The Valley of the Moon Jack London

a baby boy. Perhaps the scab he shot in the stomach had a wife

  and children. All seemed to be acquainted, members of a very

  large family, and yet, because of their particular families, they

  battered and killed each other. She had seen Chester Johnson kill

  a scab, and now they were going to hang Chester Johnson, who had

  married Kittie Brady out of the cannery, and she and Kittie Brady

  had worked together years before in the paper box factory.

  Vainly Saxon waked for Billy to say something that would show he

  did not countenance the killing of the scabs.

  "It was wrong," she ventured finally.

  "They killed Bert," he countered. "An' a lot of others. An' Frank

  Davis. Did you know he was dead? Had his whole lower jaw shot

  away--died in the ambulance before they could get him to the

  receiving hospital. There was never so much killin' at one time

  in Oakland before."

  "But it was their fault," she contended. "They began it. It was

  murder."

  Billy did not reply, but she heard him mutter hoarsely. She knew

  he said "God damn them"; but when she asked, "What?" he made no

  answer. His eyes were deep with troubled clouds, while the mouth

  had hardened, and all his face was bleak.

  To her it was a heart-stab. Was he, too, like the rest? Would he

  kill other men who had families, like Bert, and Frank Davis, and

  Chester Johnson had killed? Was he, too, a wild beast, a dog that

  would snarl over a bone?

  She sighed. Life was a strange puzzle. Perhaps Mercedes Higgins

  was right in her cruel statement of the terms of existence.

  "What of it," Billy laughed harshly, as if in answer to her

  unuttered questions. "It's dog eat dog, I guess, and it's always

  ben that way. Take that scrap outside there. They killed each

  other just like the North an' South did in the Civil War."

  "But workingmen can't win that way, Billy. You say yourself that

  it spoiled their chance of winning."

  "I suppose not," he admitted reluctantly. "But what other chance

  they've got to win I don't see. Look at 'us. We'll be up against

  it next."

  "Not the teamsters?" she cried.

  He nodded gloomily.

  "The bosses are cuttin' loose all along the line for a high old

  time. Say they're goin' to beat us to our knees till we come

  crawlin' back a-beggin' for our jobs. They've bucked up real high

  an' mighty what of all that killin' the other day. Havin' the

  troops out is half the fight, along with havin' the preachers an'

  the papers an' the public behind 'em. They're shootin' off their

  mouths already about what they're goin' to do. They're sure

  gunning for trouble. First, they're goin' to hang Chester Johnson

  an' as many more of the fifteen as they can. They say that flat.

  The Tribune, an' the Enquirer an' the Times keep sayin' it over

  an over every day. They're all union-hustin' to beat the band. No

  more closed shop. To hell with organized labor. Why, the dirty

  little Intelligencer come out this morning an' said that every

  union official in Oakland ought to be run outa town or stretched

  up. Fine, eh? You bet it's fine.

  "Look at us. It ain't a case any more of sympathetic strike for

  the mill-workers. We got our own troubles. They've fired our four

  best men--the ones that was always on the conference committees.

  Did it without cause. They're lookin' for trouble, as I told you,

  an' they'll get it, too, if they don't watch out. We got our tip

  from the Frisco Water Front Confederation. With them backin' us

  we'll go some."

  "You mean you'll . . . strike?" Saxon asked.

  He bent his head.

  "But isn't that what they want you to do?--from the way they're

  acting?"

  "What's the difference?" Billy shrugged his shoulders, then

  continued. "It's better to strike than to get fired. We beat 'em

  to it, that's all, an' we catch 'em before they're ready. Don't

  we know what they're doin'? They're collectin' gradin'-camp

  drivers an' mule-skinners all up an' down the state. They got

  forty of 'em, feedin' 'em in a hotel in Stockton right now, an'

  ready to rush 'em in on us an' hundreds more like 'em. So this

  Saturday's the last wages I'll likely bring home for some time."

  Saxon closed her eyes and thought quietly for five minutes. It

  was not her way to take things excitedly. The coolness of poise

  that Billy so admired never deserted her in time of emergency.

