She had always liked the Pastures as a place to walk; the air was less flat than in the town; and it was pleasant to set one’s face against poverty and one’s feet toward a place where people were rich enough to pay rent. Bentley’s Place overtopped the city on an artificial and costly eminence. The little house that was placed like a lodge was the terminal station of the narrow-gauge railway. She knew herself to be two miles and three quarters from that, and a mile or more from the plant.
Usually she met the day squad coming out from the town, the men standing in the ore cars, the smoke from their pipes and the straining, overworked little engine blown behind them toward the town—like a message sent home, Emma thought. But to-day no cars passed, and she, being a child of toil, was quick to know that this meant a strike. She hurried on to her earnings, remembering that when men are out of work they have all day in which to spend their savings. Women see so little in strikes but higher wages until some one is dead.
When she reached the Bridge it was crowded with people. Men who had not worked at the plant for years were exhorting their fellows not to submit to tyranny. Many large words were being misused with great pride by those who never had a chance to talk except when the crowd was too busy to listen. The women were not very carefully dressed, having had no time for fastenings or strings. They, together with the children they brought with them, seemed to regard the occasion as one of festivity.
Nothing was denounced very definitely. One stranger was said to be a reporter, whereupon half a dozen people beset him, anxious to have their views in the paper. Emma could learn nothing from any of them. They used Quarry’s and Bowa’s names frequently, so that she forebore mentioning under whose roof the Englishman had passed the night.
Her shop was in the fourth house from the Bridge; a steep diagonal path ran from its back door to the Tracks. The men were swarming to it before she was quite ready to have them, and many arrived by the rarely used footway. News came with them, and she found herself believing first one report and then another. Bowa came to be shaved; she was surprised at his thinking of a thing so incidental to a holiday toilet as a shave, but she supposed that he was resolved to die tidy, and said as much.
He could not be at the plant, he explained, and felt that he had no need to be there. His smile was exceedingly subtle, but his hands worked against his will in an embarrassed fashion.
The day wore on until about four o’clock. Her business had been immense, and she had listened to the many accounts and descriptions of the plant until she felt she knew it perfectly. In the centre was the powder house, where explosives were kept; on the city flank was the nutt and bolt factory, and very near, but south of it, the furnace. It was set on a steep “slide” of rock; its door, through which the furnace was fed, was on the summit side; and on the base side, lower on the slide by eight feet or more, was another door through which the “cinder” flew away at night into the darkness like a burning river. This door seems complicated on paper, though in fact its construction is simple. A skewer secures it at its upper edge—a skewer with a large loop at one end. Into this loop the hook of the fire-tenders’ strange implement is thrust when the door is to be opened. “The Devil’s Crook” is what the men have named the long oak stick finished at one end with an iron hook. It does look like a thing wherewith to herd black sheep.
Emma was weary of constant exclamation and argument. It was time she ate; so she closed her door and “boiled her bottle,” allowing the men who were already in the shop to remain there. She saw Bowa get up from his chair and leave by the back door, silent and hurried. As was natural, Emma turned to the window to see what had caught his eye in the street.
Young Bentley had driven up in his buggy; his liveried servant sat beside him, and the horse he drove plunged and shook with nervousness at being surrounded by a crowd of loud-voiced people. Bentley stood up in the little buggy, having given the reins to his man. “See here,” he said, addressing the crowd, “if we have a strike, you’d better remember that I can stand it, and you can’t. I’ve sent police to the plant to protect my property, and you had better stand by them; for the plant is the machine you make your bread with, and it’s the only thing you can work at. I’ve got lots of irons on the fire. Now some one has trifled with this road-bed, in the cut here, By the Bridge. I suppose you want to make me lose my charter. I’m going to examine the damage now, and I hope you’ll come with me.”
He jumped to the ground and began to descend the steps leading to the road-bed in the cut, over which the Bridge is. No one followed him, but with admirable nerve he neither hesitated nor quickened his pace.