Mountain Part 32

Tom nodded reverently. "Unions is good. Ah am de resurrection an' de life, says de Lawd. De Lawd done sont unions to he'p his cullud chillun."

"An' Jim's de finansher secretary. He gits de money."

"Dat's good too. You boys is hustlers, lak yo' ole paw was."

The Cole life went on as if he had never been away.

Some weeks later, Stella Cole had just straightened up from the half-barrel tubs, to wring a soggy batch of towels before "renchin'"

them in the clearer water, when she looked up with that uncanny premonition of danger which lower animals and lower races possess. The ground s.h.i.+vered; then a hideous noise broke over the sunned and silent trees, deafening her. The vast growl of the dynamite explosion rang shrilly in her ears; she fell on trembling knees, praying.

The crash of falling timbers behind made her look around. The unsteady ground, she said afterwards, "shook lak you wuz shakin' a counterpane."

The rickety step supports crumpled, the rotted square of the back porch crashed in on the bench of water-buckets below.

There was a droning noise in the air, the sound of running steps along the road pa.s.sing above the house. Toward the farther mines, beyond her house and the next hill, she saw a palpable haze, smoke-like and yet not smoke, dulling the sky.

"Mah boys!" she gasped, and started running puffily for the front gate, and the road beyond.

She stood aside to let a screeching machine throb past her. It was Mr.

Pelham; the sight of his tense and collected gaze rea.s.sured her. Mr.

Pelham wouldn't let anything happen to her boys.

She shrank into the outer fringe of the tear-eyed, wailing Hewintown women, trying desperately to get some news. She wandered twice into the thick air at the top of the ramp, but the acrid heaviness drove her back. The men she spoke to cursed, shoving her aside. She slumped to the ground, moaning in inarticulate misery. Lord, they were all dead!

Then she saw Ed running with an empty bucket, his head bandaged, his face grimed and ferocious. "Ed! Eddie! Whar's Babe, an' Jim, an'

Will----"

He stopped, coughing, gasping. "Jim's killed, ma. Dey brung out his body. Hit's yonder under dem trees.... Babe's all right; ain't seed Will. Mebbe he's caved in." He hurried off, face set and purposeful.

"Mah Jim! Mah Jim!" She pulled her trembling body from the ground, and set off on unsteady feet toward the ominous trees.

The body was not there. "You might look in the Company stores, in Hewintown," said a sweet voiced girl, her face torn with sympathy.

"Thank 'ee, ma'am." She stumbled weakly off, her uncovered head dizzy from the excitement and the sun. Her lips repeated over and over, "Mah Will! Mah Jim!"

The sudden dark of the storeroom clouded her vision. From body to body she went. Here were the negroes. This bloodied face was like--No. She went on.

At length she found what she sought. Weak from exhaustion and shock, she crumpled up beside the limp warmness that had been her second son.

Here Diana found her, a Diana pale and frightened, her right arm bandaged to the shoulder, blood caked in dusky crimson at the height of her breast. "Mother! Is this.... Jim?"

Stella raised herself drowsily. "Yeh, dis is Jim." She looked at the girl fearfully, a vague horror channelling her face. "Is Will daid too?"

"Will's all right.... You come home with me."

Stella faced the girl when they were outside. "Will all right? Babe all right?"

Diana nodded.

"What's wrong wid yo' arm, girl?"

"Nothin'. A pane of gla.s.s scratched it. It's all right."

Jim's funeral, the Sunday following, was a notable affair. A committee of fellow-members from the union marched first. The ornately rosetted Brethren of the Morning Star, and the proud ranks of the Sons and Daughters of Ancient Galilean Fishermen, came next. Last were the comfortably filled livery carriages, furnished by the lodges as the proper foil for their flamboyant officers. Stella brought out her old black silk, in sorrow and pride. Tom's successor, Brother Adams, preached the funeral sermon. "G.o.d moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform," was the burden of sermon and song. There was no suggestion among the elder heads that the devil, or the Birrell-Florence-Mountain Mining Company, had had a hand in this particular wonder, this harvest of dumb death.

Tom, busied with funeral sermons for other victims, received gratefully the benefits from the two lodges. "Ain't dar nothin' f'um dat union Jim set sech store on?"

"Unions don't have benefits, paw. We gwine ter git our benefit strikin'," explained Will painfully.

"Lots of use dey are, den! Whuffur you belong to su'thin' what ain't got no benefits?"

Diana and Stella sided with the father, but the boys were determined.

"Dey say de comp'ny ain't gwine pay no damages for killin' de miners. We gwine strike an' _make_ 'em pay!" insisted Will.

"We gotter git money somehow, ain't we?" said Ed, grouchily.

"Dat's foolishness," argued Tom. "How you think you gwinter make white folks do what dey don't want to, huh? Dis union business is foolishness."

The unusual excitement of several sermons a day brought on an attack of Tom's old sickness. At Paul Judson's suggestion, he walked himself over, one boiling afternoon, to the free ward of the "horse-pittle."

Less than two weeks after his limping departure, old Peter accosted Mary Judson respectfully, as she stepped into her electric at the side door of Hillcrest. "Ole Tom Cole's done for dis time, Miss' Mary."

"Yes, Peter? Are you sure?"

"Dey cut him open in de horse-pittle, an' he's dead sho'. A n.i.g.g.e.r what wu'k dar done tol' me."

Stella was close-lipped about the matter. "Dey do say he is daid dis time, Miss' Mary. Too much preachin' ain't nacheral."

Diana saw, for the fourth time, the slouching figure in the dusk of the mountain roadway, as she returned that night from the big house. She came up to him with certainty, by now used to the mixed menace of his presence. "What are you hangin' around me for, Jim Hewin?"

"You know what I want, brown baby. Aw, don't be so d.a.m.n' stingy!"

He took her familiarly by her dusky, well-rounded arm; she shook him off petulantly. "I've told you----"

He held the arm more confidently. "You ain't in no hurry. We'll walk up a piece----"

Her feet r.e.t.a.r.ded, as he turned up the stubby gra.s.s-rugged path. He pulled her after him with a low chuckle of insolent arrogance.

Her tones were more docile, soberly argumentative. "Why don't you go to your white girl? You told me you were going to get married----"

"She kin wait."

They were deep in the obscurity of the oak thicket now; the path was cherty, gra.s.sless. She walked easily in front of him, then stopped in the topmost shadow, as the murky panorama of the night city opened before them. She stood wrapped in the dusky wonder of a sky stained with echoes of furnace fire, a dun horizon broken with twinkling patterns of streets and avenues. Around her waist he coiled a determined arm; in her he saw the beauty that she found in the broken mystery below.

"Let's sit down."

Gathering her skirts close, she sat on the dry gra.s.s, shrinking slightly from his touch. He let her have her fill of the s.h.i.+ning moment; but his hand continued its gentle stroking along her arm, her shoulders, the soft curve of her neck.

A subtle riot s.h.i.+vered out of nowhere into her emotions, an agonizing quiver so sweet that it must be wicked. Her distressed face besought his, "Don't, don't, Jim----"