Around eight-thirty, a man came into the recreation room, whispered in Bob Olinger’s ear. Olinger left the room, and returned fifteen minutes later, his forehead furrowed. Quade saw him whisper to Murphy, Walsh, Smith and Jackson, in turn. They left the room with extravagant casualness. Quade slipped after them.
“You stay here!” snapped Smith.
“Oh, let him come along,” said Olinger. “He’s in as deep as us.”
They went to the office, and Olinger got out the signal flags, wigwagged rapidly for five minutes. Then he stopped to watch the windows across the street…
“Bartlett claims we’re holding Hocker a prisoner here,” Olinger reported. “Says Hocker was in the plant today. His family claims he never came home from the office. They want us to let the police in here.”
“Nothing doing!” cried Walsh. “If we’re in this so deep, let’s fight it out.”
“We’ll have to,” said Olinger. “We couldn’t let them find Hocker’s body after denying that he was here.” Olinger signaled the refusal. Then he turned around.
“Gaylord’ll keep them out. He realizes the importance of not letting the police crash in here. But the Bartlett officials voted to fight us. Hocker, who’s dead, was ordinarily sympathetic to our cause. Samuel Sharp, the next biggest stockholder after Bartlett, is inactive in the business. Besides, he’s in New York. Cassoway, the treasurer, is on the fence. So when Hocker was killed, our cause was hurt. Now, Bartlett says he’ll not even arbitrate until we leave the plant.
“If we leave, we’re licked. Bartlett’d get in a flock of strikebreakers. If we last two weeks, we can win. There’s talk that the company isn’t any too well fixed. If we hold up production for two weeks, Bartlett will surrender on our terms. He can’t stand a shutdown more than that. The orders the company has will go to a competitor.”
“Say, Bartlett could shut up this business right now and never have to worry about the rent,” Walsh growled. “I see by the paper the other day where that dizzy daughter of his is figuring on marrying herself a phony duke.”
Something clicked in Oliver Quade’s brain. With one of the finest memories in existence, he never forgot a name or face and yet… a while ago he had seen a face and had not been able to identify it. But now he knew…
Quade slipped out of the office and returned to the recreation room. Many of the strikers had retired for the night, but there were still quite a few dancers there. Ruth Larson was among them.
Quade went up to her. “Would you mind stepping aside with me?”
“Why, Mr. Quade!” she mocked him. “It’s against the rules to go out on the veranda.”
“I know it — Miss Bartlett!”
She caught her breath. “How did you know?”
“I saw your picture in a newspaper, once. I never forget a face, and when one of the lads mentioned Bartlett’s daughter being in Europe, I tumbled to your name. Why—”
She colored. “A lark, I guess you’d call it.”
“No. I wouldn’t. Ruth Bartlett wouldn’t work in her father’s plant. How long — a month?”
“Two.”
“Bob Olinger?”
She bit her lip. Then, “Yes, he’s the reason. I met him three months ago at a schoolmate’s home. I was just one of several rich girls there, to him. He couldn’t tell one of us from another, but I—”
“So you got a job here, where you’d see him. Your father know?”
“Oh, no! He thinks I’m in Europe. A girl chum of mine sends him a telegram every week, signing my name. No one here knows me, none of the office help or the officials.”
“No.” She looked down at her denim work apron. “There are four hundred girls in this plant. Half of them dress like this. In the assembly room where I work, there are a hundred girls. We work alike, look alike, and none of the officials ever look close at a factory hand.”
Quade shook his head. “But why’d you stay here?”
Before she could answer, Pete Walsh bore down on them. “Time to break up,” he said, “Olinger’s orders.”
Quade watched her walk off.
In the machine shops Quade found a couple of hundred folding cots, already set up. He appropriated one, loosened his shoe laces and stretched out. He was asleep in a few minutes.
Breakfast consisted of coffee and bread.
Having eaten, Quade went to the office on the second floor. He found Olinger and his four captains holding a council of war.
“I judge by your faces the strike isn’t going so good this morning,” he greeted the strikers.
“It’s now 7:30,” said Olinger. “In twenty minutes a force of strikebreakers will try to crash through the line. They’ll be escorted by a hundred special deputies and police. There’re eight hundred of our men outside those gates, besides a thousand sympathizers. They don’t intend to let those strikebreakers through the gates.”
Quade whistled. “Does Bartlett know of your attitude?”
“Gaylord — across the street — warned him. Bartlett’s gotten in touch with the governor. The governor has refused to act until the sheriff requests it. Sheriff Spiess is a fool. He thinks we’re bluffing.”
“I still think the boys should have some guns,” cut in Ford Smith. “Them deputies is armed. They’re professional gunmen, spoiling for a fight. Everyone of them was shipped in here by that strike-breakin’ outfit in New York.”
“You’re a captain,” suggested Henry Jackson, sarcastically. “Would you like to go down there and lead the men?”
Pete Walsh jeered and Ford Smith flushed angrily. “You think I’m afraid! Let me tell you—”
Jackson turned to the window. “The strikebreakers are coming!”
The pickets and sympathizers outside saw them, too. The picket lines stopped, stiffened into a formation along the fence.
Olinger snapped orders to his captains. “Walsh, Smith, get down among the men quickly. They’re not to leave the plant. Jackson, Murphy, you two get out in front of the doors. See that no one leaves! Our men are not to get mixed in outside, no matter what happens!”
The four captains ran from the room. Olinger stared out the window and Quade saw the worried look on the young strike leader’s face.
Then the epic outside took Quade’s full attention. A fleet of trucks was coming slowly up the street, surrounded by a convoy of police cars. All along the front of the plant, outside the high steel wire, the strikers were three deep, their arms linked together in a chain. If they held…
On the other side of the street were hundreds and hundreds of friends and relatives of the strikers. Over on the other side, in the brick building, the windows were black with union officials, organizers, strike chieftains.
The trucks and their convoys stopped when they came to within a hundred feet of the main gate. One of the police cars rolled ahead. Several men stepped out of the line of the strikers, went to talk with the officials in the open car. The din of the pickets subsided. Everyone seemed to want to hear what the dickering would lead to: fight or parley.
“That’s the fool sheriff, Speiss!” mumbled Olinger. “I hope he listens to reason!”
The parley went on for a full minute. The sheriff, conspicuous by his light gray Stetson, waved his hands and shouted. The strikers on the street argued and waved their hands too.
“As long as they talk,” Quade said, “things will be all right. Talking men don’t fight.”
Then a gun cracked somewhere and the sheriff reeled and fell back against a couple of his deputies. “I’m hit!” he cried.
Hell broke loose then. A couple of deputies in the car threw up riot guns and blazed away — straight into the chain of pickets.
The strikers surged toward the cars and a hail of lead from other automobiles met them. Tear gas cartridges popped and exploded everywhere into clouds of gray smoke. Above it all, the screams and yells and cries of two thousand men and women. And the scuffing and rushing and turmoil!