The Way of the Strong Part 78

She did not know. She could not think. He was in the neighborhood. That was certain. But where, where? She paced the room puzzling her brains as to how she might find him. Then, quite without realizing her actions, she opened a drawer in her bureau and drew out the riding suit Monica had given her. She had only worn it a few times before Monica had been taken seriously ill. She looked it over. It had been her great pride--once. Its divided skirt and beautiful long coat had been a positive joy.

Suddenly an irresistible impulse made her lay it out on her bed. The next moment she began to remove her own costume.

Far out on the outskirts of those wheat lands which acknowledged the direct control of the master of Deep Willows, at a point where the cultivated land yielded to the wood-lined slopes of the river valley, a great crowd of men, made to look almost insignificant by comparison with their wide surroundings, were listening eagerly to a speaker, perched upon the prostrate form of a huge tree trunk.

It was evening, and the westering sun lolled heavily upon the skyline, cradled in a cauldron of fiery cloud rising to bear it upon its long night journey. Everywhere was the profound peace when Nature composes itself for repose at the close of day. The air was sweet with the perfume of ripening foliage, blended with the dank which rose from the racing waters below. It was a moment for peace and good-will; it was a moment when all life should yield its thanks for blessings bestowed by the unseen hand of Nature; it was a moment when the heart of man should bow before the Creator of a beneficent life.

Yet neither peace nor good-will reigned. The arrogant heart of man was stirred by pa.s.sions of discontent, and even evil. Life and all its benefits and blessings they possessed, and possessing them they cared nothing for such possession. These things were forgotten in a craving for more. This crowd was foregathered that it might learn how best to satisfy its discontent, which had been stirred by mischievous tongues in hearts. .h.i.therto contented.

The man on the tree trunk was no mere flamboyant orator preaching a doctrine of profound socialism. He was not talking "principle," so beloved of the tub-thumper. He was there with a mind packed full of venom against one man, a venom he was spitting into the ears of these workers for that one man's undoing.

This man had traveled far to satisfy his hatred. He had put himself at enormous inconvenience to address this meeting. His coming, too, had been heralded by other talkers, who were his satellites. His audience had been promised the joy of listening to the words of the greatest labor leader in the country; the privilege of hearing what the most powerful figure in the country's labor movement had to promise them; what he could do to wrest from their employer a bettering of their lot.

Austin Leyburn was paying something like a secret visit to those people, and so carefully had his coming been nursed that his words became as the words of divine inspiration to those dull-witted workers he was addressing.

It was the first evening of the strike at Deep Willows, and his coming had been antic.i.p.ated in another way. A liberal supply of drink had found its way to the strikers. No one quite knew where it came from. No one cared very much. It was there for their indulgence, and they thirstily availed themselves of it.

The result was all that might have been hoped by those whose mischief was at work. A sense of elation prevailed. A sense of injustice against Alexander Hendrie was uppermost in blurred minds. A vaunting demand for something, something they did not possess, lay at the back of pretty well every mind, and an arrogant determination to possess it was stirring. Then, too, prejudice against the colored race became a prejudice no longer, it had swiftly lashed itself into an active hatred that suggested grave possibilities.

This was the att.i.tude of mind desired, and carefully fostered, before the great man's words could be received as he demanded they should be received. Then, with a blare of oratorical trumpets he appeared in their midst.

It was the perfection of organization, organization such as only Austin Leyburn understood.

Frank had been abroad among the smaller farms in the district, pursuing his work with indifferent enthusiasm. Now he was returning to Everton for the night, weary in body, but still more weary in heart. His mind was full of that which he had witnessed in Monica's home. He was thinking of the mother he had always known, lying in her richly appointed sickroom, crying out in her delirium all the pain and anguish through which she had pa.s.sed, and was still pa.s.sing.

Something was urging him to hasten on his way, and, hastening, to diverge, and break his journey at Deep Willows. He felt that he could not pa.s.s another night, he could not endure another day of the work that had somehow grown so distasteful to him, without ascertaining Monica's condition. It was little more than twenty-four hours since his mind and heart had been distracted almost beyond endurance by a sight of her sufferings. And during those few hours he seemed to have pa.s.sed through an eternity.

His way brought him along the north bank of the river. It was a short cut to the boundary of Hendrie's wheat lands, which he must skirt on his journey to Everton. His horse was tired. It had been under the saddle since noon.

He had been riding along the lower slopes down by the river bank, and, as he came to the limits of Deep Willows, he dismounted and led the weary creature up the steep sides of the valley.

It was just as he neared the shoulder of the rising ground that a sudden burst of cheering startled his horse and made it lunge backwards, and it was some moments before Frank could pacify it. At last, however, he induced the frightened beast to stand. Then he hitched it to a bush and moved forward on foot.

He, too, had been startled, but he guessed something of the meaning of the cheering. He had heard so much of that sort of thing lately. It seemed to him that his whole life was spent listening to crowds of dishevelled creatures cheering men who made them promises which could never be fulfilled.

He made his way through the foliage, and as he feared its fringe he moved more cautiously. Nor was he aware of his caution. There was no reason for it. If this were what he suspected it was, a strike meeting, it was surely his duty to witness it. However, his movements became cautious, even furtive.

A moment later he was glad they had been so, for, as he pushed the last of the bush aside, and beheld the crowd beyond, and saw the figure of Austin Leyburn addressing it, and heard his powerful voice hurling invective against Alexander Hendrie from his tree trunk, he thanked his stars that his presence was unknown.

Austin Leyburn here! Austin Leyburn in the neighborhood of Deep Willows, while the great railroad strike was in full operation! It was almost unbelievable.

