“But isn't that what they want you to do?—from the way they're acting?”
“What's the difference?” Billy shrugged his shoulders, then continued. “It's better to strike than to get fired. We beat 'em to it, that's all, an' we catch 'em before they're ready. Don't we know what they're doin'? They're collectin' gradin'-camp drivers an' mule-skinners all up an' down the state. They got forty of 'em, feedin' 'em in a hotel in Stockton right now, an' ready to rush 'em in on us an' hundreds more like 'em. So this Saturday's the last wages I'll likely bring home for some time.”
Saxon closed her eyes and thought quietly for five minutes. It was not her way to take things excitedly. The coolness of poise that Billy so admired never deserted her in time of emergency. She realized that she herself was no more than a mote caught up in this tangled, nonunderstandable conflict of many motes.
“We'll have to draw from our savings to pay for this month's rent,” she said brightly.
Billy's face fell.
“We ain't got as much in the bank as you think,” he confessed. “Bert had to be buried, you know, an I coughed up what the others couldn't raise.”
“How much was it?”
“Forty dollars. I was goin' to stand off the butcher an' the rest for a while. They knew I was good pay. But they put it to me straight. They'd been carryin' the shopmen right along an was up against it themselves. An' now with that strike smashed they're pretty much smashed themselves. So I took it all out of the bank. I knew you wouldn't mind. You don't, do you?”
She smiled bravely, and bravely overcame the sinking feeling at her heart.
“It was the only right thing to do, Billy. I would have done it if you were lying sick, and Bert would have done it for you an' me if it had been the other way around.”