CHAPTER III.

The situation along the line of the Great Western at four o'clock this sultry afternoon was indeed alarming. "No violence," said the leaders of the strike, "will be countenanced, though of course we cannot guarantee that it won't occur. Our men are bitter at the refusal to comply with their just demands, and they have thousands of friends and sympathizers whom we can't control." Whether friends of the striking switchmen and trainmen or not, there could be no question about the number of so-called sympathizers. They swarmed to the yards from every slum in the city, a host of tramps and thugs, vagabonds and jail-birds, re-enforced by bevies of noisy, devil-may-care street boys, and scores of shrill-voiced, slatternly women. The men who ventured to handle switches under instructions of the yard foremen were stoned and driven off. Loyal train hands who had refused to strike and came out with the mail and express trains were hooted, jeered, and assaulted, despite the deputy marshals and the widely scattered police. Some strange apathy chained the city authorities and its battalions of uniformed and disciplined men who were held in reserve at the police stations, while the pitiably small force, distributed by twos and threes along ten miles of obstructed track, made only shallow pretence of resistance to the efforts of the mob or of protection to the objects of its wrath. Mail trains and some few passenger trains, heavily guarded, had managed to crawl through the howling throng, and this partial success of the management served to fan the flame of fury, and every window was smashed by volleys of stones and coupling-pins in the last train to be pulled through. The track behind it was suddenly and speedily blocked by the overturning, one after another, of dozens of freight-cars. The rioters, guided by graduates of the yard, now worked in most effective and systematic fashion. There was no need of assaulting switchmen when they could so readily block the tracks. The last train got in at noon. At 2 P.M. no trains, even the mails, could get either in or out.

Then the authorities had to take a hand. The law of the United States prohibited any interference with the carriage of its mails. The railway officials represented their tracks blocked by mobs and obstructed by overturned cars, spiked switches, and unspiked rails. A wrecking train, under guard of both police and deputy marshals, was pushed out to clear the way. The rioters jeered the deputies and cheered their friends among the police. The work was attempted, but was not done. Fifty deputies couldn't cover four miles of mob, and five hundred police winked at personal acquaintances in the shouting, seething throng, and contented themselves with occasional hustling of some manifestly friendless tramp or the vigorous arrest of some vagrant boy.

Prominent business men in a body went to the Mayor and demanded action. Others had already wired the Governor. The Colonels of the city regiments who had, of their own accord, warned their men to be in readiness, got their orders for service at 3.50 in the afternoon, and at 4.45 Corporal Fred came bounding in across the threshold of his home to kiss his mother and sisters good-by and hasten into town where, ready packed, was his knapsack with his blanket, uniform, arms, and ammunition, at the regimental armory.

The roar of the multitude at the yards only a block away rose hoarse and vibrant on the sultry air. The dust was sifting down in smothering clouds. Drawn thither by curiosity numbers of women and children had gathered at the upper end of the street, and were thronging the porches, windows, and even the roofs of the frame houses that covered the neighborhood. "What ever you do, mother," said Fred, "keep away from the crowd, and keep the girls at home. Has Jim been in?"

"No, he hasn't come back," was the almost tearful answer. "Your father said he would try to find him when he went to the shops after dinner. I wish he had kept away from those meetings. No good can ever come of such rioting."

"I haven't a moment to lose, mother," said Fred, kissing away the tears now brimming in her eyes, "but I must go across the tracks to get to the cable-cars, and he may be there. If so, I'll try to make him promise to come home."

It was a tearful group the gallant young fellow left behind him on the narrow porch, as he strode swiftly up the street. Some fifty yards away he turned and waved his hat to them, then disappeared among the groups of women excitedly, nervously watching the proceedings. The throng grew denser as he neared the white rod gates that were lowered to close the crossing with every sign of coming train or switch engine. Ordinarily they were rising and falling and their warning gongs trilling every other minute, but not once this long June day had their white fingers ceased to point straight to the zenith. At the crossing a solitary and perspiring policeman was swinging loosely his club and occasionally drawling "Come, get back out of this," and laying benevolent hand on the nearest spectator; but where one fell back a dozen surged forward, and the entire crossing was in the possession of a throng of strike sympathizers, among whom Fred failed to recognize more than three or four real railway men. Prominent among the more active and determined at the very front, however, he caught sight of a man named Farley, a brakeman, who was often one of Jim's own crew. He was shouting and gesticulating to friends in the second-story windows of a saloon across the tracks, a rendezvous of men who, at ordinary times, rarely drank a drop of liquor. The ground-floor was invisible to the throng. "Come out here, you fellers," he was saying. "I tell you they're going to try to clear these side-tracks, and we'll need every man of you."

