing, then to the man climbing the footpath, then to someone yelling a taunt from higher on the hill, then to a couple of giggling boys who dodged behind a wooden watchman’s shanty near the crossing.

  The shack screened the boys from the civilians and soldiers just below. The boys began to pick up rocks. Grinning adults nearby tossed them extra stones, sticks, and even a couple of old shoes. When the boys had their arms full, they jumped into the open on the east side of the shanty and started throwing the objects at the militiamen.

  None of the objects was large enough to do serious damage. But the harassment drew more glares from the soldiers. A rifle or two swung toward the shanty. Several people shrieked and ducked. The boys scampered behind the shanty again, pleased with themselves, and that might have been the end of it if those on the hillside hadn’t begun doing what the boys had done.

  Throwing shoes.

  Rocks.

  Broken pieces of brick.

  Anything available.

  One militiaman went to his knees, a bloody gash opened in his temple by a chunk of brick. He had his rifle halfway to his shoulder before an officer seized his arm to restrain him.

  But hundreds saw the young man start to take aim. Defiant cries rose all over the hillside.

  “Shoot!”

  “Shoot, you sons of bitches!”

  “YAH, YAH, YAH—WHY DON’T YOU SHOOT?”

  The slab-jawed man was still working his way upward on the congested footpath. His coat flapped and Gideon glimpsed a pistol. Again he tried to tell himself the man wasn’t after him. Perhaps the trio in yellow bandannas didn’t even work for the railroad. They might be agitators acting on behalf of the International. Informants had told him Marxists were definitely operating within the strike movement, hoping to increase the ferocity of any confrontation.

  Suddenly there were loud cracklings, like gunshots. People screamed and scattered. Gideon held his place and saw two boys being collared by the woman to whom he’d spoken earlier. Spurts of blue smoke on the ground behind them told him the boys had ignited some of their Fourth of July torpedoes. No one down at the crossing seemed to realize they were hearing firecrackers.

  The loud reports, the missiles raining from the hillside, the bloodythirsty yells of the civilians—all combined to spread panic among the Philadelphians. Nearly every man in uniform was bellowing something at the civilians—profanity, commands, pleas for reason—God alone knew what all. In the midst of all that noise, Gideon didn’t hear the shot that touched off the carnage. Nor did he see who fired it. He couldn’t tell whether it had come from the hillside or the crossing. All he knew was that, without warning, the militiamen knelt or stood and began shooting in all directions.

  A man screamed and pitched off one of the coal cars. Another civilian fell at the crossing, hit in the chest. Ten feet to Gideon’s right, a girl of three or four dropped her rag doll and screamed. A man bent over her, pulled her bloodied skirt away, and Gideon heard him cry, “My God, half her knee’s gone.”

  He started toward the distraught father to see if he could help. He’d taken just two long steps in the chaos of exploding firearms, running civilians, thickening smoke when two men seized his arms from behind.

  He writhed, lunged, tried to pull and kick his way free but the two were strong. A well-dressed civilian went fleeing by, holding his top hat in place with both hands. As soon as he was out of the way, Gideon saw the slab-jawed man approaching from the footpath.

  He wrenched his head around. Glimpsed exactly what he expected to see—a yellow bandanna knotted at the throat of the man holding his right arm. He was sure the man on the left wore one as well.

  Members of the Pittsburgh militia who’d withdrawn to the hillside were up and running now, driven by conscience to help their fellow soldiers. Half a dozen of them were coming from the west, on a path that would bring them right to Gideon—but probably not fast enough to be of help.

  The slab-jawed man crowded in close. Drew out his pistol. One of the others grabbed Gideon’s hair. The three pressed around him, making it virtually impossible for the gun to be seen.

  Rifles roared at the crossing. Hand w
eapons began to answer from the hillside. Some of the spectators were gleefully potting at the militiamen, scattering scores of others around them. In the confusion, these three who had obviously been following him for some time would do what they’d been hired to do.

  “Who sent you?” Gideon gasped at the slab-jawed man. “Tom Courtleigh?”

  “Smart bugger, ain’t he?” said the unseen man at Gideon’s left. The slab-jawed man snickered, his smile revealing brown teeth.

