Kane looked sideways at Paul Judson, who kept his eyes on the table. The satellite spoke up uncertainly. "I'll tell you something—privately—about him, that can stop his talking ... if we must use it."
Tuttle nodded, after a glance at the inscrutable downcast gaze of the vice-president.
"Is there anyone else?" said the chairman. "That lawyer, Spence?"
"No," said Tuttle, decidedly. "He's a lawyer; a lawyer thinks as his clients do," and he smiled acidly. "Bivens, of the Voice of Labor, Bowden, Pooley, employ him. He won't risk losing his livelihood ... or go further than they will."
"It's time, Henry," Paul addressed the corporation counsel, "to go ahead with our scheme. We've won the election; minor matters can be—er, investigated, or otherwise handled. But as long as the strike lasts, we are losing; our profit sheets show it. First your move, then ... the militia. I advised it long ago, you remember."
The meeting closed with the uncomfortable, and frequent, impression that, as usual, Paul Judson's sight alone had visioned correctly future troubles—and their remedies.
The last week of November saw the playing of the withheld card. Hurrying clerks of Tuttle and Mabry served on each houseowner the final notice of eviction, granted suddenly by County Judge Little.
Roscoe Little, one of the Jackson family of that name, held a perpetual lien on the judgeship because of his triumphant spinelessness. He had never been known to express a decided opinion on either side of a question; a weak-eyed hail-fellow-well-met, with a chin like the German crown prince, he spent his mornings ruling in favor of corporation attorneys, his afternoons absorbing comic weeklies and whiskey-and-sodas at the University Club. He was unmarried; facetious barristers insisted that he could not commit himself even in affairs of the heart.
There was nothing for the miners to do but move; the rifles of the augmented deputies were an unanswerable persuasion. A few miles up the valley the gray sandstone hill behind the mountain was undeveloped. Spence secured the land at a slight rental, and here tents and scrap-timber shacks did something to keep out the bitter winds of winter.
Pelham helped in the moving, as did many of the socialists. Old Peter came up to him in Hewintown the last day. "Mornin', Mr. Pelham."