Snow on the Headlight Part 4

Three kinds of meetings were held by the strikers. Public meetings, open to everybody, union meetings, open to any member of the several organizations engaged in the strike, and secret sessions held by the various Brotherhoods, to which only members of that particular order were admitted.

Many things were said and done at these secret sessions that were never printed, or even mentioned outside the lodge-room, save when a detective happened to be a member, or when a member happened to be a detective.

At one of these meetings, held by the striking firemen, the head of that organization startled the audience with the declaration that the strike was going to end disastrously for the strikers. In fact, he said, the strike was already lost. They were beaten. The only point to be determined was as to the extent of the thrashing. This red rag, flung in the faces of the "war faction," called forth hisses and hoots from the no-surrender element. A number of men were on their feet instantly, but none with the eloquence, or even the lung power to shut the chief off.

Many of the outraged members glanced over at Cowels, who always sat near the little platform at the end of the hall in order that he might not keep his admirers waiting when they called for a speech. The greatest confusion prevailed during the address of the head of the house. Cowels, the recognized leader of the war party, sat silently in his place, though frequently called upon to defend the fighters. As their chief went on telling them of the inevitable ruin that awaited the strikers, the more noisy began to accuse him of selling them out. One man wanted to know what he got for the job, but the master, feeling secure in that he was doing his duty, gave no heed to what his traducers were saying.

Amid all the turmoil Cowels sat so quietly that some of the more suspicious began to guess, audibly, that he was "in with the play." But there was no play, and if there had been Cowels would not have been in with it. Cowels was thinking. Suddenly he leaped upon his chair and yelled: "Throw 'im out!" He did not use the finger of scorn upon the master, or even look in his direction. He merely glared at the audience and commanded it to "Throw 'im out!"

"We are fighting a losing fight," repeated the chief, "and you who fight hardest here will be first to fall," and he looked at Cowels as he spoke. "It could not be pleasant to me, even with your respectful attention, to break this news to you. I do it because it is my duty. But now, having said what I had to say, let me a.s.sure you that if a majority of you elect to continue the fight, I will lead you, and I promise that every man of you shall have his fill."

This last declaration was rather a cooler for Cowels. It took a vast amount of wind out of his sails, but he was on his feet and so had to make a speech. He was not very abusive, but managed to make it plain that there were others ready and able to lead if their leader failed to do his duty. When he had succeeded in getting his train of thought out over the switches his hearers, especially the no-surrenderers, began to enthuse. His speech was made picturesque by the introduction of short rhymes, misquotations from dead poets, and tales that had never been told in type. "If," he exclaimed dramatically, "to use a Shakesperian simile, the galled wench be jaded, let him surrender his sword to some one worthy of the steel."

The orator worked the Shakesperian pedal so hard that some of his hearers expressed a desire to know more about the distinguished poet.

Finally, when he became too deep for them, a man with a strong clear voice shouted a single word--the name of a little animal whose departure from a sinking ship makes sailors seek the sh.o.r.e--and Cowels closed like a snuff-box.

Now the casual observer would say of the great orator: he has money; his family is not in want. But the statement would have been incorrect.

The Cowelses, like hundreds of other families, were without money, without credit, and would shortly be without food. The last money they had received from the Brotherhood had gone to pay the interest on the money due the Benevolent Building a.s.sociation, for fuel, and to pay the milkman who was bringing milk for the baby. It would be forty or fifty days before another a.s.sessment could be made and the money collected.

The outlook was gloomy. Mr. Hawkins had called again and offered ten dollars a month for the little spare room on the second floor, but Cowels would not consent.

But at the very moment when he was making this speech his wife was returning empty-handed from the bakery. Bennie had been watching, waiting at the window for her, and when she saw him staring at her, saw the tears come into his innocent eyes, she took him in her arms and wept as she had not wept before. They had breakfasted on bread and water. It was now past noon and they were all hungry. She gave Bennie some of the baby's milk, and then sat down to think. The door-bell rung. "I was just pa.s.sing by," said Mr. Hawkins, "and thought I'd stop and see if there was any show to get that room. I work for the plumber in the next block, so you see it would be handy for me."

"Would you pay in advance?" asked Mrs. Cowels.

"I shouldn't mind," said the plumber, "if it would be of any advantage to you."

"Then you can have the room."

"Very well," said the man, apparently delighted with his bargain, and he gave her a crisp ten-dollar note. He also gave Bennie a big, red apple, and looked surprised when the boy began to bite great chunks out of it.

That evening when Cowels came home he found the house filled with the fumes of boiled beef, and it put him in a good humor at once. He was hungry, having had nothing all day but a gla.s.s of beer and a free lunch.

"They's a man up-stairs," said Bennie, shoving his empty plate up for another load of boiled beef. Mrs. Cowels smiled a faint smile, and her husband asked:

"Who is this fellow?"

