The other answered, quietly, "They treat the new men the same as they treated the old."
Hal thought suddenly of John Edstrom's ants! Here they were--building their bridge, building it again and again, as often as floods might destroy it! They had not the swift impatience of a youth of the leisure-class, accustomed to having his own way, accustomed to thinking of freedom and decency and justice as necessities of life. Much as Hal learned from the conversation of these men, he learned more from their silences--the quiet, matter-of-fact way they took things which had driven him beside himself with indignation. He began to realise what it would mean to stand by his pledge to those poor devils in North Valley.
He would need more than one blaze of excitement; he would need brains and patience and discipline, he would need years of study and hard work!
SECTION 20.
Hal found himself forced to accept the decision of the labour-leaders.
They had had experience, they could judge the situation. The miners would have to go back to work, and Cartwright and Alec Stone and Jeff Cotton would drive them as before! All that the rebels could do was to try to keep a secret organisation in the camp.
Jerry Minetti mentioned Jack David. He had gone back this morning, without having seen the labour-leaders. So he might escape suspicion, and keep his job, and help the union work.
"How about you?" asked Hal. "I suppose you've cooked your goose."
Jerry had never heard this phrase, but he got its meaning. "Sure thing!"
said he. "Cooked him plenty!"
"Didn't you see the 'dicks' down stairs in the lobby?" inquired Hartman.
"I haven't learned to recognise them yet."
"Well, you will, if you stay at this business. There hasn't been a minute since our office was opened that we haven't had half a dozen on the other side of the street. Every man that comes to see us is followed back to his camp and fired that same day. They've broken into my desk at night and stolen my letters and papers; they've threatened us with death a hundred times."
"I don't see how you make any headway at all!"
"They can never stop us. They thought when they broke into my desk, they'd get a list of our organisers. But you see, I carry the lists in my head!"
"No small task, either," put in Moylan. "Would you like to know how many organisers we have at work? Ninety-seven. And they haven't caught a single one of them!"
Hal heard him, amazed. Here was a new aspect of the labour movement!
This quiet, resolute old "Dutchy," whom you might have taken for a delicatessen-proprietor; this merry-eyed Irish boy, whom you would have expected to be escorting a lady to a firemen's ball----they were captains of an army of sappers who were undermining the towers of Peter Harrigan's fortress of greed!
Hartman suggested that Jerry might take a chance at this sort of work.
He would surely be fired from North Valley, so he might as well send word to his family to come to Pedro. In this way he might save himself to work as an organiser; because it was the custom of these company "spotters" to follow a man back to his camp and there identify him. If Jerry took a train for Western City, they would be thrown off the track, and he might get into some new camp and do organising among the Italians. Jerry accepted this proposition with alacrity; it would put off the evil day when Rosa and her little ones would be left to the mercy of chance.
They were still talking when the telephone rang. It was Hartman's secretary in Sheridan, reporting that he had just heard from the kidnapped committee. The entire party, eight men and Mary Burke, had been taken to Horton, a station not far up the line, and put on the train with many dire threats. But they had left the train at the next stop, and declared their intention of coming to Pedro. They were due at the hotel very soon.
Hal desired to be present at this meeting, and went downstairs to tell his brother. There was another dispute, of course. Edward reminded Hal that the scenery of Pedro had a tendency to monotony; to which Hal could only answer by offering to introduce his brother to his friends. They were men who could teach Edward much, if he would consent to learn. He might attend the session with the committee--eight men and a woman who had ventured an act of heroism and been made the victims of a crime. Nor were they bores, as Edward might be thinking! There was blue-eyed Tim Rafferty, for example, a silent, smutty-faced gnome who had broken out of his black cavern and spread unexpected golden wings of oratory; and Mary Burke, of whom Edward might read in that afternoon's edition of the Western City _Gazette_--a "Joan of Arc of the coal-camps," or something equally picturesque. But Edward's mood was not to be enlivened. He had a vision of his brother's appearance in the paper as the companion of this Hibernian Joan!
Hal went off with Jerry Minetti to what his brother described as a "hash-house," while Edward proceeded in solitary state to the dining-room of the American Hotel. But he was not left in solitary state; pretty soon a sharp-faced young man was ushered to a seat beside him, and started up a conversation. He was a "drummer," he said; his "line" was hardware, what was Edward's? Edward answered coldly that he had no "line," but the young man was not rebuffed--apparently his "line"
had hardened his sensibilities. Perhaps Edward was interested in coal-mines? Had he been visiting the camps? He questioned so persistently, and came back so often to the subject, that at last it dawned over Edward what this meant--he was receiving the attention of a "spotter!" Strange to say, the circumstance caused Edward more irritation against Peter Harrigan's regime than all his brother's eloquence about oppression at North Valley.
SECTION 21.
