8

THE five acres of plow land on the Anderson place was surrounded on three sides by big, dark apple trees; and on the fourth it was bounded by the narrow, dusty county road. The men had arrived in droves, laughing and shouting to one another, and they had found preparations made for them. Stakes were driven into the soft ground defining the streets for the camp. There were five streets running parallel to the county road, and opposite the end of each street a deep hole was dug in the ground as a toilet.

Before the work of building the camp started, they held their general meeting with some order; elected Dakin chairman and assented to his committee. They agreed with enthusiasm to the suggestion of the squads.

Hardly had they begun to assemble when five motorcycle police rode up and parked their motors in the county road. They leaned against the machines and watched the work. Tents were pitched, and shelters laid out. The sad-eyed Dr. Burton was everywhere, ordering the building of the camp. At least a hundred old automobiles lined the road, drawn up like caissons in an artillery park, all facing out toward the road. There were ancient Fords, ravaged in their upholstery; Chevrolets and Dodges with rusty noses, paintless, with loose fenders or no fenders at all. There were worn-out Hudsons that made a noise like machine-guns when they were starting. They stood like aged soldiers at a reunion. At one end of the line of cars stood Dakin’s Chevrolet truck, clean and new and shiny. Alone of all the cars it was in good condition; and Dakin, as he walked about the camp, surrounded by members of his committee, rarely got out of sight of his truck. As he talked or listened his cold, secret eyes went again and again to his shining green truck.

When the grey old tents were pitched Burton insisted that the canvas be scrubbed with soap and water. Dakin’s truck brought barrels of water from Anderson’s tank. The women washed the tents with old brooms.

Anderson walked out and watched with worried eyes while his five acres was transformed into a camp. By noon it was ready; and nine hundred men went to work in the orchard, picking apples into their cooking kettles, into their hats, into gunny sacks. There were not nearly ladders enough. The men climbed up the trunks into the trees. By dark the crop was picked, the lines of boxes filled, the boxes trucked to Anderson’s barn and stored.

Dick had worked quickly. He sent a boy to ask for men and a truck to meet him in town, and the truck came back loaded with tents of all kinds—umbrella tents of pale brown canvas, pup-tents, low and peaked, big troop tents with room in them for ten men. And the truck brought two sacks of rolled oats and sacks of flour, cases of canned goods, sacks of potatoes and onions and a slaughtered cow.

The new tents went up along the streets. Dr. Burton superintended the cooking arrangements. Trucks went out to the city dump and brought back three rusty, discarded stoves. Pieces of tin covered the gaping tops. Cooks were assigned, washtubs filled with water, the cow cut up and potatoes and onions set to cooking in tremendous stews. Buckets of beans were boiled. In the dusk, when the picking was over, the men came in and found tubs of stew waiting for them. They sat on the ground and ate from basins and cups and tin cans.

As darkness fell, the motorcycle police were relieved by five deputy sheriffs armed with rifles. For a time they marched up and down the road in military manner, but finally they sat in the ditch and watched the men. There were few lights in the camp. Here and there a tent was lighted with a lantern. The flares of little fires threw shadows. At one end of the first street, so pitched that it was directly behind his shining green truck, stood Dakin’s tent—a large, patented affair with a canvas wall in the middle, making two rooms. His folding table and chairs were set up. A ground cloth lay on the floor, and from the center pole a hissing gasoline lantern hung. Dakin lived in style and traveled in luxury. He had no vices; every cent he or his wife made went to his living, to his truck, to providing new equipment for his camp.

When it was dark, London and Mac and Jim strolled to the tent and went in. With Dakin in the tent sat Burke, a lowering, sullen Irishman, and two short Italian men who looked very much alike. Mrs. Dakin had retired to the other side of the partition. Under the white light of the gasoline lamp Dakin’s pink scalp showed through his blond hair. His secret eyes moved restlessly about. “Hello, boys, find some place to sit.”

London chose a chair, the only one left. Mac and Jim squatted on the ground; Mac brought out his Durham bag and made a cigarette. “Things seem to be goin’ O.K.,” he observed.

Dakin’s eyes flicked to him, and then away. “Yeah, they seem to be all right.”

“They got those cops here quick,” said Burke. “I’d like to take a poke at a few of ’em.”

