"What money?"
"Some I've earned."
It was Edward's turn to laugh. "Enough to buy you a shave and a bath?"
He took out his wallet, and pulled off several bills; and Hal, watching him, realised suddenly a change which had taken place in his own psychology. Not merely had he acquired the class-consciousness of the working-man, he had acquired the money-consciousness as well. He was actually concerned about the dollars the company owed him! He had earned those dollars by back- and heart-breaking toil, lifting lumps of coal into cars; the sum was enough to keep the whole Rafferty family alive for a week or two. And here was Edward, with a smooth brown leather wallet full of ten- and twenty-dollar bills, which he peeled off without counting, exactly as if money grew on trees, or as if coal came out of the earth and walked into furnaces to the sound of a fiddle and a flute!
Edward had of course no idea of these abnormal processes going on in his brother's mind. He was holding out the bills. "Get yourself some decent things," he said. "I hope you don't have to stay dirty in order to feel democratic?"
"No," answered Hal; and then, "How are we going?"
"I've a car waiting, back of the office."
"So you had everything ready!" But Edward made no answer; afraid of setting off the volcano again.
SECTION 18.
They went out by the rear door of the office, entered the car, and sped out of the village, unseen by the crowd. And all the way down the canyon Edward pleaded with Hal to drop the controversy and come home at once.
He brought up the tragic question of Dad again; when that did not avail, he began to threaten. Suppose Hal's money-resources were to be cut off, suppose he were to find himself left out of his father's will--what would he do then? Hal answered, without a smile, "I can always get a job as organiser for the United Mine-Workers."
So Edward gave up that line of attack. "If you won't come," he declared, "I'm going to stay by you till you do!"
"All right," said Hal. He could not help smiling at this dire threat.
"But if I take you about and introduce you to my friends, you must agree that what you hear shall be confidential."
The other made a face of disgust. "What the devil would I want to talk about your friends for?"
"I don't know what might happen," said Hal. "You're going to meet Peter Harrigan and take his side, and I can't tell what you might conceive it your duty to do."
The other exclaimed, with sudden passion, "I'll tell you right now! If you try to go back to that coal-camp, I swear to God I'll apply to the courts and have you shut up in a sanitarium. I don't think I'd have much trouble in persuading a judge that you're insane."
"No," said Hal, with a laugh--"not a judge in this part of the world!"
Then, after studying his brother's face for a moment, it occurred to him that it might be well not to let such an idea rest unimpeached in Edward's mind. "Wait," said he, "till you meet my friend Billy Keating, of the _Gazette_, and hear what he would do with such a story! Billy is crazy to have me turn him loose to 'play up' my fight with Old Peter!"
The conversation went no farther--but Hal was sure that Edward would "put that in his pipe and smoke it."
They came to the MacKellar home in Pedro, and Edward waited in the automobile while Hal went inside. The old Scotchman welcomed him warmly, and told him what news he had. Jerry Minetti had been there that morning, and MacKellar at his request had telephoned to the office of the union in Sheridan, and ascertained that Jack David had brought word about the strike on the previous evening. All parties had been careful not to mention names, for "leaks" in the telephone were notorious, but it was clear who the messenger had been. As a result of the message, Johann Hartman, president of the local union of the miners, was now at the American Hotel in Pedro, together with James Moylan, secretary of the district organisation--the latter having come down from Western City on the same train as Edward.
This was all satisfactory; but MacKellar added a bit of information of desperate import--the officers of the union declared that they could not support a strike at the present time! It was premature, it could lead to nothing but failure and discouragement to the larger movement they were planning.
Such a possibility Hal had himself realised at the outset. But he had witnessed the new birth of freedom at North Valley, he had seen the hungry, toil-worn faces of men looking up to him for support; he had been moved by it, and had come to feel that the union officials must be moved in the same way. "They've simply got to back it!" he exclaimed.
"Those men must not be disappointed! They'll lose all hope, they'll sink into utter despair! The labour men must realise that--I must make them!"
The old Scotchman answered that Minetti had felt the same way. He had flung caution to the winds, and rushed over to the hotel to see Hartman and Moylan. Hal decided to follow, and went out to the automobile.
He explained matters to his brother, whose comment was, Of course! It was what he had foretold. The poor, mis-guided miners would go back to their work, and their would-be leader would have to admit the folly of his course. There was a train for Western City in a couple of hours; it would be a great favour if Hal would arrange to take it.
Hal answered shortly that he was going to the American Hotel. His brother might take him there, if he chose. So Edward gave the order to the driver of the car. Incidentally, Edward began asking about clothing-stores in Pedro. While Hal was in the hotel, pleading for the life of his newly-born labour union, Edward would seek a costume in which he could "feel like a human being."
SECTION 19.
Hal found Jerry Minetti with the two officials in their hotel-room: Jim Moylan, district secretary, a long, towering Irish boy, black-eyed and black-haired, quick and sensitive, the sort of person one trusted and liked at the first moment; and Johann Hartman, local president, a grey-haired miner of German birth, reserved and slow-spoken, evidently a man of much strength, both physical and moral. He had need of it, any one could realise, having charge of a union headquarters in the heart of this "Empire of Raymond"!
Hal first told of the kidnapping of the committee. This did not surprise the officials, he found; it was the thing the companies regularly did when there was threat of rebellion in the camps. That was why efforts to organise openly were so utterly hopeless. There was no chance for anything but a secret propaganda, maintained until every camp had the nucleus of an organisation.
"So you can't back this strike!" exclaimed Hal.
Not possibly, was Moylan's reply. It would be lost as soon as it was begun. There was no slightest hope of success until a lot of organisation work had been done.
"But meantime," argued Hal, "the union at North Valley will go to pieces!"
"Perhaps," was the reply. "We'll only have to start another. That's what the labour movement is like."
Jim Moylan was young, and saw Hal's mood. "Don't misunderstand us!" he cried. "It's heartbreaking--but it's not in our power to help. We are charged with building up the union, and we know that if we supported everything that looked like a strike, we'd be bankrupt the first year.
You can't imagine how often this same thing happens--hardly a month we're not called on to handle such a situation."
"I can see what you mean," said Hal. "But I thought that in this case, right after the disaster, with the men so stirred--"
The young Irishman smiled, rather sadly. "You're new at this game," he said. "If a mine-disaster was enough to win a strike, God knows our job would be easy. In Barela, just down the canyon from you, they've had three big explosions--they've killed over five hundred men in the past year!"
Hal began to see how, in his inexperience, he had lost his sense of proportion.
He looked at the two labour leaders, and recalled the picture of such a person which he had brought with him to North Valley--a hot headed and fiery agitator, luring honest workingmen from their jobs. But here was the situation exactly reversed! Here was he in a blaze of excitement--and two labour leaders turning the fire-hose on him! They sat quiet and business-like, pronouncing a doom upon the slaves of North Valley. Back to their black dungeons with them!
"What can we tell the men?" he asked, making an effort to repress his chagrin.
"We can only tell them what I'm telling you--that we're helpless, till we've got the whole district organised. Meantime, they have to stand the gaff; they must do what they can to keep an organisation."
"But all the active men will be fired!"
"No, not quite all--they seldom get them all."
Here the stolid old German put in. In the last year the company had turned out more than six thousand men because of union activity or suspicion of it.
"_Six thousand!_" echoed Hal. "You mean from this one district?"
"That's what I mean."
"But there aren't more than twelve or fifteen thousand men in the district!"
"I know that."
"Then how can you ever keep an organisation?"