Sanders the Valiant

by Roy Norton

 

SANDERS THE VALIANT

By Roy Norton

SANDERS, more than any one else, felt the isolation of it. With all its familiarity, there was a sense of great strangeness brooding ominously over the scene. The big mill down in the hollow was there even as it was when he went away to the far East, but a year before the same shaft-house reared its ungainly head above its footing of leveled dump, the tramway stretched—snakelike around the hills, and the blacksmith’s shop squatted out on the foreground. But everywhere there was silence.

A strike was on—cruel, relentless, long drawn, and effective. And Sanders’ heart was filled with a great pity and a great loneliness, for many of these men were his friends, and they were fighting the greatest man in the world, his hero, McCarthy the manager.

It seemed preposterous that they should be at enmity with his ideal. Why, McCarthy was every man’s friend, if the man was only worth while. McCarthy had given him a stage in the older days, had nursed men who were sick, had looked after the welfare of the widowed, and impoverished himself to assist others, and, best of all, had married the Dream Lady.

Sanders felt very moody, and over his freckled face there crept a gloom strangely at variance with the lines of good humor that crinkled the corners of his eyes, and even swept up to the very roots of his red hair.

From the manager’s house in the rear there floated to him through the opened windows McCarthy’s big, booming voice, carrying a note of mingled stubbornness and sorrow.

“It’s not our own old men that are at fault,” the voice said, evidently addressing the Dream Lady. “It’s these new men that have entered the district. Men that have come from the foreign mines, and who are always rampant unionists. They don’t understand conditions, and have swept those who do off their feet and out of reason in their demands. It wouldn’t hurt so much if some of our old men, who used to be such good friends of mine, were not suffering.” The speech ended in a long-drawn sigh, and the twittering of a bird in the tamaracks distracted Sanders’ attention.

“But why are you so worried to-day?” came the Dream Lady’s voice, with an undertone of insistence.

Sanders felt that McCarthy was trying to evade something, and waited impatiently for the answer. It came after much hesitation.

“Well, I may as well tell you the truth, because you will know it all sooner or later. I received notice last night that the men, aggravated by our ability to keep the pumps going and the underground workings free from water, are going to resort to violence. There are threats from the worst of them that they will dynamite the boiler house.”

A sharp, low exclamation came from the Dream Lady within, and Sanders hurriedly jumped to his feet and ran into the house. The mine-manager sat with his hands tightly clenched, his gray-fringed head dropped forward, and his whole posture that of despondency. His dark eyes blazed with resolution unspoken, and his set jaws told of another side to the impending struggle. Both Sanders and the Dream Lady read his purpose, and understood.

“Oh, Mack,” pleaded the Dream Lady, dropping to her knees by his side, “you aren't going to stay here and fight them, are you? The mine isn’t worth your life. You are mine. You belong to me, and to Sanders.”

Sanders felt that he had been appealed to by the Dream Lady, but for once was without an answer.

“I’m going to send you and Sanders away,” said McCarthy, without looking up.

Sanders rose in open rebellion. “You can send her if you want to,” he said. “We don’t want her to get hurt. But you can’t send me. I’m goin’ to stick. You always stuck by me, and I always stuck by you. And we ain’t goin’ to be unstuck now,” he concluded sharply.

McCarthy felt that he was receiving the last straw when such opposition came from within his own household. He pleaded with them, tried to show that they might be in danger; besought them to go, because he would worry over their safety, and finally commanded.

As a compromise, he allowed them two days’ respite, telling them that he feared no attack until at least one more attempt at conciliation had failed.

Then, to avoid further discussion of what he considered a final solution, he put on his hat, aimlessly picked up a rubber coat, and strode out across the porch, and down the pathway to the idle plant.

Sanders patted the Dream Lady affectionately on the shoulder, and put his arms around her neck, in the vain hope of comforting her. She drew him to her until the shock of red hair was pillowed on her breast, and then broke into quivering sobs.

The boy, with a wisdom far beyond his years, silently slipped through the door and out on the hillside, and left her to the efficacy of tears. He remembered with vividness the few times that he had indulged in such a luxury. His life up to a year ago had been too hard. Down below him in the cañon stretched the road whereon he had driven a stage and fought his own way in man’s fashion; across the gulch was a decaying cabin, to which his father—years before—had been brought, mortally injured; in that cabin his brother had died, and from its doors they had carried the body of his mother. And now, after a year in the East under the care of his foster-mother, he had come back joyously to the hills—his hills—to find nothing but trouble. It wasn’t that he minded it in his own behalf, but because the Dream Lady, as he called her, was in grief, and because the grim, quiet mine-manager, her husband, was in danger.

