"Aw, you lemme 'lone! I ain't done a thing."
"Take him, there." He shook the boy savagely. "Your name's McGuire, ain't it? Frank McGuire—I know you."
McGue came up again, holding in his irritation. "What do you want this boy for?"
"None of your damn' business! We got a warrant for him, see? You keep out, or——"
Several of the deputies in the rear clicked their hammers suggestively, snickering at the one-sided joke. A disturbed buzz wavered up and down the massed strikers. As Huggins turned up the wider road again, it grew in volume into a subdued stream of boohs, catcalls, hisses, low threats. He turned incautiously, facing them.
"Don't you follow me, you gutter trash, or I'll jug the lot of you!"
A weak satiric voice came from behind a house. "Aw, will you, though!"
McGue's eyes grinned; but his face remained set, as he doggedly kept pace with the head of the marching guards.
Two more men were taken in the same methodical fashion. The surging procession was now near the open center of the location, where a square had been left as a common, with the artesian well at one end.
Girls and women quietly replaced the men in the front line, jeering and cursing at the flushed faces of the soldiers, occasionally stumbling awkwardly against them. There was a scream as a soldier turned suddenly on a pretty red-haired girl, and caught her wrist. An old Irish virago beside clutched his shoulder and flung him sideways.