  She realized that she herself was no more than a mote caught up

  in this tangled, nonunderstandable conflict of many motes.

  "We'll have to draw from our savings to pay for this month's

  rent," she said brightly.

  Billy's face fell.

  "We ain't got as much in the bank as you think," he confessed.

  "Bert had to be buried, you know, an I coughed up what the others

  couldn't raise."

  "How much was it?"

  "Forty dollars. I was goin' to stand off the butcher an' the rest

  for a while. They knew I was good pay. But they put it to me

  straight. They'd been carryin' the shopmen right along an was up

  against it themselves. An' now with that strike smashed they're

  pretty much smashed themselves. So I took it all out of the bank.

  I knew you wouldn't mind. You don't, do you?"

  She smiled bravely, and bravely overcame the sinking feeling at

  her heart.

  "It was the only right thing to do, Billy. I would have done it

  if you were lying sick, and Bert would have done it for you an'

  me if it had been the other way around."

  His face was glowing.

  "Gee, Saxon, a fellow can always count on you. You're like my

  right hand. That's why I say no more babies. If I lose you I'm

  crippled for life."

  "We've got to economize," she mused, nodding her appreciation.

  "How much is in bank?"

  "Just about thirty dollars. You see, I had to pay Martha Skelton

  an' for the . . . a few other little things. An' the union took

  time by the neck and levied a four dollar emergency assessment on

  every member just to be ready if the strike was pulled off. But

  Doc Hentley can wait. He said as much. He's the goods, if anybody

  should ask you. How'd you like'm?"

  "I liked him. But I don't know about doctors. He's the first I

  ever had--except when I was vaccinated once, and then the city

  did that."

  "Looks like the street car men are goin' out, too. Dan Fallon's

  come to town. Came all the way from New York. Tried to sneak in

  on the quiet, but the fellows knew when he left New York, an'

  kept track of him all the way acrost. They have to. He's

  Johnny-on-the-Spot whenever street car men are licked into shape.

  He's won lots of street car strikes for the bosses. Keeps an army

  of strike breakers an' ships them all over the country on special

  trains wherever they're needed. Oakland's never seen labor

  troubles like she's got and is goin' to get. All hell's goin' to

  break loose from the looks of it."

  "Watch out for yourself, then, Billy. I don't want to lose you

  either."

  "Aw, that's all right. I
can take care of myself. An' besides, it

  ain't as though we was licked. We got a good chance."

  "But you'll lose if there is any killing."

  "Yep; we gotta keep an eye out against that."

  "No violence."

  "No gun-fighting or dynamite," he assented. "But a heap of

  scabs'll get their heads broke. That has to be."

  "But you won't do any of that, Billy."

  "Not so as any slob can testify before a court to havin' seen

  me." Then, with a quick shift, he changed the subject. "Old Barry

  Higgins is dead. I didn't want to tell you till you was outa bed.

  Buried'm a week ago. An' the old woman's movin' to Frisco. She

  told me she'd be in to say good-bye. She stuck by you pretty well

  them first couple of days, an' she showed Martha Shelton a few

  that made her hair curl. She got Martha's goat from the jump."

  CHAPTER XI

  With Billy on strike and away doing picket duty, and with the

  departure of Mercedes and the death of Bert, Saxon was left much

  to herself in a loneliness that even in one as healthy-minded as

  she could not fail to produce morbidness. Mary, too, had left,

  having spoken vaguely of taking a job at housework in Piedmont.

  Billy could help Saxon little in her trouble. He dimly sansed her

  suffering, without comprehending the scope and intensity of it.

  He was too man-practical, and, by his very sex, too remote from

  the intimate tragedy that was hers. He was an outsider at the

  best, a friendly onlooker who saw little. To her the baby had

  been quick and real. It was still quick and real. That was her

  trouble. By no deliberate effort of will could she fill the

  aching void of its absence. Its reality became, at times, an

  hallucination. Somewhere it still was, and she must find it. She

  would catch herself, on occasion, listening with strained ears

  for the cry she had never heard, yet which, in fancy, she had

  heard a thousand times in the happy months before the end. Twice

  she left her bed in her sleep and went searching--each time

  coming to herself beside her mother's chest of drawers in which

  were the tiny garments. To herself, at such moments, she would

  say, "I had a baby once." And she would say it, aloud, as she

  watched the children playing in the street.

