Part 50 (1/2)

At Friends.h.i.+p the unruly element was very strong. For a time it held its meetings in a hall. When that was closed it resorted to the open air.

On the fifteenth of July it held an incendiary meeting on the unused polo field, and the next day awakened to the sound of hammers, and to find a high wooden fence, reenforced with barbed wire, being built around the field, with the state police on guard over the carpenters. In a few days the fence was finished, only to be partly demolished the next night, secretly and noiselessly. But no further attempts were made to hold meetings there. It was rumored that meetings were being secretly held in the woods near the town, but the rendezvous was not located.

On the restored fence around the polo grounds a Red flag was found one morning, and two nights later the guard at the padlocked gate was shot through the heart, from ambush.

Then, about the first of August, out of a clear sky, sporadic riotings began to occur. They seemed to originate without cause, and to end as suddenly as they began. Usually they were in the outlying districts, but one or two took place in the city itself. The rioters were not all foreign strikers from the mills. They were garment workers, hotel waiters, a rabble of the discontented from all trades. The riots were to no end, apparently. They began with a chance word, fought their furious way for an hour or so, and ended, leaving a trail of broken heads and torn clothing behind them.

On toward the end of July one such disturbance grew to considerable size. The police were badly outnumbered, and a surprising majority of the rioters were armed, with revolvers, with wooden bludgeons, lengths of pipe and short, wicked iron bars. Things were rather desperate until the police found themselves suddenly and mysteriously reenforced by a cool-headed number of citizens, led by a tall thin man who limped slightly, and who disposed his heterogeneous support with a few words and considerable skill.

The same thin young man, stopping later in an alley way to investigate an arm badly bruised by an iron bar, overheard a conversation between two roundsmen, met under a lamppost after the battle, for comfort and a little conversation.

”Can you beat that, Henry?” said one. ”Where the h.e.l.l'd they come from?”

”Search me,” said Henry. ”D'you see the skinny fellow? Limped, too.

D'you notice that? Probably hurt in France. But he hasn't forgotten how to fight, I'll tell the world.”

The outbreaks puzzled the leaders of the Vigilance Committee. w.i.l.l.y Cameron was inclined to regard them as without direction or intention, purely as manifestations of hate, and as such contrary to the plans of their leaders. And Mr. Hendricks, nursing a black eye at home after the recent outburst, sized up the situation shrewdly.

”You can boil a kettle too hard,” he said, ”and then the lid pops off.

Doyle and that outfit of his have been burning the fire a little high, that's all. They'll quit now, because they want to get us off guard later. You and your committee can take a vacation, unless you can set them to electioneering for me. They've had enough for a while, the devils. They'll wait now for Akers to get in and make things easy for them. Mind my words, boy. That's the game.”

And the game it seemed to be. Small violations of order still occurred, but no big ones. To the headquarters in the Denslow Bank came an increasing volume of information, to be duly docketed and filed. Some of it was valueless. Now and then there came in something worth following up. Thus one night Pink and a picked band, following a vague clew, went in automobiles to the state borderline, and held up and captured two trucks loaded with whiskey and destined for Friends.h.i.+p and Baxter. He reported to w.i.l.l.y Cameron late that night.

”Smashed it all up and spilled it in the road,” he said. ”Hurt like sin to do it, though. Felt like the fellow who shot the last pa.s.senger pigeon.”

But if the situation in the city was that of armed neutrality, in the Boyd house things were rapidly approaching a climax, and that through Dan. He was on edge, constantly to be placated and watched. The strike was on his nerves; he felt his position keenly, resented w.i.l.l.y Cameron supporting the family, and had developed a curious jealousy of his mother's affection for him.

Toward Edith his suspicions had now become certainty, and an open break came on an evening when she said that she felt able to go to work again.

They were at the table, and Ellen was moving to and from the kitchen, carrying in the meal. Her utmost thrift could not make it other than scanty, and finally Dan pushed his plate away.

”Going back to work, are you?” he sneered. ”And how long do you think you'll be able to work?”

”You keep quiet,” Edith flared at him. ”I'm going to work. That's all you need to know. I can't sit here and let a man who doesn't belong to us provide every bite we eat, if you can.” w.i.l.l.y Cameron got up and closed the door, for Mrs. Boyd an uncanny ability to hear much that went on below.

”Now,” he said when he came back, ”we might as well have this out. Dan has a right to be told, Edith, and he can help us plan something.” He turned to Dan. ”It must be kept from your mother, Dan.”

”Plan something!” Dan snarled. ”I know what to plan, all right. I'll find the--” he broke into foul, furious language, but suddenly w.i.l.l.y Cameron rose, and there was something threatening in his eyes.

”I know who it is,” Dan said, more quietly, ”and he's got to marry her, or I'll kill him.”

”You know, do you? Well, you don't,” Edith said, ”and I won't marry him anyhow.”

”You will marry him. Do you think I'm going to see mother disgraced, sick as she is, and let you get away with it? Where does Akers live? You know, don't you? You've been there, haven't you?”

All Edith's caution was forgotten in her shame and anger.

”Yes, I know,” she said, hysterically, ”but I won't tell you. And I won't marry him. I hate him. If you go to him he'll beat you to death.”

Suddenly the horrible picture of Dan in Akers' brutal hands overwhelmed her. ”Dan, you won't go?” she begged. ”He'll kill you.”

”A lot you'd care,” he said, coldly. ”As if we didn't have enough already! As if you couldn't have married Joe Wilkinson, next door, and been a decent woman. And instead, you're a--”