"He's a plumber," was the reply, "and he seems like a very nice man."

"Did he pay a month in advance?"

"Yes."

"Well, I don't like the idea of having strangers in the house," said Cowels, "and I wish you had not taken him in."

"I dislike it too, George," said Mrs. Cowels, "but the baker had refused me a loaf of bread, the children were hungry and you might as well know now that I can never see my babies suffer for want of food, and you need not be surprised at anything I may do to supply their wants."

Cowels had never seen his wife display so much spirit and it surprised him. "It's all very well," she went on, "to prate about honor and loyalty to the Brotherhood, but an obligation that entails the suffering of innocent women and children is not an honorable obligation and ought not to exist. A man's first duty is to his family. My advice to you would be to miss a few meetings and go and try to find something to do.

Think how we have denied ourselves in order to have a place of our own, and now it's all to be taken from us, and all because of this senseless and profitless strike."

"By George, she's a cracker-jack!" said Hawkins, who had been listening down the stove-pipe.

Cowels made no reply to his wife, but he was thinking. In fact, he had been thinking all the way home. He had been interrupted twice that day while addressing the meeting. One fellow had asked who the devil Shakespeare was, and if he had ever done anything for the Union. Another man had said "rats," and the orator was sore.

Now, when he had thought it all over, he surprised his wife as much as she had surprised him. "They're all a lot of unliterate ingrates," said Cowels, "and for two cents I'd shake the whole show and go to work. If they turn me down at the convention, and this strike is not settled, I'll take an engine."

Mr. Hawkins gave a low whistle.

"No, you must never do that, George, after all you've said against such things; it would not do."

"Then they must not drive me to it," said Cowels. "I've tried to show them the way to success, even to lead them, and they have the nerve to guy me. I'll fool 'em yet if they trifle with me."

"That's what I thought all along," mused Hawkins. "It was not the Brotherhood that Mr. Cowels was working so hard for, but Mr. Cowels.

Well, he will be just as eager to succeed in another direction--he's ambitious."

CHAPTER SEVENTH

The great strike, like a receding sea, revealed heaps of queer wreckage.

Men who had once been respected by their fellows, but who had drifted down the river of vice now came to claim the attention of the strikers or the company. Most conspicuous among them was drunken Bill Greene.

Three months ago he would have been kicked out of a company section house or pa.s.sed by a Brotherhood man without a nod. Then he was "Old Bill;" now they called him Billy.

In his palmy days he had wooed, and won the heart of Maggie Crogan, a pretty waitress in the railway eating-house at Zero Junction. Maggie was barely eighteen then, a strawberry blonde with a sunny smile and a perpetual blush. In less than a year he had broken her heart, wrecked her life and sent her adrift in the night. His only excuse was that he was madly in love with Nora Kelly, but Nora, having heard the story of Maggie's miserable life, turned her back on Greene and married George Cowels, then a young apprentice in the shops. Inasmuch as it was about the only commendable thing he ever did, it should be put to Greene's credit that he did really love Nora Kelly; but, being a coward with an inherited thirst, he took to drink the day she turned him down; and now, after a few wasted years he and Maggie--old red-headed Mag they called her--had drifted together, pooled their sorrows and often tried to drown them in the same can of beer. She worked, when she worked at all, at cleaning coaches. He borrowed her salary and bought drink with it. Once he proposed marriage, and ended by beating her because she laughed at him.

Before the strike he had been forced to keep sober four days out of a week. Now he was comfortably tanked at all times. He had been a machinist and round-house foreman, and the company saw in him a fair "emergency" engineer, and was constantly watching for an opportunity to try him on one of the fast express trains.

At last he was called to take out a pa.s.senger run. The round-house foreman had gone personally to fetch "Billy" from the bar-room near the Grand Pacific where he was waiting for a Brotherhood man to drop in and buy him a drink. When told that he was wanted to take out the Pacific express, the b.u.m straightened up, hitched his suspenderless trousers and asked: "Who're you?"

"I'm the foreman; come and have a bite o' breakfast and let's be off."

"Well--folks gen'ly drink afore they eat--come on, le's have a horn.

Here, bar-keep, give us a couple o' slugs."

"Got any dough?"

"Now don't git gay--I'm goin' down to take me run out--here's me foreman."

"But you must not drink," broke in the official, "when you are going out on an express train."

"What?"

"You must not drink."

"Then I don't work. Th' Brotherhood 'll pay me four dollars a day to sit right here and keep three gages an' a flutter in the stack--go on with yer d.a.m.n ol' railroad--"

"Come now, Billy," pleaded the foreman, "this is an opportunity--"

"Billy! Month ago Stonaker's n.i.g.g.e.r threw me down the steps."