  One day, on the Eighth street cars, a young mother sat beside

  her, a crowing infant in her arms. And Saxon said to her:

  "I had a baby once. It died."

  The mother looked at her, startled, half-drew the baby tighter in

  her arms, jealously, or as if in fear; then she softened as she

  said:

  "You poor thing."

  "Yes," Saxon nodded. "It died."

  Tear's welled into her eyes, and the telling of her grief seemed

  to have brought relief. But all the day she suffered from an

  almost overwhelming desire to recite her sorrow to the world--to

  the paying teller at the bank, to the elderly floor-walker in

  Salinger's, to the blind woman, guided by a little boy, who

  played on the concertina--to every one save the policeman. The

  police were new and terrible creatures to her now. She had seen

  them kill the strikers as mercilessly as the strikers had killed

  the scabs. And, unlike the strikers, the police were professional

  killers. They were not fighting for jobs. They did it as a

  business. They could have taken prisoners that day, in the angle

  of her front steps and the house. But they had not.

  Unconsciously, whenever approaching one, she edged across the

  sidewalk so as to get as far as possible away from him. She did

  not reason it out, but deeper than consciousness was the feeling

  that they were typical of something inimical to her and hers.

  At Eighth and Broadway, waiting for her car to return home, the

  policeman on the corner recognized her and greeted her. She

  turned white to the lips, and her heart fluttered painfully. It

  was only Ned Hermanmann, fatter, bronder-faced, jollier looking

  than ever. He had sat across the aisle from her for three terms

  at school. He and she had been monitors together of the

  composition books for one term. The day the powder works blew up

  at Pinole, breaking every window in the school, he and she had

  not joined in the panic rush for out-of-doors. Both had remained

  in the room, and the irate principal had exhibited them, from

  room to room, to the cowardly classes, and then rewarded them

  with a month's holiday from school. And after that Ned Hermanmann

  had become a policeman, and married Lena Highland, and Saxon had

  heard they had five children.

  But, in spite of all that, he was now a policeman, and Billy was

  now a striker. Might not Ned Hermanmann some day club and shoot

  Billy just as those other policemen clubbed and shot the strikers

  by her front steps?

  "What's the matter, Saxon?" he asked. "Sick?"

  She nodded and choked, unable to speak, and started to move

  toward her car which was coming to a stop.

  "I'll help you," he offered.

  She shrank away from his hand.

  "No; I'm all right," she gasped hurriedly. "I'm not going to take

  it. I've forgotten something."

  She turned away dizzily, up Broadway to Ninth. Two blocks along

  Ninth, she turned down Clay and back to Eighth street, where she

  waited for another car.

  As the summer months dragged along, the industrial situation in

  Oakland grew steadily worse. Capital everywhere seemed to have

  selected this city for the battle with organized labor. So many

  men in Oakland were out on strike, or were locked out, or were

  unable to work because of the dependence of their trades on the

  other tied-up trade's, that odd jobs at common labor were hard to

  obtain. Billy occasionally got a day's work to do, but did not

  earn enough to make both ends meet, despite the small strike

  wages received at first, and despite the rigid economy he and

  Saxon practiced.

  The table she set had scarcely anything in common with that of

  their first married year. Not alone was every item of cheaper

  quality, but many items had disappeared. Meat, and the poorest,

  was very seldom on the table. Cow's milk had given place to

  condensed milk, and even the sparing use of the latter had

  ceased. A roll of butter, when they had it, lasted half a dozen

  times as long as formerly. Where Billy had been used to drinking

  three cups of coffee for breakfast, he now drank one. Saxon

  boiled this coffee an atrocious length of time, and she paid

  twenty cents a pound for it.

