Chapter XII
A gleam of light came, when Billy got a job driving a grading
team for the contractors of the big bridge then building at
Niles. Before he went he made certain that it was a union job. And a union job it was for two days, when the concrete workers threw down their tools. The contractors, evidently prepared for such happening, immediately filled the places of the concrete men with nonunion Italians. Whereupon the carpenters, structural ironworkers and teamsters walked out; and Billy, lacking train fare, spent the rest of the day in walking home.
"I couldn't work as a scab," he concluded his tale.
"No," Saxon said; "you couldn't work as a scab."
But she wondered why it was that when men wanted to work, and
there was work to do, yet they were unable to work because their
unions said no. Why were there unions? And, if unions had to be, why were not all workingmen in them? Then there would be no scabs, and Billy could work every day. Also, she wondered where she was to get a sack of flour, for she had long since ceased the extravagance of baker's bread. And so many other of the neighborhood women had done this, that the little Welsh baker had closed up shop and gone away, taking his wife and two little daughters with him. Look where she would, everybody was being hurt by the industrial strife.
One afternoon came a caller at her door, and that evening came
Billy with dubious news. He had been approached that day. All he
had to do, he told Saxon, was to say the word, and he could go
into the stable as foreman at one hundred dollars a month.
The nearness of such a sum, the possibility of it, was almost
stunning to Saxon, sitting at a supper which consisted of boiled
potatoes, warmed-over beans, and a small dry onion which they
were eating raw. There was neither bread, coffee, nor butter. The
onion Billy had pulled from his pocket, having picked it up in
the street. One hundred dollars a month! She moistened her lips
and fought for control.
"What made them offer it to you?" she questioned.
"That's easy," was his answer. "They got a dozen reasons. The guy
the boss has had exercisin' Prince and King is a dub. King has
gone lame in the shoulders. Then they're guessin' pretty strong
that I'm the party that's put a lot of their scabs outa
commission. Macklin's ben their foreman for years an' years--why
I was in knee pants when he was foreman. Well, he's sick an' all
in. They gotta have somebody to take his place. Then, too, I've
been with 'em a long time. An' on top of that, I'm the man for
the job. They know I know horses from the ground up. Hell, it's
all I'm good for, except sluggin'."
"Think of it, Billy!" she broathed. "A hundred dollars a month! A
hundred dollars a month!"
"An' throw the fellows down," he said.
It was not a question. Nor was it a statement. It was anything
Saxon chose to make of it. They looked at each other. She waited
for him to speak; but he continued merely to look. It came to her
that she was facing one of the decisive moments of her life, and
she gripped herself to face it in all coolness. Nor would Billy
proffer her the slightest help. Whatever his own judgment might
be, he masked it with an expressionless face. His eyes betrayed
nothing. He looked and waited.
"You . . . you can't do that, Billy," she said finally. "You can't
throw the fellows down."
His hand shot out to hers, and his face was a sudden, radiant
dawn.
"Put her there!" he cried, their hands meeting and clasping. "You're the truest true blue wife a man ever had. If all the other fellows' wives was like you, we could win any strike we tackled."
"What would you have done if you weren't married, Billy?"
"Seen 'em in hell first."
"Than it doesn't make any difference being married. I've got to
stand by you in everything you stand for. I'd be a nice wife if I
didn't."
She remembered her caller of the afternoon, and knew the moment
was too propitious to let pass.
"There was a man here this afternoon, Billy. He wanted a room. I
told him I'd speak to you. He said he would pay six dollars a
month for the back bedroom. That would pay half a month's
installment on the furniture and buy a sack of flour, and we're
all out of flour."
Billy's old hostility to the idea was instantly uppermost, and
Saxon watched him anxiously.
"Some scab in the shops, I suppose?"