These were something of Frank's amazed thoughts as he watched the gesticulating figure silhouetted against the ruddy skyline.

But now, as he stood, the man's words reached him, and, in a moment, their startling purpose held him spellbound.

What was that he was saying? Hark!

Leyburn's harsh voice rang out in clarion tones--

"I hadn't intended to come along yet, boys," he was saying. "I hadn't intended to come till next year. You see, this is a new union, and funds are not big. It needs money to fight these gilded hogs. But when I saw the way things were going; when I heard the way you were herded alongside a crowd of lousy n.i.g.g.e.rs, and set to work with 'em, like a pack of galley slaves; when I heard these things, and learned that these dirty blacks were taking the place of legitimate white workers for less wages, then my blood just got red hot, and I couldn't sleep o'

nights. Say, boys, it broke me all up. I couldn't eat nor sleep till I'd rushed through a financial arrangement with other labor organizations, which sets you clear beyond the chances of want. There's money and plenty for a strike right now. Money and plenty to kill the harvest of these swine of men who roll about in their automobiles, every bolt of which, every soft cus.h.i.+on they sit on, has been paid for by the sweat of your big hearts.

"What's your wages? A dollar a day? Don't you wish it was? Don't you wish they'd let you have it? I was going to say 'earn' it. By h.e.l.l, earn it! You're earning hundreds a day for this skunk of a man, Hendrie. Hundreds and hundreds. Say, he's got millions, no one knows how rich he is, and you boys are the fellows who earn it for him. Do you get that? Do you get its meaning right? Here's one man sits around on top, with you boys lying around whining at his feet for a fraction of the result of your own work."

Frank murmured the word "syndicalism" to himself. But the rabid tongue of Leyburn was still at work.

"Say, d'you know what set war raging between the northern and southern states? Do you know what set sons and fathers at each other's throats?

I'll tell you. It was the high-minded folk of the north couldn't stand for slavery, even of the blacks. Do you know what you are to-day?

You're slaves, slaves of this man--white slaves. 'Out you go into my fields,' he says, 'and I'll let you live--just live--that's all. His fields, mark you. His! By what right are they his? Ain't they yours?

Didn't the Creator set you out here just the same as him, and hand you this world for your own? His fields! And out you go into them, and you grind, and sweat, and you fill his safe full of money, so he can live in a luxury you can never enjoy."

"The cur," muttered the listener. "The miserable cur." Something stirred behind him, but it remained unnoticed.

"Listen to me," Leyburn shouted above the hubbub of agreement and applause which arose from the half-drunken portion of the crowd. "Do you know what's going to happen right here, quite soon? Course you don't. You don't know these gilded hogs same as I do. I'll tell you what's going to happen. Hendrie told me himself. He says n.i.g.g.e.rs are easier dealt with than whites. He says he can get them cheaper. He says they work just as well. He says he'll run Deep Willows on black labor entirely--soon, just as soon as he can get enough of 'em. He cares nothing for any of you, not even for you boys who've worked years for him. Out you got to go--the lot of you, so he can make bigger money out of the black. Get that? You know what it means to you? Will you stand for it?"

A great shout of "no" accompanied by a yell of blasphemy greeted his challenge.

"All lies, lies, lies," muttered the listening man, and a soft-voiced echo from somewhere behind agreed with him.

"Of course you won't," Leyburn roared, with a harsh laugh. "And that's why I'm right here talking to you, because you're the real grit. You've quit work to-night, and you're going to get your strike pay right away, and when you get it, I'll tell you what you'll do, if you'd beat this skunk into treating you right. There's his crop--worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. You reckon to let it rot at harvest. Will it rot?

Mind he's still got his rotten black slaves. Do you know what he'll do?

No, you hadn't thought of it. But I'll tell you. He'll set them to work it. While you're making a stand for labor, his black slaves'll rob you of the fruits of your work. See?"

Another fierce shout went up from the audience, and the speaker grinned his delight.

Frank waited breathlessly for what was to follow, and a low sigh, like the breath of the night breeze in the trees, sounded behind him.

"Now, you're going to beat him, and I'll show you how. See this?"

Leyburn drew a box of matches from his pocket, and held it up for all to see.

"Fire the d.a.m.ned crop," shouted a voice in the crowd. And in a moment the word "fire" roared from a hundred tongues.

The speaker nodded and laughed.

"That's it," he cried. "Make a big bluff at him, and he's got to weaken. He won't listen without, so he'll have to be made to listen.

Fire his crop, and you steal his purse. It's fair game. This is war--labor war. Fire his crop, and he's on his knees, and you can make your own terms. The d.a.m.ned n.i.g.g.e.rs don't amount to a row of shucks. If they b.u.t.t in, out 'em. Get after 'em with a gun, shoot 'em up--the crowd of you. Then the government'll get busy and stop black labor in a white country. They can't afford to quarrel with the workers. They want their votes. They're yearning for office. Get redhot after the n.i.g.g.e.rs and out 'em. Chase 'em back to the place they belong. Are you on?"

A great cheer rose from the crowd. It was prolonged. And with it was the laugh of mischief Leyburn wanted to hear. He knew that he had tickled their sense of humor, and love of violent horse-play. Firing the crop appealed. But, even more, the routing of the n.i.g.g.e.rs would be a joy not readily missed.

"That's it," Leyburn cried. "But before I've done I want to say right here----"

Frank pa.s.sed one great hand across his perspiring forehead. It was unbelievable that it could be Leyburn urging these men to nothing less than anarchy and crime. He could scarcely credit his ears. Yet there it was--and he was still speaking.

A furious and utter loathing for the man, even for the cause of the benighted worker, rose up in his heart and sickened him.

"It's awful!" he said aloud.