The queue bent in through the dining-room doorway and past the tables where Jessie, Myra Egan, Mrs. Sturges, Mrs. Train, and Mrs. Maples served them soup, salt pork, bread, and black coffee in a rattle of plates and cutlery. Jessie looked faded and tired beside Myra Egan’s pink-cheeked freshness. Those who had been served stood in the middle of the room and wolfed down their food, more, he knew, from an urge to get out than from hunger. Finished, they joined another line, where Lupe, the fat Mexican cook, watched them drop their plates into a cauldron of hot water, after which they filed outside past those who still entered.
The hot, wet smell of soup that permeated the General Peach seemed to him the stench of defeat. They were almost defeated, and he raged at it, and at his presumption in thinking he could help them, and, most of all, at MacDonald, who had beaten them so easily. They did not even send MacDonald the revised demands any more, for MacDonald only threw them away as soon as they were presented to him. More than a dozen of the strikers had left Warlock, and he knew most of the rest were only waiting for some excuse to go back to the Medusa. Leaning against the newel post, he watched their leaders, old man Heck and Frenchy Martin, filing out with the rest. Their faces were resolute still, but he knew it was only for show. Each day he stood here to watch the strikers and feel their temper, and each day he could see them weakening.
He stayed to watch the last of the miners leave before he went into Jessie’s room and sat down in the chair beside the door. He rose when Jessie came in. Myra Egan stood outside in the entryway, and smiled at him as she tucked her hair up under her bonnet. Myra’s face was plumper, and her breasts looked swollen in her crisp gingham dress; before many months had passed she would bear Warlock’s first legitimate child.
“My goodness, I am feeling the heat these days, Doc!” she said, fanning her flushed face with her hand.
“It is natural that you should, Myra.”
She flushed still more, prettily. Jessie thanked her, and thanked the other ladies, whom he could not see from where he stood. Disparate types though they were, they were beginning to form a women’s organization, now dedicating their energies to the welfare of the strikers. He had heard Mrs. Maples indignantly informing Myra Egan that Kate Dollar had offered to help them; a club existed as soon as there was someone to be excluded.
Jessie closed the door and went to stand listlessly by the table. “It is very tiring,” she said.
“I don’t expect it will need to be done much longer.”
She shrugged. He knew she did not really care, yet it was what she had chosen for her role and she would fulfill that role to the limit of her strength, and probably better than someone who cared more. She bent her head as she leafed through the pages of a little book of poems on the table. The nape of her neck under the curls was white, downed with fair hair, and heartbreakingly thin.
He heard the sound of boots mounting the porch. “Jessie!” a voice called.
She moved to the door and opened it.
“The hogs are all fed, I see.” It was MacDonald’s voice, and the doctor went to join her in the doorway. “How long are you going to go on feeding this herd?”
“As long as they are hungry,” Jessie said. MacDonald stood facing her, his derby hat in his hand. His pale, small-featured face was savage. With him was one of his foremen, Lafe Dawson, with a shotgun over his arm.
“Well, they are going to stay hungry as long as you are going to feed them,” MacDonald said. “Why should they work when they can line up at your trough for every meal? You may think you are being quite the little angel of mercy, but let me tell—”
“Maybe you had better not talk so loud, Mr. MacDonald,” Dawson said, rolling his eyes toward the stairs.
“I will talk as loudly as I wish! I am talking to you, too, Wagner. You are doing them a disservice. You are going to regret this; and they are.”
“There are no Regulators any more, Charlie,” the doctor said. It pleased him to see how frightened MacDonald was behind his mask of anger.
“I have heard from the company,” MacDonald said. “They are backing me completely — completely! There is no pressure upon me to settle this strike, whatever lying rumors have been circulated to the contrary.”
“Then why are you threatening us, Charlie?” Jessie said; she said it calmly and without guile, only as though she were puzzled.
“For your own good!” MacDonald tried to smile, and failed. “I have come to tell you that I have heard from Mr. Willingham. Mr. Arthur Willingham.” He folded his arms, as though in triumph. “Mr. Willingham is in Bright’s City today, to confer with General Peach. You may know that Mr. Willingham, besides being president of the Porphyrion and Western Mining Company, has very important connections in Washington. I think that General Peach will not ignore what is going on down here any longer. If these men do not go back to work immediately, or if there is any more trouble down here whatsoever, you can be sure we will have martial law down here in every sense of the word, and a Mexican crew will then be brought in to work the Medusa. That,” MacDonald said, “was my communication from Mr. Willingham.” He waited, as though for some attempt at rebuttal.
Tittle and Fitzsimmons had appeared at the head of the hallway, and Dawson shifted his shotgun around to point at them.
“Have you had orders to settle the strike, Charlie?” Jessie asked.
“Are you calling me a liar?” MacDonald cried. “I tell you that Mr. Willingham is backing me one hundred per cent! The mining companies cannot allow a pack of ignorant, filthy foreigners to dictate to them how stopes are to be constructed, and what wages are to be paid!” MacDonald advanced a step, pointing a finger at the doctor as though it were a weapon. “Committees interfering with the work, and all the rest of this asininity you have put into their heads, Wagner. I see well enough that your committees are to be the Miners’ Union in fact. It was you—the two of you! Well, I will not be blackguarded by a pack of strong-backed louts, nor by a couple of conspiring — criminally conspiring! — busybodies! I swear to you that I will fight this until they come creeping back begging for work!”
“Charlie,” the doctor said. “I swear to you that I will do my best to see that they do not!”
MacDonald bared his teeth in the facsimile of a smile again, as though he had cunningly extracted a confession. “Remember that, Dawson,” he said. “When General Peach comes down here we will have things to tell him about Doctor David Wagner. And about this house. A disorderly house,” he said, and Jessie gasped.
“Watch your tongue, MacDonald!” the doctor cried. Dawson was grimacing horribly; Tittle started forward and Dawson swung the shotgun toward him again.
“I said a disorderly house!” MacDonald said. “A damnable mare’s nest of criminal conspiracy against the mining companies. Conspiracy to commit arson! And murder, for all I know!” He stopped, panting, his eyes flickering insanely; and then he cried, “And a disorderly house in more ways than that! This house and you are a scandal to this town, Jessie. I can ruin you!”
“Shut up!” Tittle screamed. Fitzsimmons was trying to hold him, and Dawson nervously threatened him with the shotgun. “Shut up! You lying, dirty dog!” Tittle screamed, in a mechanical voice.
“That’s enough, Ben,” Jessie said.
“Shoot that man if he tries to attack me!” MacDonald said to his foreman, but Tittle had quieted.
Dawson was motioning toward the stairs. “Mr. MacDonald, you had better hush!”
MacDonald sneered. “And do not think I am frightened of your adulterous scandal of a marshal, either! You may be sure he will be—”
“Charlie, I will kill you myself!” the doctor cried. He could feel his heart pounding dangerously in his chest as he started forward. Dawson turned the shotgun toward him. Tittle’s eyes were glaring from his contorted face, as insane as MacDonald’s; as murderous, he thought suddenly, as his own face must look. Jessie put a hand on his arm and he halted.