“Come in! Come in! Something bad!” They put their hands to their heads and rocked sidewise. They were foreigners and knew little English.
“Joe,” I said, “we’d better drive on. They may have been drinking. It may be some sort of hoax to get us into the house.”
“No! No!” shrieked the women. “No drink! Something bad!” They climbed on the running board and began pulling us.
“Come on, Mother,” said Joe. “Let’s go in. I think there has been trouble.”
We followed the three lanky women into the shack. On a wretched bed covered with dirty rag-ends of blankets and old quilts lay Mooney, bleeding profusely and unconscious. Farley sat beside him, badly beaten.
Joe raced into Trinidad and got a doctor but although Mooney survived he was never quite right in the head afterward. Farley, however, recovered from his terrible beating.
He said that as they were returning from Bohnn, seven gunmen jumped out from the bushes along the road, had beaten them up, kicked them and stamped their feet upon them. All seven were armed and resistance was useless.
Organizers were thrown into jail and held without trial for months. They were deported. In April fourteen miners were arrested at Broadhead and deported to New Mexico. They were landed in the desert, thirty miles from food or water. Hundreds of others were deported, taken away without being allowed to communicate with wives and children. The women suffered agonies not knowing when their men went from home whether they would ever return. If the deported men returned they were immediately arrested by the militia and put in jail. All organizers and leaders were in danger of death, in the open streets or from ambush. John Lawson was shot at but by a miracle the bullet missed him.
The strike in the southern fields dragged on and on. But from the moment the southern miners had been deserted by their northern brothers, I felt their strike was doomed. Bravely did those miners fight before giving in to the old peonage. The military had no regard for human life. They were sanctified cannibals. Is it any wonder that we have murders and holdups when the youth of the land is trained by the great industrialists to a belief in force; when they see that the possession of money puts one above law.