  The blight of hard times was on all the neighborhood. The

  families not involved in one strike were touched by some other

  strike or by the cessation of work in some dependent trade. Many

  single young men who were lodgers had drifted away, thus

  increasing the house rent of the families which had sheltered

  them.

  "Gott!" said the butcher to Saxon. "We working class all suffer

  together. My wife she cannot get her teeth fixed now. Pretty soon

  I go smash broke maybe."

  Once, when Billy was preparing to pawn his watch, Saxon suggest
ed

  his borrowing the money from Billy Murphy.

  "I was plannin' that," Billy answered, "only I can't now. I

  didn't tell you what happened Tuesday night at the Sporting Life

  Club. You remember that squarehead Champion of the United States

  Navy? Bill was matched with him, an' it was sure easy money. Bill

  had 'm goin' south by the end of the sixth round, an' at the

  seventh went in to finish 'm. And then--just his luck, for his

  trade's idle now--he snaps his right forearm. Of course the

  squarehead comes back at 'm on the jump, an' it's good night for

  Bill. Gee! Us Mohegans are gettin' our bad luck handed to us in

  chunks these days."

  "Don't!" Saxon cried, shuddering involuntarily.

  "What?" Billy asked with open mouth of surprise.

  "Don't say that word again. Bert was always saying it."

  "Oh, Mohegans. All right, I won't. You ain't superstitions, are

  you?"

  "No; but just the same there's too much truth in the word for me

  to like it. Sometimes it seems as though he was right. Times have

  changed. They've changed even since I was a little girl. We

  crossed the plains and opened up this country, and now we're

  losing even the chance to work for a living in it. And it's not

  my fault, it's not your fault. We've got to live well or bad just

  by luck, it seems. There's no other way to explain it."

  "It beats me," Billy concurred. "Look at the way I worked last

  year. Never missed a day. I'd want to never miss a day this year,

  an' here I haven't done a tap for weeks an' weeks an' weeks. Say!

  Who runs this country anyway?"

  Saxon had stopped the morning paper, but frequently Maggie

  Donahue's boy, who served a Tribune route, tossed an "extra" on

  her steps. From its editorials Saxon gleaned that organized labor

  was trying to run the country and that it was making a mess of

  it. It was all the fault of domineering labor--so ran the

  editorials, column by column, day by day; and Saxon was

  convinced, yet remained unconvinced. The social puzzle of living

  was too intricate.

  The teamsters' strike, backed financially by the teamsters of San

  Francisco and by the allied unions of the San Francisco Water

  Front Confederation, promised to be long-drawn, whether or not it

  was successful. The Oakland harness-washers and stablemen, with

  few exceptions, had gone out with the teamsters. The teaming

  firm's were not half-filling their contracts, but the employers'

  association was helping them. In fact, half the employers'

  associations of the Pacific Coast were helping the Oakland

  Employers' Association.

  Saxon was behind a month's rent, which, when it is considered

  that rent was paid in advance, was equivalent to two months.

  Likewise, she was two months behind in the installments on the

  furniture. Yet she was not pressed very hard by Salinger's, the

  furniture dealers.

  "We're givin' you all the rope we can," said their collector. "My

  orders is to make you dig up every cent I can and at the same

  time not to be too hard. Salinger's are trying to do the right

  thing, but they're up against it, too. You've no idea how many

  accounts like yours they're carrying along. Sooner or later

  they'll have to call a halt or get it in the neck themselves. And

  in the meantime just see if you can't scrape up five dollars by

  next week--just to cheer them along, you know."

  One of the stablemen who had not gone out, Henderson by name,

  worked at Billy's stables. Despite the urging of the bosses to

  eat and sleep in the stable like the other men, Henderson had

  persisted in coming home each morning to his little house around

  the corner from Saxon's on Fifth street. Several times she had

  seen him swinging along defiantly, his dinner pail in his hand,

  while the neighborhood boys dogged his heels at a safe distance

  and informed him in yapping chorus that he was a scab and no

  good. But one evening, on his way to work, in a spirit of bravado