With the restlessness of his age he decided to take the trail along the top of the hill, and come down to the American mine. He swung silently, with the free step of the born mountaineer, up the mountain’s side, cut along the ridge, and down across the crest.

From the point where he paused on the top he looked back on the silent camp, with its row of untenanted cabins and assay-offices, empty bunk-houses and staring, boarding shacks, idle mills and unanimated rows of ore-cars. A voice from below him arrested his attention. It was an excited one, raised almost to a shout.

Sanders felt the necessity of further knowledge and the imperative need of stealth. He slipped off his shoes, took to the brush, and crept or wriggled toward the sound. His way led him over small, open spaces, or through tangles of undergrowth, until he came sheer out upon an abrupt ledge that towered up to a broken ending, where its hardness had defied nature’s erosion, and left it standing solitary, like a little cliff on the mountain’s face.

With care, that no loose rock should be sent flying down as a warning to those below, he stretched himself on his stomach, and cautiously worked out to the edge.

Below him, in various attitudes, were grouped a number of the striking miners, resting in the warmth of the sun, and in earnest argument. Sanders noticed with joy that nearly all were familiar, and knew them for what McCarthy had once been wont to call “The Old Guard.”

“I’m sick of this,” said the speaker, a former shift-boss. “They always treated me right at the mine, and there was never any row until this bunch of Pennsylvanians came in here. And why did they come? Because their own unions had forfeited their charter, and run them out for the trouble-makers they are.”

“Yes, but why did Mack put them on?” insisted another voice, that had evidently been the speaker in a previous discussion.

“Because he needed miners, and had to take what he could get,” sharply answered the former shift-boss.

“Then why didn’t you kick harder before we all went on strike, if you knew all this?” sneered the objector.

“I did, but you were one of the sore-heads that wanted a fight, and I had to shut up.”

“Yes,” said another. “You wanted a fight, and you got it, I guess.”

“Here, here!” interrupted a gray-bearded man, seated at the side. “We all make mistakes, and some are right and some are wrong. The question is, did we old hands join these fellows with the idea that if we were shut out there would be powder used to kick to pieces the plant we helped make? Are we going to stand for it? As man to man, did the boss ever fight us but fair? Ain’t there fifty of us that wants to drop the whole fight, go to Mack as men, and say we done wrong; take our medicine, and come back.”

A rumbling of assent swept over the crowd.

“But we’ve got to act quick,” continued the elder man. “There’s a committee of a hundred going up there to-day, and unless Mack gives in—which we all know he won’t do—they will blow her up to-night.”

“Good God!” came from Sanders’ dry throat. Even now they might be there at the mine. A hundred against three. Even now they were perhaps on their way to try to terrorize the man who was more than father to him.

In an agony of careful haste the boy wormed his way back across the face of the ridge, out into the undergrowth and up the hillside, and broke into a wild run. Heedless of the thorns that tore him, of the sharp stones that cut his feet, or the ruggedness of the mountainside, he fled—fled back to give warning. Beads of perspiration cut rivulets down his dust-grimed face, and his heart struck his ribs as though battering at a citadel. His breath came in gasps, and, when he paused to scale a ledge, his knees fluttered strangely. But no sob came to the grim little lips, no tears welled to the shrewd little eyes, and no thought of fear lurked in his hard-driven heart.

Breaking through a thicket at the top, he came in sight of the shaft and boiler-houses. He groaned in agony of disappointment. They had beat him up while he had listened to the talk of the peaceful element back there under the rocks.

Down below in the yard, or level place between the shaft-houses and the shops, was what looked like an army of men. The place was black with them. With his back against the shaft-house, stood the manager, his great, stocky form planted squarely on wide-spread feet, his unarmed hands hanging loosely by his sides, and his whole attitude that of unwavering determination. He was evidently addressing the men, because at something he said Sanders saw the crowd break into hoarse shouts and wild gesticulation. McCarthy stood unmoved, and apparently was talking to them again.

Sanders waited to see or hear no more. He ran unobserved down to the long tramway and entered it through a place where a board was loose at the bottom. With glowing eyes he raced through the semidarkness toward the shaft-house.

As he dashed through the shaft-house he saw Glover, the loyal, standing calmly by the side of the dark opening with a rifle in his hand. He scarcely saw John, the grim old engineer, who was carefully, but with haste, loading a long-barreled and blackened Colt’s. Here were those who would make any attack a bloody one.