Dakin reproved him calmly. “Let cops alone till you can’t no more. They ain’t hurtin’ a thing.”

Mac asked, “How the squads shapin’?”

“All right. They all elected their chiefs. Some of ’em kicked out the chief and elected new ones already. Say, that Doc Burton is a swell guy.”

“Yeah,” Mac said. “He’s O.K. Wonder where he’s at? You better have one of the squads watch out for him. When we get started, they’ll try to get him out of here. If they can get him out, they can clear us out. ’Danger to public health,’ they call it.”

Dakin turned to Burke. “Fix that up now, will you, Burke? Tell a good bunch to keep care o’ Doc. The guys like him.” Burke got up and went out of the tent.

London said, “Tell ’im what you told me, Mac.”

“Well, the guys think this is a kind of a picnic, Dakin. Tomorrow morning the picnic’s over. The fun begins.”

“Scabs?”

“Yep, a train-load. I got a kid in town. He goes to the telegraph office for me. Got a wire tonight. A freight train-load of scabs is startin’ out from the city today. Ought to be in some time in the mornin’.”

“Well,” said Dakin. “Guess we better meet that train an’ have a talk with the new guys. Might do some good, before they all get scattered.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Mac. “I’ve saw the time when a whole slough of scabs come over if you just told ’em how things was.”

“We’ll tell ’em, all right.”

“Listen,” said Mac. “The cops’ll try to head us off. Couldn’t we let the guys kind of sneak off through the trees just before daylight, and leave them cops holding the bag here?”

For a second Dakin’s cold eyes twinkled. “Think that’d work, you guys?” They laughed delightedly. Dakin went on, “Well, go out an’ tell the men about it.”

Mac said, “Wait a minute, Dakin. If you tell the guys tonight, it won’t be no secret.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you don’t think we ain’t got stools in the camp, do you? I bet there’s at least five under cover, besides the guys that’d spill anything and hope to get a buck out of it. Hell, it’s always that way. Don’t tell ’em nothing till you’re ready to start.”

“Don’t trust the guys, huh?”

“Well, if you want to take the chance, go ahead. I bet you find the cops comin’ right along with us.”

Dakin asked, “What do you guys think?”

“I guess he’s right,” said one of the little Italian men.

“O.K. Now we got to leave a bunch to take care of the camp.”

“At least a hundred,” Mac agreed. “If we leave the camp, they’ll burn ’er, sure as hell.”

“The boys sure got Anderson’s crop down quick.”

“Yeah,” said Dakin. “There’s two or three hundred of ’em out in the orchard next door right now. Anderson’s goin’ to have a bigger crop than he thought.”

“I hope they don’t cause trouble yet,” Mac said. “There’ll be plenty later on.”

“How many scabs comin’? Did you find out?”

“Somewheres between four and five hundred tomorrow. Be more later, I guess. Be sure an’ tell the guys to take plenty of rocks in their pockets.”

“I’ll tell ’em.”

Burke came back in. He said, “The Doc’s goin’ to sleep in one of them big army tents. There’ll be ten guys sleepin’ in the same tent with him.”

“Were’s Doc at now?” Mac asked.

“He’s dug up a couple of ring-worms on a guy. He’s fixin’ ’im over by the stoves.”

At that moment a chorus of yells broke out in the camp, and then a high, angry voice shouting. The six men ran out of the tent. The noise came from a group of men standing in front of the camp street that faced the road. Dakin pushed his way in among the men. “What th’ hell’s the matter here?”

The angry voice answered, “I’ll tell you. Your men started throwin’ rocks. I’m tellin’ you now if there’s any more rocks we’re goin’ to start shootin’, an’ we don’t care who we hit.”

Mac turned to Jim, standing beside him. He said softly, “I wish they would start shooting. This bunch of mugs is going to pieces, maybe, if something dirty doesn’t happen pretty soon. They’re feeling too good. They’ll start fighting themselves.”

London walked fiercely into the crowd of men. “You guys get back,” he cried. “You got enough to do without no kid tricks. Go on, now, get back where you belong.” The authority of the man drove them sullenly back, but they dispersed reluctantly.

The deputy shouted, “You keep those guys in order or we’ll do it with Winchesters.”

Dakin said coldly, “You can pull in your neck and go back to sleep.”