  “Why, Mr. Kent,” he said, “we ain’t s’posed to use any names. ’Cept yours, of course.” The muzzle of the pistol jabbed Gideon’s belly. “Let’s just say we’re bringin’ regards from a friend in Chicago.”

  Gideon wrenched to the left. The man holding his right arm exclaimed, “Hurry it up, Jim. Them Pittsburgh sojers are comin’ right this way.”

  The slab-jawed man took time to glance over Gideon’s shoulder and verify the warning. Again Gideon lunged. He couldn’t free himself. The slab-jawed man retreated one step. He took aim. The pistol cracked, the noise all but unnoticed in the pandemonium.

  At first Gideon felt no more than a sting in his left side. Then, rapidly, dizziness and pain swept over him. His knees buckled. The two men continued to prop him up while they and their leader tore off the yellow bandannas. Then they let go and scrambled out of the way of the Pittsburgh militiamen.

  Gideon tumbled sideways down the hill. He dug his hands in the dirt and stopped rolling as one militiaman yelled, “Francis, we should help that fella. He’s bleedin’—”

  “I wouldn’t lift a hand to help any of these civilians. They get hurt, it’s their own damn fault for comin’ out here to cause trouble.”

  The voice faded. Gideon lay on his belly, gazing at the summit of the hill. Between the flickering figures of the Pittsburgh men running by, he saw the three thugs climbing Twenty-eighth Street and disappearing over the top of the ridge.

  All around he heard guns volleying. Men cursing or yelling in pain. Women shrieking. Children wailing or calling for their parents.

  Someone stumbled into him. His hands lost their hold and he started rolling again, over and over down the hillside. The cindery soil tore his face open. He crashed against the watchman’s shanty, his descent arrested. He could feel blood sopping his left side.

  How badly was he hurt? No way to tell. He shouted. No one heard. Or if they did, they refused to come to his aid.

  He thought of Courtleigh. So full of hatred, he’d had to pay men to balance his accounts—and in such a way that he could never be held responsible. Gideon didn’t like to believe Sime Strelnik had been right, and that the Courtleighs of the world were beyond the reach of justice. But because they could hire others to kill for them, perhaps they were.

  How had the three men found him? Followed him on the train to Pittsburgh? Or had they been watching at the depot, just like the old woman in Chicago six years ago?

  He’d never know the answer. It made little difference anyway. He was frightened of the blurred quality of his right eye, and of an uncontrollable heaviness of his eyelid.

  Julia’s dear face flashed into his mind.

  Then poor Margaret’s.

  Will’s.

  Eleanor’s—God, why hadn’t she answered his letters, so that he could have seen her one time before he died?

  You aren’t going to die, he told himself. But he feared it was empty confidence. The left side of his chest felt as if it had been set afire.

  He thought of Matt. The book they’d done together. He was furious and sad that he might never see a copy of 100 Years. He no longer cared whether it succeeded or failed. It was a good work, it said what he wanted to say, and Matt’s illustrations were genius. That was enough.

  The thunder of firearms had become almost continuous. His left shoulder was wedged between the ground and the wall of the watchman’s shanty. He saw distorted images of people racing by—grotesque shapes against the ridge and the summer sky.

  “Wrong,” he said, growing delirious. “Wrong—all this. Bread, but—not at—this price—”

  The almost incoherent whisper faded. He braced a palm beneath his body, vainly tried to lift himself. “Jesus Christ,” he gasped, more as a prayer than an oath. In pain, he fell back, his head slamming the side of the shanty.

  He fought the weight of his right eyelid. He couldn’t keep it open. He slipped away to darkness, terrified that he’d never wake again.

  Chapter V

  The Punishers

  i

  LIKE A GREAT many theatrical people, Eleanor preferred the fantasy of the stage to the reality of the everyday world. Consequently she had little interest in major news events, and seldom let them intrude into her thinking. That weekend, though, such intrusion couldn’t be avoided. With one exception—Margaret—everyone in the household, even Will, was talking about the strike and the frightful headlines it had generated:

  Bloodshed in Baltimore!

  ——o——

  Looters Threaten Pittsburgh!

  ——o——

  The Great Strike Spreads!

  When Eleanor went downstairs for Sunday breakfast, the serving girls had a nervous, fluttery air. All of them seemed in a hurry to rush back to the kitchen. Eleanor said to one of them, “What on earth’s making you so jumpy, Bridgit?”