Outside, the noise of shouting and of wild voices came to him stronger. The excitement seemed to be growing with frightful rapidity. He would have plunged through an opening near Mack, if the latter had not observed him and said hastily and with emphasis: “Sanders, get back in there quick.” He hesitated to obey, and the big man said quietly: “You have never refused to obey me yet. Get back, I tell you, and stay there. This is no place for you.”

Scurrilous epithets were being shouted by the strikers. McCarthy took no heed, but stood as calmly as before. A harsh, insulting voice from the rear of the crowd shouted something in which the name of the manager’s wife was coupled.

The leash on the big man’s temper was breaking. He had stood all he would stand. There was a time to end all things, and even kindness no longer played a part in this game.

“Stop!” he shouted, his face crimson with the rush of emotion, and his hitherto unclenched hand thrown into the air with a gesture eloquent of command.

The older habit of obedience and the lurking respect for a man in his position compelled them to listen.

His voice was deadly quiet now, and pitched in a tone of tensity that betokened the strain under which he was laboring. Those of the mob who would have jeered were hushed by their fellows. The manager waited until the silence was so complete that the chug-chug of the pumping-machinery came through the boardings.

“This is no longer a strike,” he said quietly; “it’s a lockout. This mine has never opposed a union. It has never tried to import non-union labor. It never had trouble with its own men until you fellows came here from the East. In all the months it has been tied up, it has tried to recover peace. Its old men are honest and want to work as honest men. But you—you dirty crowd of coal-heavers!” His control, so long held, was going. The thought of that last insult rankled and burned. His face became livid with passion. His dark eyes blazed, and when he resumed both fists were clenched and shaking at them. “You are a pack that was practically scabbed in your own country, couldn't get work of any kind there, and I knew it. I disliked your brand from the start, and you never were more than half-miners. You didn’t know ore from muck. And, worst of all, you are a pack of cowards. Now—now you are locked out!”

All previous outbursts were outdone by the frenzy that followed his speech. The crowd, which had stood still or writhed beneath the denunciations he had hurled, burst into curses, jeers, or threats. The raucous voice from the rear made itself heard above the din in loud shoutings for a rope.

“Hang him!” it cried. “Hang him!”

As waves tossed by a typhoon, the mob surged and billowed to and fro.

The manager seemed to grow more compact, and a deadly light shone in his eyes. A board behind him burst outward, and the gaunt, gray face of the engineer was thrust through, and after it came a hand which tendered McCarthy the weapon. The manager took it automatically, and stood in a crouching attitude waiting for the attack.

Glover appeared at the opening.

“Get back,” the manager commanded. “Stick to the pumps. It’s me they want. The pumps—the pumps—for God’s sake keep them going. Stick to the pumps!”

Suddenly, and as if by agreement, a shower of stones and broken pieces of ore came hurtling through the air. They rang spitefully against the wooden sides of the shaft-house and tram, and rolled from the slanting roofs with rumbling notes.

McCarthy was down and out. A rock had struck him full on the forehead, its jagged corners laying open his scalp and felling him.

Sanders, disobedient at last, could stand no more. He broke through the opening, his lithe little form bounding into the open and halting in front of the fallen man. He stood over him, trying with his little body to protect the great bulk beneath. In desperation he shrieked to the strikers to stop, to wait, to do anything but throw more.

A few more scattering rocks fell near him, but none struck the mark. The mob, robbed for the instant of its prey, hesitated to stone to death a mere boy. There was something so fearless and yet so appealing in his attitude that it cried pause.

Sanders, in a fury of rage, the blood of fighting Irish ancestors coursing hotly in his veins, harangued them even as they commanded him to step aside or run away.

“You low-down pups,” he shouted; “there isn’t a one of you that would dare tackle him alone. No, nor any two of you. You were afraid. You knew he would lick you. You had to come in a bunch in order to keep your nerve up. There’s half of you that never were treated as white as he did, and there’s one or two of you out there that owe more than that to him. That’s right, Bill Burton,” he shouted to one who was stepping from his view. “I'd sneak, too, if I were you. When your wife was dying, before you took to booze, he made you a present of money enough to tide you over. And you, too, Leopold,” he jeered another,“you ought to throw rocks because when there wasn’t a hole in the Blue Mountains would have you, he gave you work.”

Behind his sturdy little form, as he talked, McCarthy had risen to a sitting position, and consciousness was returning. He weaved to and fro with dizziness, but was wiping the blood from his eyes. It was all coming rapidly back. He must get Sanders away from there. They would hurt him. He started to rise to his feet.

The crowd, hushed for the minute by the tempest of Sanders’ speech, was again violent. They wanted to wait no longer. They were blood-hungry and tired of delay.