Mac muttered to Jim, “Those cops are scared as hell. That makes ’em dangerous. Just like rattlesnakes when they’re scared: they’ll shoot at anything.”

The crowd had moved away now and the men were scattering to their tents. Mac said, “Let’s go have a look at Doc, Jim. Come on over by the stoves.” They found Dr. Burton sitting on a box, bandaging a man’s arm. A kerosene lantern shed a thin yellow light on his work and illumined a small circle on the ground. He stuck down the bandage with adhesive.

“There you are,” he said. “Next time don’t let it get so sore. You’ll lose an arm some day, if you do.”

The man said, “Thanks, Doc,” and went away, rolling down his sleeve.

“Hello, Mac. Hello, Jim. I guess I’m finished.”

“Was that the ringworm?”

“No, just a little cut, and a nice infection started. They won’t learn to take care of cuts.”

Mac said, “If Doc could only find a case of small-pox now and set up a quarantine ward, he’d be perfectly happy. What’re you going to do now, Doc?”

The sad brown eyes looked tiredly up at Mac. “Well, I think I’m all through. I ought to go and see whether the squad disinfected the toilets the way I told them.”

“They smell disinfected,” Mac said. “Why don’t you get some sleep, Doc? You didn’t have any last night.”

“Well, I’m tired, but I don’t feel sleepy. For the last hour I’ve thought when I was through I might walk out into the orchard and sit down against a tree and rest.”

“Mind company?”

“No. I’d like to have you.” Burton stood up. “Wait till I wash my hands.” He scrubbed his hands in a pan of warm water and covered them with green soap and rinsed them. “Let’s stroll, then,” he said.

The three walked slowly away from the tent streets and toward the dark orchard. Their feet crunched softly on the crisp little clods of the plowed ground.

“Mac,” Burton said wearily. “You’re a mystery to me. You imitate any speech you’re taking part in. When you’re with London and Dakin you talk the way they do. You’re an actor.”

“No,” said Mac. “I’m not an actor at all. Speech has a kind of a feel about it. I get the feel, and it comes out, perfectly naturally. I don’t try to do it. I don’t think I could help doing it. You know, Doc, men are suspicious of a man who doesn’t talk their way. You can insult a man pretty badly by using a word he doesn’t understand. Maybe he won’t say anything, but he’ll hate you for it. It’s not the same thing in your case, Doc. You’re supposed to be different. They wouldn’t trust you if you weren’t.”

They entered the arches under the trees, and the leaf clusters and the limbs were dark against the sky. The little murmuring noise of the camp was lost. A barn-owl, screeching overhead with a ripping sound, startled the men.

“That’s an owl, Jim,” Mac explained. “He’s hunting mice.” And then to Burton, “Jim’s never been in the country much. The things we know are new to him. Let’s sit down here.”

Mac and the doctor sat on the ground and leaned against the big trunk of an old apple tree. Jim sat in front of them, folding his legs before him. The night was still. Above, the black leaves hung motionless in the quiet air.

Mac spoke softly, for the night seemed to be listening. “You’re a mystery to me, too, Doc.”

“Me? A mystery?”

“Yes, you. You’re not a Party man, but you work with us all the time; you never get anything for it. I don’t know whether you believe in what we’re doing or not, you never say, you just work. I’ve been out with you before, and I’m not sure you believe in the cause at all.”

Dr. Burton laughed softly. “It would be hard to say. I could tell you some of the things I think; you might not like them. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t like them.”

“Well, let’s hear them, anyway.”

“Well, you say I don’t believe in the cause. That’s like not believing in the moon. There ’ve been communes before, and there will be again. But you people have an idea that if you can establish the thing, the job’ll be done. Nothing stops, Mac. If you were able to put an idea into effect tomorrow, it would start changing right away. Establish a commune, and the same gradual flux will continue.”

“Then you don’t think the cause is good?”

Burton sighed. “You see? We’re going to pile up on that old rock again. That’s why I don’t like to talk very often. Listen to me, Mac. My senses aren’t above reproach, but they’re all I have. I want to see the whole picture—as nearly as I can. I don’t want to put on the blinders of ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ and limit my vision. If I used the term ‘good’ on a thing I’d lose my license to inspect it, because there might be bad in it. Don’t you see? I want to be able to look at the whole thing.”

