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_ It began quietly, as the fateful unexpected so often begins.
Children, of all ages and sizes, were playing in the street, and
Saxon, by the open front window, was watching them and dreaming
day dreams of her child soon to be. The sunshine mellowed
peacefully down, and a light wind from the bay cooled the air and
gave to it a tang of salt. One of the children pointed up Pine
Street toward Seventh. All the children ceased playing, and
stared and pointed. They formed into groups, the larger boys, of
from ten to twelve, by themselves, the older girls anxiously
clutching the small children by the hands or gathering them into
their arms.
Saxon could not see the cause of all this, but she could guess
when she saw the larger boys rush to the gutter, pick up stones,
and sneak into the alleys between the houses. Smaller boys tried
to imitate them. The girls, dragging the tots by the arms, banged
gates and clattered up the front steps of the small houses. The
doors slammed behind them, and the street was deserted, though
here and there front shades were drawn aside so that
anxious-faced women might peer forth. Saxon heard the uptown
train puffing and snorting as it pulled out from Center Street.
Then, from the direction of Seventh, came a hoarse, throaty
manroar. Still, she could see nothing, and she remembered
Mercedes Higgins' words "THEY ARE LIKE DOGS WRANGLING OVER BONES.
JOBS ARE BONES, YOU KNOW"
The roar came closer, and Saxon, leaning out, saw a dozen scabs,
conveyed by as many special police and Pinkertons, coming down
the sidewalk on her side of tho street. They came compactly, as
if with discipline, while behind, disorderly, yelling confusedly,
stooping to pick up rocks, were seventy-five or a hundred of the
striking shopmen. Saxon discovered herself trembling with
apprehension, knew that she must not, and controlled herself. She
was helped in this by the conduct of Mercedes Higgins. The o]d
woman came out of her front door, dragging a chair, on which she
coolly seated herself on the tiny stoop at the top of the steps.
In the hands of the special police were clubs. The Pinkertons
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
sidewMk, 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, almout 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." _
Read next: BOOK II: CHAPTER X
Read previous: BOOK II: CHAPTER VIII
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