There was but one man in the mob brutal enough to strike down a boy. Swift as a bullet and as sure of aim came a stone, striking Sanders a glancing blow on the head. Like an animal stricken to death, his legs crumpled beneath him, his arms stretched widely out, his head flew backward, and he fell inert on the body of the man he had tried so valiantly to protect.

The crowd, halted by the apparent tragedy, was awed. Those who had boys of their own, or who remembered little Sanders as the stage-driver, were shocked to the heart and ashamed. The mob-fever was passing, and in its stead stood shame. Shame that Sanders, one of their own people, after all, was lying there, white and limp and lifeless.

McCarthy, sobbing with great dry shakings, had gained his knees and was stooping over his boy. The sense of a great bereavement swept over him, and the wave of tenderness that had made him forget the mob was unbearable.

With white face, stained and streaked with blood from his wound, he turned slowly toward the crowd as would a wounded lion, and in his eyes there smoldered a glow of unfathomable misery.

He looked out on them, as if realizing for the first time the full force of the fact that concealed within that crowd somewhere was the man who had struck down Sanders. Even as they watched him, they saw his expression change to one of such malevolent hatred, such demoniacal hungering for revenge, that they shuddered. They saw his jaws come together convulsively, and saw him gather the limp little form into his arms and rise to his feet.

Sanders’ head dropped back, as did his arms, across the manager’s hold, and his legs swung lifelessly.

McCarthy, bearing his burden lightly, was transformed. With one bound he swept out into the crowd, with the lurid light of murder shooting from beneath his shaggy, down-drawn brows, his hair disheveled, the blood drip-dripping unheeded from his wound, a picture of berserker rage. He had but one wish, mad and overpowering, and that was to kill.

They parted before him as he went, giving always a free way. And to and fro through the mob he surged wildly, fiercely, deadly, demanding to be shown the man who had thrown the last rock.

From the rear came the voice of the engineer, who did not understand Sanders’ fall or the situation: “Are you going to leave the shaft-house, McCarthy?”

There was no instant’s hesitation in his reply: “To hell with the shaft-house and the mine! I’m going to find the man that did this, and kill him! By God, I'll kill him!” he roared, as he went his way.

As he charged through the awed and terror-stricken mob and out past the concealing corner of the blacksmith-shop in his futile search of hate, he came into view of his house on the hillside.

The agonized scream of a woman rent the air and attracted his attention. His wife had seen him at last, and had seen in his arms the little figure. Suddenly, and in view of all those who looked up from below, she tottered and fell her length on the veranda.

McCarthy paused in his march, then turned and gazed at those around him. Gazed unspeakingly. The furious blaze died out of his eyes and sanity returned, leaving stamped on his face a look of bitter, uncompromising sorrow and accusation.

Steadily and with no backward look at either the mob he had fought or the plant he had protected, he strode up the hillside. As they stood silent and abashed, as though rooted to the spot, they saw him disappear into the darkness of the doorway. Saw him return, and, still without looking in their direction, gather tenderly in his arms the unconscious form of his wife. Then, as if to shut them out from sanctity, the door closed, white and unblinking in the sunlight; and they, shame-stricken, without word of mouth or thought of further violence, and as if directed by one impulse, went slowly down the road.

When night came the moon gleamed whitely down through the tamaracks and pines and made of the silent, ungainly buildings castles of rare design.

There was a knock at the cabin on the hill, the door was thrown widely open, and the giant form of the manager was outlined within it, as though framed in silhouette. Without speech or salutation he confronted the score of men below.

From where they stood they could see, in the light shining within the room, a cot on which lay a little bandaged figure, around which there moved solicitously a woman and a bearded man whom they recognized as the camp-surgeon.

They stood nervously twisting their hats in their hands, as if bereft of speech. There was something of loneliness and accusation in that silent, immovable bulk in the doorway, planted there as though indifferent to fear or favor.

The gray-haired spokesman, after the quietude had seemed prolonged into ages, wetted his parched lips and said: “We've come, sir, to find out how Sanders is?”

The man in the doorway answered softly: “The doctor says he will live, thank God!” And it was a prayer he gave, of untold thankfulness, which found an echo in the hearts of the men before him. He said no more, evidently believing that speech was useless and the world contained nothing further to talk about.

The men shifted from one foot to the other in speechless embarrassment, and then, as having relieved their minds, turned to go. The somber figure still stood motionless in the doorway.

“Oh, by the way,” said the gray-haired spokesman, as if remembering something which had escaped his memory, “we, as a committee from all the miners, come to tell you that the strike was unanimously declared off to-night.”

And so they left him, standing colossal and silent, in the doorway of his home.