Mac broke in heatedly, “How about social injustice? The profit system? You have to say they’re bad.”

Dr. Burton threw back his head and looked at the sky. “Mac,” he said. “Look at the physiological injustice, the injustice of tetanus, the injustice of syphilis, the gangster methods of amoebic dysentery—that’s my field.

“Revolution and communism will cure social injustice.”

“Yes, and disinfection and prophylaxis will prevent the others.”

“It’s different, though; men are doing one, and germs are doing the other.”

“I can’t see much difference, Mac.”

“Well, damn it, Doc, there’s lockjaw every place. You can find syphilis in Park Avenue. Why do you hang around with us if you aren’t for us?”

“I want to see,” Burton said. “When you cut your finger, and streptococci get in the wound, there’s a swelling and a soreness. That swelling is the fight your body puts up, the pain is the battle. You can’t tell which one is going to win, but the wound is the first battleground. If the cells lose the first fight the streptococci invade, and the fight goes on up the arm. Mac, these little strikes are like the infection. Something has got into the men; a little fever had started and the lymphatic glands are shooting in reinforcements. I want to see, so I go to the seat of the wound.”

“You figure the strike is a wound?”

“Yes. Group-men are always getting some kind of infection. This seems to be a bad one. I want to see, Mac. I want to watch these group-men, for they seem to me to be a new individual, not at all like single men. A man in a group isn’t himself at all; he’s a cell in an organism that isn’t like him any more than the cells in your body are like you. I want to watch the group, and see what it’s like. People have said, ’mobs are crazy, you can’t tell what they’ll do.’ Why don’t people look at mobs not as men, but as mobs? A mob nearly always seems to act reasonably, for a mob.”

“Well, what’s this got to do with the cause?”

“It might be like this, Mac: When group-man wants to move, he makes a standard. ’God wills that we re-capture the Holy-Land’ or he says, ‘We fight to make the world safe for democracy’; or he says, ‘we will wipe out social injustice with communism.’ But the group doesn’t care about the Holy Land, or Democracy, or Communism. Maybe the group simply wants to move, to fight, and uses these words simply to reassure the brains of individual men. I say it might be like that, Mac.”

“Not with the cause, it isn’t,” Mac cried.

“Maybe not, it’s just the way I think of things.”

Mac said, “The trouble with you, Doc, is you’re too God damn far left to be a communist. You go too far with collectivization. How do you account for people like me, directing things, moving things? That puts your group-man out.”

“You might be an effect as well as a cause, Mac. You might be an expression of group-man, a cell endowed with a special function, like an eye cell, drawing your force from group-man, and at the same time directing him, like an eye. Your eye both takes orders from and gives orders to your brain.”

“This isn’t practical,” Mac said disgustedly. “What’s all this kind of talk got to do with hungry men, with layoffs and unemployment?”

“It might have a great deal to do with them. It isn’t a very long time since tetanus and lockjaw were not connected. There are still primitives in the world who don’t know children are the result of intercourse. Yes, it might be worthwhile to know more about group-man, to know his nature, his ends, his desires. They’re not the same as ours. The pleasure we get in scratching an itch causes death to a great number of cells. Maybe group-man gets pleasure when individual men are wiped out in a war. I simply want to see as much as I can, Mac, with the means I have.”

Mac stood up and brushed the seat of his pants. “If you see too darn much, you don’t get anything done.”

Burton stood up too, chuckling softly. “Maybe some day—oh, let it go. I shouldn’t have talked so much. But it does clarify a thought to get it spoken, even if no one listens.”

They started back over the crisp clods toward the sleeping camp. “We can’t look up at anything, Doc,” Mac said. “We’ve got to whip a bunch of scabs in the morning.”

“Deus vult,” said Burton. “Did you see those pointers of Anderson’s? Beautiful dogs; they give me a sensual pleasure, almost sexual.”

A light still burned in Dakin’s tent. The camp slept. Only a few coals of fire still burned in the streets. The silent line of old cars stood against the road, and in the road itself a clump of sparks waxed and waned, cigarettes of the watchful deputies.

