"I'm leaving you, Mr. Lover, on Wednesday.... Make my last three days pleasant."
He took her to the station. As they entered it, two cars disgorged another increment of the militia.
"You were a good lover," was her final praise. "Run down to the coast and see me sometime.... If you still want me."
It was just after ten, in the dry heat of a July day six weeks later, when four of the deputies appeared on the road at the entrance to the miners' shack village, and started to enter. They were backed by a squad of the new Home Guard, who had come to help out the militia, now in process of gradual federalization.
"What d'ye want?" called out John McGue, the only committeeman at the moment in the informal town. Pelham, Joe Mullins, the new national organizer, and a committee were visiting the governor, to protest against two exceptionally brutal clubbings by the restlessly inactive guards. It was a hopeless trip, except as a protest.
"You hold things down, McGue," Mullins had told him. "It's coming, by God! They'll consent to arbitrate before the middle of August, or the federal government'll step in! Four new camps, man, in three weeks--they can't get any more men, either, for love or money. We've got 'em!"
Things were looking serious for the company. The Ed Cole verdict had reacted against it; defections from the ranks of the strike-breakers were frequent, and the output was hardly a third of that of the summer before the strike.
McGue wondered if the visit of the guards and militiamen had been timed to fit in with the absence of most of the strike leaders in Jackson. "What d'ye want?" he repeated.
"We got warrants for six men." The deputy--it was Huggins--started to walk on in; McGue kept his place.
"Get out of the way, there," Huggins warned him shortly.
"Gimme the names; we'll git the men fer you. No need to go trampling through people's houses and gardens, as you guards did last week."
The voices in dispute resounded down the vacant roads. Men, hungry men, their natures warped with the long unequal struggle, massed in a shifting background behind the rugged committeeman.
"Get out of my way, or I'll jug you too."
Silently McGue stepped aside. The crowd flattened back against the flimsy walls. The armed guards, grinning at one another, jostling and joking, penetrated deeper and deeper into the straggly irregularity of the settlement.