Part 25 (2/2)

And Billy resolutely kept undivulged the cut in wages. Not until two weeks later, when it went into effect, and he poured the diminished sum into her lap, did he break it to her. The next day, Bert and Mary, already a month married, had Sunday dinner with them, and the matter came up for discussion. Bert was particularly pessimistic, and muttered dark hints of an impending strike in the railroad shops.

”If you'd all shut your traps, it'd be all right,” Mary criticized.

”These union agitators get the railroad sore. They give me the cramp, the way they b.u.t.t in an' stir up trouble. If I was boss I'd cut the wages of any man that listened to them.”

”Yet you belonged to the laundry workers' union,” Saxon rebuked gently.

”Because I had to or I wouldn't a-got work. An' much good it ever done me.”

”But look at Billy,” Bert argued. ”The teamsters ain't ben sayin' a word, not a peep, an' everything lovely, and then, bang, right in the neck, a ten per cent cut. Oh, h.e.l.l, what chance have we got? We lose. There's nothin' left for us in this country we've made and our fathers an'

mothers before us. We're all shot to pieces. We can see our finish--we, the old stock, the children of the white people that broke away from England an' licked the tar outa her, that freed the slaves, an' fought the Indians, 'an made the West! Any gink with half an eye can see it comin'.”

”But what are we going to do about it?” Saxon questioned anxiously.

”Fight. That's all. The country's in the hands of a gang of robbers.

Look at the Southern Pacific. It runs California.”

”Aw, rats, Bert,” Billy interrupted. ”You're talkin' through your lid. No railroad can ran the government of California.”

”You're a bonehead,” Bert sneered. ”And some day, when it's too late, you an' all the other boneheads'll realize the fact. Rotten? I tell you it stinks. Why, there ain't a man who wants to go to state legislature but has to make a trip to San Francisco, an' go into the S. P. offices, an' take his hat off, an' humbly ask permission. Why, the governors of California has been railroad governors since before you and I was born.

Huh! You can't tell me. We're finished. We're licked to a frazzle. But it'd do my heart good to help string up some of the dirty thieves before I pa.s.sed out. D'ye know what we are?--we old white stock that fought in the wars, an' broke the land, an' made all this? I'll tell you. We're the last of the Mohegans.”

”He scares me to death, he's so violent,” Mary said with unconcealed hostility. ”If he don't quit shootin' off his mouth he'll get fired from the shops. And then what'll we do? He don't consider me. But I can tell you one thing all right, all right. I'll not go back to the laundry.”

She held her right hand up and spoke with the solemnity of an oath. ”Not so's you can see it. Never again for yours truly.”

”Oh, I know what you're drivin' at,” Bert said with asperity. ”An' all I can tell you is, livin' or dead, in a job or out, no matter what happens to me, if you will lead that way, you will, an' there's nothin' else to it.”

”I guess I kept straight before I met you,” she came back with a toss of the head. ”And I kept straight after I met you, which is going some if anybody should ask you.”

Hot words were on Bert's tongue, but Saxon intervened and brought about peace. She was concerned over the outcome of their marriage. Both were highstrung, both were quick and irritable, and their continual clashes did not augur well for their future.

The safety razor was a great achievement for Saxon. Privily she conferred with a clerk she knew in Pierce's hardware store and made the purchase. On Sunday morning, after breakfast, when Billy was starting to go to the barber shop, she led him into the bedroom, whisked a towel aside, and revealed the razor box, shaving mug, soap, brush, and lather all ready. Billy recoiled, then came back to make curious investigation.

He gazed pityingly at the safety razor.

”Huh! Call that a man's tool!”

”It'll do the work,” she said. ”It does it for thousands of men every day.”

But Billy shook his head and backed away.

”You shave three times a week,” she urged. ”That's forty-five cents.

Call it half a dollar, and there are fifty-two weeks in the year.

Twenty-six dollars a year just for shaving. Come on, dear, and try it.

Lots of men swear by it.”

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