“D’you hear that, Jim? That’ll show you what Burton is. Here’s a couple of fine dogs, good hunting dogs, but they’re not dogs to Doc, they’re feelings. They’re dogs, to me. And these guys sleeping here are men, with stomachs; but they’re not men to Doc, they’re a kind of a collective Colossus. If he wasn’t a doctor, we couldn’t have ’im around. We need his skill, but his brain just gets us into a mess.”

Burton laughed apologetically. “I don’t know why I go on talking, then. You practical men always lead practical men with stomachs. And something always gets out of hand. Your men get out of hand, they don’t follow the rules of common sense, and you practical men either deny that it is so, or refuse to think about it. And when someone wonders what it is that makes a man with a stomach something more than your rule allows, why you howl, ‘Dreamer, mystic, metaphysician’. I don’t know why I talk about it to a practical man. In all history there are no men who have come to such wild-eyed confusion and bewilderment as practical men leading men with stomachs.”

“We’ve a job to do,” Mac insisted. “We’ve got no time to mess around with high-falutin’ ideas.”

“Yes, and so you start your work not knowing your medium. And your ignorance trips you up every time.”

They were close to the tents now. “If you talked to other people that way,” Mac said, “we’d have to kick you out.”

A dark figure arose suddenly from the ground. “Who is it?” a voice demanded; and then, “Oh, hello. I didn’t know who it was coming in.”

“Dakin set out guards?” Mac asked.

“Yeah.”

“He’s a good man. I knew he was a good man, cool-headed man.”

They stopped by a big, peaked troop tent. “Guess I’ll turn in,” Doc said. “Here’s where my bodyguard sleeps.”

“Good idea,” Mac agreed. “You’ll probably have some bandaging to do tomorrow.”

When Doc had disappeared inside the tent, Mac turned to Jim. “No reason why you shouldn’t get some sleep too.”

“What are you going to do, Mac?”

“Me? Oh, I thought I’d take a look around, see if everything’s all right.”

“I want to go with you. I just follow you around.”

“Sh-h, don’t talk so loud.” Mac walked slowly toward the line of cars. “You do help me, Jim. It may be sloppy as an old woman, but you keep me from being scared.”

“I don’t do anything but pad around after you,” said Jim.

“I know. I guess I’m getting soft. I’m scared something might happen to you. I shouldn’t have brought you down, Jim. I’m getting to depend on you.”

“Well, what’re we going to do now, Mac?”

“I wish you’d go to bed. I’m going to try to have a talk with those cops in the road.”

“What for?”

“Listen, Jim, you didn’t get bothered by what Doc said, did you?”

“No. I didn’t listen.”

“Well, it’s a bunch of bunk; but here’s something that isn’t bunk. You win a strike two ways, because the men put up a steady fight, and because public sentiment comes over to your side. Now most of this valley belongs to a few guys. That means the rest of the people don’t own much of anything. The few owners either have to pay ’em or lie to ’em. Those cops out in the road are special deputies, just working stiffs with a star and a gun and a two-weeks’ job. I thought I’d try and sound ’em out; try and find out how they feel about the strike. I guess how they feel is how the bosses told ’em to feel. But I might get a line on ’em, anyway.”

“Well, how about it if they arrest you? Remember what that man said in the road last night.”

“They’re just deputies, Jim. They won’t recognize me the way a regular cop would.”

“Well, I want to go with you.”

“O.K., but if anything looks funny, you cut for the camp and yell like hell.”

In a tent behind them a man started shouting in his sleep. A soft chorus of voices awakened him and stopped his dreaming. Mac and Jim wedged their way silently between two cars and approached the little group of glowing cigarettes. The sparks died down and shifted as they approached.

Mac called, “Hey, you guys, can we come out there?”

From the group a voice, “How many of you?”

“Two.”

“Come on, then.” As they drew near a flashlight glanced out and touched their faces for a second, and then went off. The deputies stood up. “What do you want?” their spokesman demanded.

Mac replied, “We just couldn’t sleep; thought we’d come out and talk.”

The man laughed. “We been having lots of company tonight.”

In the dark Mac pulled out his Bull Durham bag. “Any of you guys want to smoke?”

“We got smokes. What is it you want?”

“Well, I’ll tell you. A lot of the guys want to know how you fellows feel about the strike. They sent us out to ask. They know you’re just working men, the same as them. They want to know if you maybe won’t help your own kind of guys.”

