"About half an hour after the boy told me this the deputies appeared. In the first bunch were forty-two, and then Sheriff McRae came with more, making altogether, what I counted, sixty-four. The first bunch came around the bush alongside the railroad track where I was and the sheriff came in about twenty minutes later with his bunch from the opposite way.
"In the first bunch was a fat, stout fellow with two guns. He had a chief's badge—a chief of police's badge—on him. He was facing toward the fire and he says, 'If you move a step, I will fill you full of lead!' I laughed at him, says I, 'What does this outrage mean?' There was another old gentleman with a chin beard, fat, middling fat, probably my own age, and he picked up my coat which was lying alongside me and looked at my button. He says, 'Oh, undesirable citizen!' I says, 'What do you mean?' He says, 'Are you an I. W. W.?' I says, 'I am, and I am more than proud of it!' 'Well,' he says, 'we don't want you in this county.' I says, 'Sure?' He says, 'Yes.' I says, 'Well, I am not going to stay in this county, I am going to cook breakfast and go to Seattle.' He says, 'Do you understand what this means?' I says, 'No.' He says, 'The sheriff will be here in a few minutes and he will tell you what it means.' I heard afterward that this man was the mayor of Snohomish.
"I was sitting right opposite the fire with my coffee and bread and meat in my hand when Sheriff McRae came up and says, 'Who is this bunch?' So a tall, black deputy, a tall, dark complected fellow, says, 'They are a bunch of harvest hands coming from North Dakota.' McRae says, 'Did you search these men?' And he says, 'Yes.' 'Did you find any shooting arms on them?' He says, 'No.' They had searched us and we had no guns or clubs.
"McRae then asked, 'Who is their leader?' and this old gentleman that spoke to me first, he says, 'They have no leader, but that old man over there is the spokesman.' So he came over to me and says, 'Where are you going?' I says, 'I am going to Seattle.' Then he used an expression that I don't think is fit for ladies to hear. I says, 'My mother was a lady and she never raised any of us by the name you have mentioned, and,' I says, 'I don't think I have done anything that I will have to walk out of the county.' He says, 'Do you see that track?' I says, 'Yes.' He says, 'Well, you will walk down that track!' I says, 'But for these twenty-one men that are here in my hands I wouldn't walk a foot for you.' He says, 'You get out. I am going to shoot all these things to pieces.' I says, 'You will shoot nothing to pieces, I bought them with my hard-earned money.' He says, 'All right, take them with you.' Then he shot up the cans and things, and he says, 'That is the track to Seattle and you go up it, and if I ever catch you in this county again you will get what you are looking for.'
"So we walked up the hill toward Seattle and there is a town, I think they call it Maltby, and we got there between four and five o'clock in the evening. Fellow Worker Thornton, Adams and Love were the committee men and they asked me how I felt. I told them my feet were pretty sore.
"I went over to the station agent and found out that there was a freight due at 9:30 but that sometimes it didn't get in until three in the morning. I then asked permission to light a fire and cook some coffee, and after we were thru eating we lay down.
"About 9:30 the train came along and I called the men. As the train was backing up I saw some light come, and one auto throwing her searchlight, and I counted four automobiles. That is all I could count but there were a whole lot of them coming. I says, 'Men, we have run up against a stone wall.'
"Fellow Worker Love and I—he came off the machine with me in Great Falls—we were first in line and Sheriff McRae and two other men with white handkerchiefs around their necks came forward first and he says, 'You son-of-a-b——, I thought you were going to Seattle?' I says, 'Ain't I going to Seattle? I can't go till the train goes,' I says, 'you've had me walking now till I have no foot under me. What do you mean by this outrage? My father fought for this country and I have a right here. I am on railroad property and have done nothing to anybody.' McRae then hit Fellow Worker Love on the head and I yelled 'Break and run, men, or they will kill you!' He turned around then and he said to me, 'You dirty old Irish bastard, now I will make you so you can't run. I'll show you!' With that he let drive and hit me, leaving this three cornered mark here (indicating place on head). And when the others went up the track he says, 'Get now, God damn your old soul, or I will kill you!' I says, 'Sheriff, look here, you are a perfect gentleman, you are, to hit a fellow old enough to be your father.' He made as if to hit me again and then Fellow Worker Love came back and says, 'Have a heart!' I says 'You run,' and he says 'No, they are not going to kill you while I am here.' And Fellow Worker Paterson came back down the track and I says, 'What is the matter, Paterson, are you crazy? Get the men and tell them to go over the line. Don't stay in this county or they are liable to murder you!' Then Love and I went off the track into the thick bushes and lay down till next morning.
"At daylight we got up, went down to the junction and gathered up fifteen of the men. When the train pulled in the trainman asked me where I was going and I said I was going to Seattle. He says, 'Do you carry a card?' 'Yes,' says I. 'Produce!' says he. That is the word the trainmen use. So I put my hand in my pocket and pulled it out. 'You better get back in the caboose, you are hurt,' he said. He saw the blood where Fellow Worker Love had bandaged my head with his handkerchief. 'No,' says I, 'Where the men are riding is good enough for me.' So we went to where the interurban comes in and I was seven men short. I paid two-fifty into Seattle, and we came in, and I made a report to the Seattle locals."
Incidents similar to this were of almost daily occurrence, scores of deportations taking place during the month of September. Then on the 26th, despite his promises to refrain from molesting the hall, McRae entered the premises, forcibly seized Earl Osborne, the secretary, took him a long distance out in the country, and at the point of a gun made him start the thirty-mile trip on foot to Seattle. On the 29th of September the Everett authorities arrested J. Johnson and George Bradley in Seattle. Johnson was held on an arson charge but no legal warrant for his arrest was issued until October 17th, or until he had been in jail for nineteen days. Then the charge against him was that he had set fire to a box factory—but this was soon changed when it was learned by the authorities that the box factory had not caught fire until after Johnson was in jail, and for the first charge they substituted the claim that Johnson had burned the garage of one Walter Smith, a scab shingle weaver deputy. George Bradley, who had been deported from Everett after having served one day as secretary, was accused of second degree arson as an alleged accomplice. Each man was told that the other had confessed and the best thing to do was to make a clean breast of matters, but this scheme of McRae's fell thru for two reasons: the men were not guilty, and they had never seen or heard of each other before. Johnson was in jail fifty-eight days without a preliminary hearing. Both men were released on property bonds, and the trials were "indefinitely postponed," that still being their status at this writing.