A Poor Wise Man Part 79

It was dark when Howard Cardew and w.i.l.l.y Cameron left the hospital.

Elinor's information had been detailed and exact. Under cover of the general strike the radical element intended to take over the city.

On the evening of the first day of the strike, armed groups from the revolutionary party would proceed first to the munic.i.p.al light plant, and, having driven out any employees who remained at their posts, or such volunteers as had replaced them, would plunge the city into darkness.

Elinor was convinced that following this would come various bomb outrages, perhaps a great number of them, but of this she had no detailed information. What she did know, however, was the dependence that Doyle and the other leaders were placing in the foreign element in the nearby mill towns and from one or two mining districts in the county.

Around the city, in the mill towns, there were more than forty thousand foreign laborers. Subtract from that the loyal aliens, but add a certain percentage of the native-born element, members of seditious societies and followers of the red flag, and the Reds had a potential army of dangerous size.

As an actual fighting force they were much less impressive. Only a small percentage, she knew and told them, were adequately armed. There were a few machine guns, and some long-range rifles, but by far the greater number had only revolvers. The remainder had extemporized weapons, bars of iron, pieces of pipe, farm implements, lances of wood tipped with iron and beaten out on home forges.

They were a rabble, not an army, without organization and with few leaders. Their fighting was certain to be as individualistic as their doctrines. They had two elements in their favor only, numbers and surprise.

To oppose them, if the worst came, there were perhaps five thousand armed men, including the city and county police, the state constabulary, and the citizens who had signed the cards of the Vigilance Committee.

The local post of the American Legion stood ready for instant service, and a few national guard troops still remained in the vicinity. "What they expect," she said, looking up from her pillows with tragic eyes, "is that the police and the troops will join them. You don't think they will, do you?"

They rea.s.sured her, and after a time she slept again. When she wakened, at midnight, the room was empty save for a nurse reading under a night lamp behind a screen. Elinor was not in pain. She lay there, listening to the night sounds of the hospital, the watchman shuffling along the corridor in slippers, the closing of a window, the wail of a newborn infant far away.

There was a shuffling of feet in the street below, the sound of many men, not marching but grimly walking, bent on some unknown errand. The nurse opened the window and looked out.

"That's queer!" she said. "About thirty men, and not saying a word. They walk like soldiers, but they're not in uniform."

Elinor pondered that, but it was not for some days that she knew that Pink Denslow and a picked number of volunteers from the American Legion had that night, quite silently and unemotionally, broken into the printing office where Doyle and Akers had met Cusick, and had, not so silently but still unemotionally, destroyed the presses and about a ton of inflammatory pamphlets.

CHAPTER XLVIII

There was a little city, and few men within it; And there came a great king against it, and besieged it, And built great bulwarks against it; Now there was found in it a Poor Wise Man, And he by his wisdom delivered the city.--Ecclesiastes IX:14, 15.

The general strike occurred two days later, at mid-day. During the interval a joint committee representing the workers, the employers and the public had held a protracted sitting, but without result, and by one o'clock the city was in the throes of a complete tie-up. Laundry and delivery wagons were abandoned where they stood. Some of the street cars had been returned to the barns, but others stood in the street where the crews had deserted them.

There was no disorder, however, and the city took its difficulties with a quiet patience and a certain sense of humor. Bulletins similar to the ones used in Seattle began to appear.

"Strikers, the world is the workers' for the taking, and the workers are the vast majority in society. Your interests are paramount to those of a small, useless band of parasites who exploit you to their advantage. You have nothing to lose but your chains and you have a world to gain. The world for the workers."

There was one ray of light in the darkness, however. The munic.i.p.al employees had refused to strike, and only by force would the city go dark that night. It was a blow to the conspirators. In the strange psychology of the mob, darkness was an essential to violence, and by three o'clock that afternoon the light plant and city water supply had been secured against attack by effectual policing. The power plant for the car lines was likewise protected, and at five o'clock a line of street cars, stalled on Amanda Street, began to show signs of life.