Silence met his words. Mac looked uneasily around.

A voice said softly, “All right, you chickens. Get ’em up. Let out a squawk and we plug you.”

“Say, what the hell is this? What’s the idea?”

“Get behind ’em, Jack, and you, Ed, get your guns in their backs. If they move, let ’em have it. Now, march!”

The rifles pushed into their backs and punched them along through the darkness. The leader’s voice said, “Thought you was God-damn smart, didn’t you? You didn’t know those day-cops pointed you two guys out.” They marched across the road, and in among the trees on the other side. “Thought you was darn smart, getting the men out of here before daylight; thought you’d leave us holding the sack. Hell, we knew that gag ten minutes after you decided it.”

“Who told you, mister?”

“Don’t you wish you knew?” Their feet pounded along. The rifles jabbed into their backs.

“You takin’ us to jail, mister?”

“Jail, hell, we’re takin’ you God-damn reds to the Vigilance Committee. If you’re lucky they’ll beat the crap out of you and dump you over the county line; if you ain’t lucky, they’ll string you up to a tree. We got no use for radicals in this valley.”

“But you guys are cops, you got to take us to jail.”

“That what you think. There’s a nice little house a little ways from here. That’s where we’re taking you.”

Under the orchard trees even the little light from the stars was shut off. “Now be quiet, you guys.”

Jim cried, “Go, Mac!” and at the same instant he dropped. His guard toppled over him. Jim rolled around the trunk of a tree, stood up and bolted. At the second row he climbed up into an apple tree, far up, among the leaves. He heard a scuffle and a grunt of pain. The flashlight darted about and then fell to the ground and aimlessly lighted a rotten apple. There came a rip of cloth, and then steady pounding of footsteps. A hand reached down and picked up the flashlight and switched it off. Muffled, arguing voices came from the place of the scuffle.

Jim eased himself gently out of the tree, panting with apprehension every time the leaves quivered. He moved quietly along, came to the road and crossed it. At the line of cars a guard stopped him. “This is the second time tonight, kid. Why’n’t you go to bed?”

Jim said, “Listen, did Mac come through?”

“Yeah, goin’ like a bat out of hell. He’s in Dakin’s tent.”

Jim hurried on, lifted the brown tent-flap and went in. Dakin and Mac and Burke were there. Mac was talking excitedly. He stopped on a word and stared as Jim came in. “Jesus, I’m glad,” he said. “We was just goin’ to send out a party to try and get you. What a damn fool I was! What a damn fool! You know, Dakin, they was marchin’ us along, had guns right in our backs. I didn’t think they’d shoot, but they might of. Jim, what in hell did you do?”

“I just dropped, and the guy fell over me, and his gun dug in the dirt. We used to do that trick in the school yard.”

Mac laughed uneasily. “Soon’s the guns wasn’t touching us, I guess they was afraid they’d kill each other. I jumped sideways and kicked my guy in the stomach.”

Burke was standing behind Mac. Jim saw Mac wink at Dakin. The cold eyes almost disappeared behind pale-lashed lids. Dakin said, “Burke, you’d better make the rounds, and see if the guards are all awake.”

Burke hesitated. “I think they’re O.K.”

“Well, you better see, anyway. We don’t want no more raids. What they got in their hands, Burke?”

“They got nice clubs.”

“Well, go take a look around.”

Burke went out of the tent. Mac stepped close to Dakin. “Tent walls is thin,” he said quietly. “I’d like to talk to you alone. Want to take a little walk?”

Dakin nodded his head with two jerks. The three of them strolled out into the darkness, going in the direction Dr. Burton had taken earlier. A guard looked them over as they passed.

Mac said, “Somebody’s double-crossin’ us already. Them deputies knew we was goin’ to shove off before daylight.”

Dakin asked coldly, “D’you think it’s Burke? He wasn’t there, even.”

“I don’t know who it was. Anybody hanging around could of heard through the tent.”

“Well, what are we goin’ to do about it? You seem to know all about this stuff.” The cold voice went on, “I got an idea you reds ain’t goin’ to do us no good. A guy come in tonight and says if we kick you out, maybe the bosses ’11 talk business.”

“And you think they will? They cut the wages before we showed up, don’t forget that. Hell, you’d think we started this strike, and you know damn well we didn’t.

