The Coal War (19 page)

The miners had few guns, and it was difficult to get more, because the stores in the coal-towns had been cleaned out by the companies. Some of the Horton men went down to Pedro, telling the towns-people of their plight, and begging from house to house for arms. They came back with rusty shot-guns, old pistols, little “twenty-two” rifles such as boys use to shoot sparrows. Mike Sikoria carried a muzzle-loading musket, which antedated the Civil War; he had got powder and buckshot for the weapon, but could not fire it because he had no caps! Rovetta and his Italian friends had not been able to get guns of any sort, but had armed themselves with pitch-forks and axes, and meant to charge upon machine-guns with these implements of industry.

[28]

These developments increased the difficulty of Hal's position in the colony. He could not deny the right of these people to defend their homes; yet he wished to stand by his resolve to make his appeal to moral forces. And how could he do this, how could he make his personal position clear? He had become a leader here; irresistibly, in spite of himself, he had been pushed to the fore, and now the world held him responsible for the behavior of the strikers. Nor did he wish to repudiate them, to say, I have no part in their acts of self-defense. And on the other hand, how painfully easy it was for the strikers to misunderstand him. Oh yes, they would say, he's a rich fellow; he's only playing at striking! He's willing to help us, when it comes to appealing to his rich friends, or getting his name in the papers; but when it comes to getting a bullet through him, or laying himself liable to a long term in jail, or maybe to being hanged—then he thinks better of it, naturally!

In his own soul Hal suffered the qualms of the “conscientious objector”, whose way seems so easy—too easy! Yet it is not really easy; these qualms of the spirit are real things—as real as bullets or jails. To stand forth as weak-minded, a futile person, crying peace where there is no peace; appealing to moral forces, when there are no moral forces anywhere apparent! And when it would be so simple and so satisfactory to become a normal human being, to seize a weapon and go after those you hate! Yes, it takes courage and daring, even to believe in the existence of moral forces, in a community which seems to believe in nothing but bullets and jails, which presents itself to the eye of the soul as a mighty fortress of falsehood, pouring out upon its assailant a deluge of slander and abuse!

Each day made it harder; each cry of distress that Hal heard, each face of pain that he saw! He must identify himself more completely with each victim, he must be sure that he suffered in soul as much as they suffered in body! Also he must explain himself to them, he must keep their respect!

Mary Burke's respect, for example! Mary was Irish, and the blood of ten thousand ancestors called out in her for a share in this shindy. When she thought about Hal's attitude—yes, he was a gentleman, and this was “dirty work”, from which a gentleman shrank instinctively, whether he realized it or not. So Hal would have to argue with her; it was not really that—at least, he thought it was not that, he hoped it wasn't! They would have long searchings of soul, trying to settle deep problems of philosophy under the shadow of Stangholz's machine-gun!

What was there, really, in this busines of pacifism? Mary wanted to follow the best light she had; she wanted to learn from Hal, to be as good as he was, in the moral sense. Should she, too, place her trust in moral forces? Or were moral forces, perchance, a luxury of the rich and respected? There was really a difference, Hal must admit. If anything untoward were to happen to the son of Edward S. Warner, it would make a fuss in the newspapers; whereas, who knew or cared anything about Tommie Burke's lame foot, or the four teeth which had been shot out of Ike Klowowski's jaw? Really now, did it not seem a farce to preach nonresistance to common working-people? It was like telling a man to submit himself to savages on some lonely cannibal island. The man died and was eaten, and that was the end of it; nobody knew about him, and nothing came of his action—save that some cannibals grew fat and hearty!

Unless you believed in God, of course! Did Hal believe that there was a God, who watched what you were doing, and would do something to help you? And if so, what would He do? Hal saw that it was really a serious matter to preach brotherhood to the poor and lowly! Almost as serious to preach it in this far Western mining-country, as it had been to preach it in Judea, way back in the days of imperial Rome!