  “Why, I’m anxious to keep up with the latest about the strike, mum. Most of the papers are puttin’ out special Sunday extras.”

  Eleanor nearly dropped her coffee cup. The trend toward regular Sunday editions was accelerating, but still met resistance from some clerics and their conservative congregations. The Union wasn’t yet publishing on the Sabbath. A few months before Gideon had moved out, she recalled him saying it was probably inevitable, though. The strike was truly an event of apocalyptic importance if the New York dailies were rushing extras onto the streets today.

  She followed Bridgit toward the kitchen. “Has the Union put out an extra?”

  “We understand it will, mum. The Union and several others that are a wee bit behind the rest. Mills has gone to fetch the latest batch. He should be back soon.”

  Growing more and more curious, Eleanor walked into the kitchen. All the servants were gathered around cook, who was reading from a paper Eleanor identified as the National Republican, published in Washington. Tense faces turned Eleanor’s way as she walked in. Normally she would have been greeted as befitted the mistress of the house. Today, with the world in turmoil, only nods or strained smiles acknowledged her arrival.

  “—an’ the fact is clearly manifest,” cook read in her resonant voice, “that communistic ideas are very widely entertained in America by the workmen employed in mines and factories and by the railroads. This poison was introduced into our social system by European laborers. Now it is true that postwar prosperity has fa—fa—”

  Bridgit glanced over her shoulder to help her with the word: “Facilitated.”

  “Just what I was about to say.” Cook let the younger girl see her displeasure. She rattled the paper, cleared her throat and resumed, “Facilitated the sudden”—another pause; this time Bridget kept quiet and cook was forced to stumble through on her own—“acquisition of wealth through dubious and unscrupulous means—Lord, why can’t they use plain words ordinary folk can understand? Where was I—ah. It is also true that the crimes of certain men who made haste to grow rich are—oh, you take over.” She thrust the newspaper at the butler, who finished the sentence:

  “Are reprehensible.” Samuel scowled. “Since when is it a crime to grow rich?” he asked rhetorically. Then he went on, “Nevertheless, the rail strike is nothing less than communism in its worst and most poisonous form—not only unlawful and revolutionary but anti-American. It is the dread Commune of 1871 reborn on our very soil!”

  He ended the reading dramatically. Reaction ranged from ashen faces to a breathy “Amen.” Eleanor was about to ask a question when Mills tromped in, carrying more papers.

  “The Union’s out.” His
voice was strangely hoarse. “It contains Mr. Kent’s final dispatch from Pittsburgh.”

  Eleanor rushed to his side. “What do you mean, final?”

  He was careful to avoid her eyes. “During yesterday’s violence, he was shot.”

  ii

  She could hardly believe it. But the black-bordered box on page one was indeed headed OUR PUBLISHER INJURED.

  Quickly she read the special bulletin copy. Her father had been shot during mob violence at the Twenty-eighth Street crossing of the Pennsylvania Railroad. He’d been taken to a hospital and, following removal of the bullet from his left side, his condition had stabilized.

  Eleanor was conscious of the servants pressing in around her, as anxious as she was to learn what had happened. A part of her hated Gideon—and with justification, she believed—but at a time like this, he remained her father. Blood ties were stronger than any other, she was forced to admit.

  “My Lord, they burned boxcars and rolled ’em into the depot where the Philly militia spent the night!” Bridgit exclaimed, pointing to the ten-deck headline of the main story. But Eleanor was scanning Theo Payne’s signed editorial statement below the boxed bulletin.

  —and while the arson, bloodshed and looting in Pittsburgh cannot be condoned in the name of the struggle for workingmen’s rights, neither can we condone what is being done in other quarters. We refer to the widely published accusations against the strikers.

  It is alleged that, to the last man, the participants in the strike are Marxists. Such statements are not only false and dishonorable; they are dangerous. Society must rigorously punish lawbreakers, but just as rigorously protect the right of legitimate protest. It is the opinion of this journal, and this writer, that a peaceful strike falls under the last heading.

  We want no part of Communism in America. But neither do we want it used as an all too convenient tar brush with which the illiterate, the gullible and the unscrupulous alike may attempt to ruin reputations and eliminate honest dissent.