We’re just helpin’ it to go straight instead of shootin’ its wad.”

Dakin’s monotone cut him off. “What you gettin’ out of this?”

Mac retorted hotly, “We ain’t gettin’ nothin’.”

“How do I know that?”

“You don’t know it unless you believe it. They ain’t no way to prove it.”

Dakin’s voice became a little warmer. “I don’t know that I’d trust you guys if that was so. If a man’s gettin’ somethin’ you know he’s only goin’ to do one or two things, he’s goin’ to take orders, or he’s goin’ to double-cross. But if a guy ain’t gettin’ nothin’, you can’t tell what he’ll do.”

“All right,” Mac said irritably. “Let’s lay off that junk. When the guys want to kick us out, let ’em take a vote on us. And let us argue our case. But there ain’t no good of us fighting each other.”

“Well, what we goin’ to do, then. No good sneakin’ the guys out tomorrow mornin’ if the cops know we’re goin’ to do it.”

“Sure not. Let’s just march along the road and take our chances. When we see the scabs, and see how they act, we’ll know whether we got to fight or talk.”

Dakin stopped and moved his foot sideways against the dirt. “What do you want me out here for?”

“I just wanted to tell you we’re bein’ double-crossed. If you get somethin’ you don’t want the cops to know, don’t tell nobody.”

“All right, I got that. Long as everybody’s goin’ to know, we might as well let ’em know. I’m goin’ to bed. You guys see if you can keep out of a mess till morning.”

Mac and Jim shared a little pup-tent with no floor cloth. They crawled into the little cave and curled up in their old comforters. Mac whispered, “I think Dakin’s straight, but he isn’t taking orders.”

“You don’t think he’ll try to get us out of here, do you, Mac?”

“He might. I don’t think he will. By tomorrow night enough guys will be bruised up and mad so they’ll be meat for us. Jesus, Jim, we can’t let this thing peter out. It’s too good.”

“Mac?”

“Yeah?”

“Why don’t the cops just come and take us out of here, you and me?”

“Scared to. They’re scared the men might go haywire. It might be like when old Dan fell off the ladder. Cops know pretty well when they’ve got to leave the stiffs alone. We better go to sleep.”

“I just want to ask, Mac, how’d you get loose over in the orchard? You had a battle, didn’t you?”

“Sure, but it was so dark they couldn’t see who they were socking. I knew I could sock anybody.”

Jim lay quiet for a while. “Were you scared, Mac, when they had the guns in our backs?”

“Damn right. I’ve been up against vigilantes before; so’s poor old Joy. Ten or fifteen of ’em gang up on you and beat you to a pulp. Oh, they’re brave guys, all right. Mostly they wear masks. Damn right I was scared, weren’t you?”

“Sure, I guess so. At first I was. And then they started marching us, and I got cold all over. I could see just what would happen if I dropped. I really saw that guy fall over me, saw it before it happened. I was mostly scared they’d plug you.”

Mac said, “It’s a funny thing, Jim, how the worse danger you get in, the less it scares you. Once the fuss started, I wasn’t scared. I still don’t like the way that gun felt.”

Jim looked out through the tent opening. The night seemed grey in contrast with the blackness inside the tent. Footsteps went by, crushing the little clods. “D’you think we’ll win this strike, Mac?”

“We ought to go to sleep; but you know, Jim, I wouldn’t have told you this before tonight: No, I don’t think we have a chance to win it. This valley’s organized. They’ll start shooting, and they’ll get away with it. We haven’t a chance. I figure these guys here’ll probably start deserting as soon as much trouble starts. But you don’t want to worry about that, Jim. The thing will carry on and on. It’ll spread, and some day—it’ll work. Some day we’ll win. We’ve got to believe that.” He raised up on one elbow. “If we didn’t believe that, we wouldn’t be here. Doc was right about infection, but that infection is invested capital. We’ve got to believe we can throw it off, before it gets into our hearts and kills us. You never change, Jim. You’re always here. You give me strength.”

Jim said, “Harry told me right at first what to expect. Everybody hates us, Mac.”

“That’s the hardest part,” Mac agreed. “Everybody hates us; our own side and the enemy. And if we won, Jim, if we put it over, our own side would kill us. I wonder why we do it. Oh, go to sleep!”