What Hal had to do was to nerve his soul to new moral efforts. To write more fervent appeals to the newspapers, and when the newspapers refused to print them, to have them printed at his own expense—or rather at the expense of his father! To sit up till all hours of the morning, mailing these appeals to his friends, and adding personal messages, more excited than good taste might seem to permit! To hurry off to Sheridan and throw himself, a sort of moral dynamite bomb, at the head of the little cowboy Governor!

The Governor was still riding about in the coal-company automobile with Schulman, well guarded from dynamite bombs both moral and material. “You cannot see the Governor!” declared Old Peter's general manager; and the general manager was, as has been said before, a person accustomed to managing—one of those “forceful” men, who look you straight in the eye as they speak, and whose sentences hit you like blows between the eyes. “No sir, the Governor is busy.”

“How do you know he's busy?”

“I'm keeping him busy, if you must have it!”

The two of them stood with clenched fists—there in the corridor of the American Hotel, outside the Governor's rooms. When Hal would not go about his business, the Governor's secretary came, and repeated the general manager's words, as obediently as if he had been an office-boy. And finally came the Governor himself, hurrying past, with Schulman on one side and Atchison, chief clerk of the “G.F.C.” on the other, and one detective in front and two in the rear. And here was Hal, following along and arguing, while the Governor shook his head and almost ran, and one of the detectives rammed his elbow into Hal's ribs, almost pinning him against the wall. A most undignified scene—and a most unsatisfactory moral effort!

[29]

The little cowboy Governor had issued a statement in the newspaper that morning, saying that everything was now all right in the coal-country. But that afternoon he was so unwise as to ride out in the automobile without either Schulman or Atchison—with only his secretary and two detectives. He was going up to the Pine Creek mine, to make sure that there were no strike-breakers held in “peonage”; and half way up the canyon he ran into a sentry, who brought up his rifle and commanded, “Halt!” When the question was asked, “Why?” the answer was, “Company orders!” No one was to pass by that road. When it was explained that this was Governor Barstow, the answer was, “Nothing doing.” How could the guard know it was really the Governor? And anyhow, he had no business on the property of the “G.F.C.”!

So the chief executive went back to Sheridan, from which place he issued another statement, to the effect that all the strikers now had to do was to obey the law. He took his departure for Western City; and that same day a party of gunmen, going through a crowded street in the town of Sheridan, turned upon a group of strikers and opened fire on them with rifles, killing three people and mortally wounding two others. The strikers had hooted at them, calling them “scab-herders”, they declared; later on they added the claim that someone had thrown a stone. But none of the strikers had been armed, and no one ever asserted that they fired a shot in the entire affair.

That was the climax; there was little revolution in Sheridan that night. Mobs of strikers swarmed the streets, and the gunmen fled, some fifty taking refuge in the courthouse, with the sheriff-emperor in command, and machineguns mounted in the windows. Young Vagleman, son of the judge, and an attorney of the operators, got together a crowd of deputies in Pedro, with three machine-guns and a ton of ammunition, and stopping a United States mail-train, piled this miniature army into the sleeping-cars. When a brakeman protested, the deputies threw him off the train and knocked him over the head. But when they got to Sheridan, they found the situation in charge of the citizens of the town. As a general thing in strikes the trades-people sympathize with the employers; but in this case, the employers had gone too far, and about four hundred armed citizens held the streets of Sheridan for six days, while the sheriff-emperor and his courtiers stayed within the walls of their castle.

At Horton the leaders were holding anxious conferences. It was a desperate crisis which confronted them. Should they purchase arms in earnest, and get ready for what might turn into a revolution? Or should they join with the operators and their newspapers, in calling for the militia to keep order? The strike-leaders distrusted the militia, for they knew how it had broken the strike ten years ago. Would the operators want it now, unless they knew what it would do?