The first car was boarded by a half dozen youngish men, un.o.btrusively ready for trouble, and headed by a tall youth who limped slightly and wore an extremely anxious expression. He went forward and commenced a series of experiments with levers and brake, in which process incidentally he liberated a quant.i.ty of sand onto the rails. A moment later the car lurched forward, and then stopped with a jerk.

w.i.l.l.y Cameron looked behind him and grinned. The entire guard was piled in an ign.o.ble ma.s.s on the floor.

By six o'clock volunteer crews were running a number of cars, and had been subjected to nothing worse than abuse. Strikers lined the streets and watched them, but the grim faces of the guards kept them back. They jeered from the curbs, but except for the flinging of an occasional stone they made no inimical move.

By eight o'clock it was clear that the tie-up would be only partial.

Volunteers from all walks of life were in line at the temporary headquarters of the Vigilance Committee and were being detailed, for police duty, to bring in the trains with the morning milk, to move street cars and trucks. The water plant and the reservoirs were protected. w.i.l.l.y Cameron, abandoning his car after the homeward rush of the evening, found a line before the Committee Building which extended for blocks down the street.

Troops had been sent for, but it took time to mobilize and move them.

It would be morning before they arrived. And the governor, over the long distance wire to the mayor, was inclined to be querulous.

"We'll send them, of course," he said. "But if the strikers are keeping quiet--I don't know what the country's coming to. We're holding a conference here now. There's rioting breaking out all over the state."

There was a conference held in the Mayor's office that night: Cameron and Cardew and one or two others of the Vigilance Committee, two agents of the government secret service, the captains of the companies of state troops and constabulary, the Chief of Police, the Mayor himself, and some representatives of the conservative element of organized labor.

Quiet men, these last, uneasy and anxious, as ignorant as the others of which way the black cat, the symbol of sabotage and destruction, would jump. The majority of their men would stand for order, they declared, but there were some who would go over. They urged, to offset that reflection on their organization that the proletariat of the city might go over, too.

But, by midnight, it seemed as though the situation was solving itself.

In the segregated district there had been a small riot, and another along the river front, disturbances quickly ended by the police and the volunteer deputies. The city had not gone dark. The bombs had not exploded. Word came in that by back roads and devious paths the most rabid of the agitators were leaving town. And before two o'clock Howard Cardew and some of the others went home to bed.

At three o'clock the Cardew doorbell rang, and Howard, not asleep, flung on his dressing gown and went out into the hall. Lily was in her doorway, intent and anxious.

"Don't answer it, father," she begged. "You don't know what it may be."

Howard smiled, but went back and got his revolver. The visitor was w.i.l.l.y Cameron.

"I don't like to waken you," he said, "but word has come in of suspicious movements at Baxter and Friends.h.i.+p, and one or two other places. It looks like concerted action of some sort."

"What sort of concerted action?"

"They still have one card to play. The foreign element outside hasn't been heard from. It looks as though the fellows who left town to-night have been getting busy up the river."

"They wouldn't be such fools as to come to the city."

"They've been made a lot of promises. They may be out of hand, you know."

While Howard was hastily dressing, w.i.l.l.y Cameron waited below. He caught a glimpse of himself in the big mirror and looked away. His face was drawn and haggard, his eyes hollow and his collar a wilted string. He was dusty and shabby, too, and to Lily, coming down the staircase, he looked almost ill.

Lily was in a soft negligee garment, her bare feet thrust into slippers, but she was too anxious to be self-conscious.

"w.i.l.l.y," she said, "there is trouble after all?"

"Not in the city. Things are not so quiet up the river."

She placed a hand on his arm.

"Are you and father going up the river?"

He explained, after a momentary hesitation. "It may crystallize into something, or it may not," he finished.

"You think it will, don't you?"

"It will be nothing more, at the worst, than rioting."

"But you may be hurt!"

"I may have one chance to fight for my country," he said, rather grimly.

"Don't begrudge me that." But he added: "I'll not be hurt. The thing will blow up as soon as it starts."