The Quickening Part 28

"There is nothing for us to do but to sit tight and wait. If we get a telegram from Indiana before these idiots of ours lose their heads and go to rioting and burning, we shall still have a fighting chance. If not, we're smashed."

"You mustn't be too hard on the men, Buddy. They've been mighty patient."

The scowl deepened between the level gray eyes.

"If I could do what I'd like to, I'd fire the last man of them. It makes me savage to have them turn up and knock us on the head after we've been sweating blood to pull through. Have you seen Ludlow?"

"Yes; I saw him last night. He's right ugly; swore he wouldn't raise a hand even if the boys took kerosene and dynamite to us."

"Well, if they do, he'll be the first man to pay for it," said Tom; and he left the office and the house to make the round of the guarded gates.

Ludlow was as good as his word. On the night following the day of suspense an attempt was made to wreck the inclined railway running from the mines on Lebanon to the c.o.ke yard. It was happily frustrated; but when Tom and his handful of guards got back to the foot of the hill they found a fire started in a pile of wooden flasks heaped against the end of the foundry building.

The fire was easily extinguishable by a willing hand or two, but Tom tried an experiment. Steam had been kept up in a single battery of boilers against emergencies, and he directed Helgerson to throw open the great gates while he ran to the boiler room and sent the fire call of the huge siren whistle shrieking out on the night.

The experiment was only meagerly successful. Less than a score of the strikers answered the call, but these worked with a will, and the fire was quickly put out.

Tom was under the arc-light at the gates when the volunteers straggled out. He had a word for each man,--a word of appreciation and a plea for suspended judgment. Most of the men shook their heads despondently, but a few of them promised to stand on the side of law and order. Tom took the names of the few, and went back to his guard duty with the burden a little lightened. But the succeeding night there were more attempts at violence, three of them so determined as to leave no doubt that the crisis was at hand. This was Tom's discouraged admission when his father came to relieve him in the morning.

"We're about at the end of the rope," he said wearily, when Caleb had closed the door of the log-house yard office behind him. "The two Helgersons are played out, and neither of us can stand this strain for another twenty-four hours. I'm just about dead on my feet for sleep, and I know you are."

The old ex-artilleryman stifled a yawn, and admitted the fact.

"I'm gettin' right old and no-account, son; there's no denyin' that. And you can't make out to shoulder it all, stout as you are. But what-all can we do different?"

"I know what I'm going to do. I had a 'phone wire from Bradley, the sheriff, last night after you went home. He funked like a boy; said he couldn't raise a posse in South Tredegar that would serve against striking workmen. Then I wired the governor, and his answer came an hour ago. We can have the soldiers if we make a formal demand for them."

"But, Tom, son; you wouldn't do that!" protested Caleb tremulously.

Then, getting up to walk the floor as was his wont under sharp stress: "Let's try to hold out a little spell longer, Buddy. It'll be like fire to tow; there'll be men killed--men that I've known ever since they were boys: men killed, and women made widders. Tom, I've seen enough of war to last me."

"I know," said Tom. None the less, he found a telegraph blank and began to write the message. There had been shots fired in the night, in a sally on the inclined railway, and one of them had scored his arm. If the rioters needed the strong hand to curb them, they should have it.

"Think of what it'll mean for this town that we've built up, son. We'll have to stay here--'er leastwise, I will, and there'll be blood on the streets for me to see as long as I walk 'em."

"I know," Tom reiterated, in the same monotonous tone. But his pen did not pause.

"Then there's your mammy," Caleb pleaded, and now the pen stopped.

"Mother must not know."

"How can we he'p her knowin', Buddy? I tell you, son, the very stones o'

Paradise'll rise up to testify against us, now, and at the last great day, maybe."

The frown deepened between the young man's eyes.

"The old, old phantom!" he said, half to himself. "Will it never be laid, even for those who know it to be a myth?" And then to his father: "It's no use, pappy. I tell you we've got to take this thing by the neck. See here; that's how near they came to settling me last night,"

and he showed the perforated coat-sleeve.

Caleb Gordon was silenced. He resumed his restless pacing while Tom signed the call for help, read it over methodically, and placed it between dampened sheets in the letter-press. He had pushed the electric b.u.t.ton which summoned Stub Helgerson, when the door opened silently and Jeff Ludlow's boy thrust face and hand through the aperture.

"Well; what is it?" demanded Tom, more sharply than he meant to. The strain was beginning to tell on his nerves.

"Hit's a letter for you-all from Mr. Stamford at the dee-po," said the boy. "He allowed maybe you-all'd gimme a nickel for bringin' hit."

The coin was found and pa.s.sed, and the small boy was whooping and yelling for Helgerson to come and let him through the gates when Tom tore the envelope across and read the telegram. It was from the Indiana city, and it was signed by the chairman of the Board of Public Works.

"Proposals for water-pipe have been reopened, and your bid is accepted.

Wire how soon you can begin to ship eighteen-inch mains," was what it said. Tom handed it to his father and stepped quickly to the telephone.

There was a little delay in getting the ear of the president of the Iron City National at South Tredegar, and the bounding, pulsing blood of impatience made it seem interminable.

"Is that you, Mr. Henniker? This is Gordon at the Chiawa.s.see plant, Gordonia. We have secured that Indiana contract I was telling you about, and I'll be in to see you on the ten o'clock train. Will you save five minutes for me? Thank you. Good-by."

Tom hung the ear-piece on its hook and turned to face his father.

"Have you surrounded it?" he laughed, with a little quaver of excitement in his voice, which he had been careful to master in the announcement to the bank president. "We live, pappy; we live and win! Get word to the men to come up here at three o'clock for their pay. Tell them we blow in again to-morrow, and they can all come back to work and no questions asked. Can you stay on your feet long enough to do all that?"

Caleb was nodding gravely; yet bewilderment was still in the saddle.

"But the money for the pay-rolls, son--this is only an order to go to work," he said, fingering the telegram doubtfully.

Tom laughed joyously.

"If I can't make Mr. Henniker believe that he can afford to carry us a while longer on the strength of that bit of yellow paper, I'll rob his bank. You get the men together by three o'clock, and I'll be here with the money. If I'm not, it will be because somebody has sandbagged me between the bank and the train."

Caleb was still wrestling with the incredible thing, but light was breaking in on him slowly.

"Hold on, son," he said, and the old-time smile was wrinkling at the corners of his eyes; "how much did you allow to make out o' this job? I disremember what you said when you talked about it before."

Tom checked off the items on his fingers.

"Enough to put us through the winter; enough to stand us on our feet independent of Duxbury Farley and his son; enough to let us pay Major Dabney the back royalties on the coal. More than this, it's going to use up iron--hundreds of tons of it. We'll buy out of our own yards, and the men shall have the back-pay dividends."

The general manager had taken his burned-out corn-cob pipe from his pocket and was looking at it speculatively.

"Well, now, if that's the case, I reckon I can go down to Hargis's and buy me a new pipe, Buddy; and I--I'll be switched if I don't do it right now."

And in such gladsome easing of the strain were the wheels of Chiawa.s.see Consolidated oiled to their new whirlings on the road to fortune. If Caleb Gordon remembered how the miracle had been wrought, he said no word to clench his disapproval; and as for Tom--ah, well; it was not the first time in the history of the race that the end has served to justify the means--to make them clean and white and spotless, if need were.

XXII

LOVE

If Tom Gordon could have known how slightly the Dabney's European plans coincided with those of the Farleys, he might have had fewer heartburnings in those intervals when the hara.s.sing struggle for industrial existence gave him time to think of Ardea.