Hal listened to tales about the militia, but could not believe them. His cousin, Appie Harding, was an officer in this body, and a number of his friends belonged to it—Bob Creston and Dicky Everson among them. These young fellows were self-indulgent, and entirely without idea of the meaning of the strike; but they were not depraved, and they had a sense of fair-play—surely they were more to be trusted than brutes like Hanun and Dirkett and Stangholz! Surely anything would be better than this present arrangement of “Government by Gunmen”!

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They were threshing out these questions on Friday evening at a meeting in the headquarters tent. Half a dozen times the discussion was interrupted by strikers rushing in to say that parties of mounted men were gathering. They were getting ready for their threatened raid! They were going to wipe out the colony! All that night excitement continued—alarms and excursions, telephone-calls from all sides, the digging of shelter-holes and trenches.

And sure enough, soon after daylight a party of twenty armed horsemen came down the canyon. With Mary Burke and Jerry Minetti at his side, Hal stood at the edge of the village, and saw one of the horsemen raise his rifle and fire into the tents. The provocation was deliberate; and it at once became evident that every preparation for attack had been made. Parties of the guards had been posted on all sides, and opened fire.

The strikers rushed into the open, to draw the fire from the tents with the women and children; but the enemy meant business this time—their volleys were deadly. Several men fell, and the rest retreated, firing as they went, to the steel railroad-bridge. From this shelter they continued shooting all day, until darkness fell and the gunmen retired up the canyon.

But the strikers were now thoroughly aroused, and gave ear to Billy Keating, with his program of offensive defense. They followed the guards, and sent out a call for help all over the district. Men walked all night—twenty or thirty miles in some cases; they posted themselves behind rocks, and laid regular siege to Barela and North Valley and the Northeastern.

The guards too, called for help—and needless to say they did not understate their peril. Rescue parties with machineguns were loaded upon trains both at Sheridan and Pedro; but behold, a new development in strike warfare—the crews of the trains refused to move them!

So the strikers had things in their own hands next day. One may judge how little pleasure they took in fighting, by the use they made of their advantage. It was Sunday, and there was a festival scheduled in the evening, and they came home to dance! To celebrate their victory, to tell their wives and sweethearts how they had made the enemy run! There was music and feasting in the big school-tent, until the small hours of the morning—when word came that the “death special” was on the way, and an army of gunmen leaving Sheridan in a train of steel cars, which they were running themselves!

So the strikers proceeded to organize and put themselves under military discipline. They mounted pickets, and when the steel train made its appearance in the grey dawn, it was received with such a hail of bullets that it was forced to back away. And all that day bodies of strikers continued to arrive, and new companies were formed and new leaders appointed. They offered a command to Hal Warner, and more than one man looked at him with wonder and distrust when he declined. One of those who accepted with alacrity was the new “Ironside”, with the gun and the reporter's note-book; another was Jerry Minetti, and a third Jack David. “Big Jack” got himself a horse from one of the neighboring ranches, and with it the title of “General”. It was a small horse, and when the “General” sat on it, his feet all but touched the ground. But nobody smiled at the sight; the silent Welshman was become suddenly bold and determined, giving his orders like a veteran commander.

That night a blizzard descended out of the North. But even this made no difference—in the early morning a thousand men marched forth, and proceeded in business-like fashion to besiege the coal-camps. They cut the telephone and telegraph wires, so that it was no longer possible to send out news; they made ready to dynamite the railroad-tracks, so that the steel train could not make another foray. They beat down the resistance of the guards, killing several; the group under the command of “Captain” Keating was actually in possession of the North Valley stockade, when word came to Horton that the “policy committee” of the union had had a session with Governor Barstow, and had worked out an agreement for the ending of the strike.

The militia was to come to the field immediately, and both sides were to submit to its authority. The Governor gave his solemn assurance that the mine-guards would be disarmed as well as the strikers; also that the importation of strike-breakers would cease, that the laws would be enforced and the strikers protected. So messengers were sent to the various war-parties, and the wearied skirmishers came in, and piled their guns in the headquarters tent.