Farley was right in his prophecy. The managers realized that it would take much longer to right the overturned freight-cars than to draw away the long trains of empty or half-loaded cars at the sides, and so clear a track or two for the mails and passengers. At the crossing of Allen Street there were ten parallel tracks, those in the middle--numbers five and six--being the through tracks. Freight-cars by the dozen on tracks four and seven had been toppled over so as to completely block all four, and, as Farley spoke, down the long vista towards the city and over the heads of the throng the smoke of locomotives could be seen puffing steadily towards them. With car-loads of such guards as they could command--deputy marshals picked up and sworn in anyhow--the railway officials were coming to make the attempt. Fred had reached the spot at the most exciting hour of the day. He should, perhaps, have pushed on through the crowd and hastened on to the cable road, but it occurred to him that an account of the situation up to the last moment might be of use to his officers, or that he might find a quicker way of getting to town on a switch engine. Then, too, he longed to speak with Jim and get him to go home. He determined, therefore, on a few minutes' delay. Ducking, dodging, and squeezing, he made his way through the crowd to Farley's side.

"Jerry," said he, "I hate to see one of Jim's men in this. Surely he and you ought to keep out of the yards. Where is he?"

"He has kept out of the yards so far," answered Farley, with an angry oath and glaring eyes. "But the time's come for them that are men to show it, and them that don't step out and fight for their rights now are skulkers and sneaks--skulkers and sneaks," he shouted, and the crowd roared approval. Out through the densely-packed mass of humanity across the tracks something came shoving and surging, and presently, welcomed by a cheer, a dozen burly men burst into view and came striding out upon the right of way, Jim Wallace among them. Pale with excitement and apprehension Fred sprang towards him.

"Jim--brother--think what you're doing! For Heaven's sake take no part in this rioting! Go to mother and the girls. They're all alone."

"Go yourself, Fred," answered the elder, thickly. To Fred's dismay he saw that his big brother, his pride and protector for many a boyish year, had been drinking, and was flushed and unbalanced as a result. "Go yourself and keep out of harm's way. I'm in this to stay now. I'm not the man to see my brothers wronged and abused and robbed of their rights. You go to them, Fred. Why are you not at the office?" he added, with sudden suspicion in his glittering eye.

"I'm here to find you," said Fred, evasively. "Mother is crying because of her anxiety about you. Father has been searching. Do come out of this, Jim, and home with me."

But a yell of wrath and defiance drowned the boy's words, and as though with one simultaneous impulse the mob heaved and surged and broke into a run. The engines had switched to the side tracks a block away, and, protected by armed guards on the tender, the pilot, and footboard, were coupling on to the standing trains. Fred felt himself swept along, tugging at his brother's arm. Half a dozen agile men edged out of the crowd and dove under the cars to which the foremost engine was now attached. Shriek went the whistle, clang the bell, back leaped the guards, some of them swarming up the freight-car ladders. The engine jetted smoke and steam and backed promptly away, but a roar of triumph and derision went up from the mob. Only one car followed it. The strikers had drawn the coupling-pins of the rest.

Two of the deputies, Winchesters in hand, had clambered to the roofs of the second and third cars, and now as their comrades were trundled away there they stood irresolute. Instantly those cars were the centre of a jeering, howling mob. Instantly stones, coupling-pins, and mud began to fly. Throwing themselves flat upon their faces, the luckless fellows sought to escape the storm. Missiles hurled by the mob on one side came raining down into the faces of their fellows on the other, and even as Fred was imploring his brother to come away now and at once, a rock, hurtling over the nearest car, struck the roof and bounded into the throng below, cutting a gash on the younger brother's white forehead, and striking him senseless to the earth, just as some untaught, undisciplined fool among the deputies pulled trigger and fired. Whistling overhead the bullet went hissing away up the tracks the signal for a mad rush of men and boys. An instant more and only three forms occupied the ground where a hundred were struggling but the moment before--Jim Wallace and a fellow-trainsman bending over the senseless, bleeding form of brother Fred.

"They've shot him! They've killed him!" howled the retreating crowd. "Down with the deputies! Kill 'em! hang 'em!" were the furious yells. Three or four policemen came running up to assist the fallen. An old gray-haired man dropped the lever of the switch engine, calling to his assistant to watch it, and ran forward along the tracks, wild anxiety in his eyes, and in another moment, brushing aside the bluecoats, old Wallace threw himself upon his knees and raised the blood-stained face of his boy to his heaving breast. "In God's name," he cried, his lips piteously quivering, "how came he here? Why is he not at the office?"

There was a moment of silence. Covering his face in his hands, big burly Jim turned almost sobbing away. A young man leaping across the tracks caught the last question as he joined them, and it was his voice that was heard in answer. "Because they've discharged him, Mr. Wallace, as they have me, for obeying orders to join our regiment at once."

And as though recalled to his senses by a comrade's words, Corporal Fred faintly opened his eyes and looked up and saw his father's face. "Don't let mother know," he murmured. "It might frighten her for nothing. Help me over to the cable road, Charley; we've got to hurry to the armory."

And then the crowd came swarming back even as a little boy, escaped for the moment from watchful eyes at home and drawn by eager curiosity to the gates, now ran sobbing back to tell the dreadful news he had heard among the women in the crowd--that brother Fred was shot and killed.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

OAKLEIGH.

BY ELLEN DOUGLAS DELAND.