He took her to the station. As they entered it, two cars disgorged another increment of the militia.
He rode to the first stop with her.
"You were a good lover," was her final praise. "Run down to the coast and see me sometime.... If you still want me."
XXVII
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.