Soon after dinner the kidnapped committee arrived, bedraggled in body and weary in soul. They inquired for Johann Hartman, and were sent up to the room, where there followed a painful scene. Eight men and a woman who had ventured an act of heroism and been made the victims of a crime could not easily be persuaded to see their efforts and sacrifices thrown on the dump-heap, nor were they timid in expressing their opinions of those who were betraying them.
"You been tryin' to get us out!" cried Tim Rafferty. "Ever since I can remember you been at my old man to help you--an' here, when we do what you ask, you throw us down!"
"We never asked you to go on strike," said Moylan.
"No, that's true. You only asked us to pay dues, so you fellows could have fat salaries."
"Our salaries aren't very fat," replied the young leader, patiently.
"You'd find that out if you investigated."
"Well, whatever they are, they go on, while ours stop. We're on the streets, we're done for. Look at us--and most of us has got families, too! I got an old mother an' a lot of brothers and sisters, an' my old man done up an' can't work. What do you think's to become of us?"
"We'll help you out a little, Rafferty--"
"To hell with you!" cried Tim. "I don't want your help! When I need charity, I'll go to the county. They're another bunch of grafters, but they don't pretend to be friends to the workin' man."
Here was the thing Tom Olson had told Hal at the outset--the workingmen bedevilled, not knowing whom to trust, suspecting the very people who most desired to help them. "Tim," he put in, "there's no use talking like that. We have to learn patience--"
And the boy turned upon Hal. "What do you know about it? It's all a joke to you. You can go off and forget it when you get ready. You've got money, they tell me!"
Hal felt no resentment at this; it was what he heard from his own conscience. "It isn't so easy for me as you think, Tim. There are other ways of suffering besides not having money--"
"Much sufferin' you'll do--with your rich folks!" sneered Tim.
There was a murmur of protest from others of the committee.
"Good God, Rafferty!" broke in Moylan. "We can't help it, man--we're just as helpless as you!"
"You say you're helpless--but you don't even try!"
"_Try?_ Do you want us to back a strike that we know hasn't a chance?
You might as well ask us to lie down and let a load of coal run over us.
We can't win, man! I tell you we can't _win_! We'd only be throwing away our organisation!"
Moylan became suddenly impassioned. He had seen a dozen sporadic strikes in this district, and many a dozen young strikers, homeless, desolate, embittered, turning their disappointment on him. "We might support you with our funds, you say--we might go on doing it, even while the company ran the mine with scabs. But where would that land us, Rafferty? I seen many a union on the rocks--and I ain't so old either! If we had a bank, we'd support all the miners of the country, they'd never need to work again till they got their rights. But this money we spend is the money that other miners are earnin'--right now, down in the pits, Rafferty, the same as you and your old man. They give us this money, and they say, 'Use it to build up the union. Use it to help the men that aren't organised--take them in, so they won't beat down our wages and scab on us. But don't waste it, for God's sake; we have to work hard to make it, and if we don't see results, you'll get no more out of us.' Don't you see how that is, man? And how it weighs on us, worse even then the fear that maybe we'll lose our poor salaries--though you might refuse to believe anything so good of us? You don't need to talk to me like I was Peter Harrigan's son. I was a spragger when I was ten years old, and I ain't been out of the pits so long that I've forgot the feeling. I assure you, the thing that keeps me awake at night ain't the fear of not gettin' a living, for I give myself a bit of education, working nights, and I know I could always turn out and earn what I need; but it's wondering whether I'm spending the miners' money the best way, whether maybe I mightn't save them a little misery if I hadn't 'a' done this or had 'a' done that. When I come down on that sleeper last night, here's what I was thinking, Tim Rafferty--all the time I listened to the train bumping--'Now I got to see some more of the suffering, I got to let some good men turn against us, because they can't see why we should get salaries while they get the sack. How am I going to show them that I'm working for them--working as hard as I know how--and that I'm not to blame for their trouble?'"
Here Wauchope broke in. "There's no use talking any more. I see we're up against it. We'll not trouble you, Moylan."
"You trouble me," cried Moylan, "unless you stand by the movement!"
The other laughed bitterly. "You'll never know what I do. It's the road for me--and you know it!"
"Well, wherever you go, it'll be the same; either you'll be fighting for the union, or you'll be a weight that we have to carry."
The young leader turned from one to another of the committee, pleading with them not to be embittered by this failure, but to turn it to their profit, going on with the work of building up the solidarity of the miners. Every man had to make his sacrifices, to pay his part of the price. The thing of importance was that every man who was discharged should be a spark of unionism, carrying the flame of revolt to a new part of the country. Let each one do his part, and there would soon be no place to which the masters could send for "scabs."
SECTION 22.
There was one member of this committee whom Hal watched with especial anxiety----Mary Burke. She had not yet said a word; while the others argued and protested, she sat with her lips set and her hands clenched.