Mountain Part 33

He did not answer; nor did he stop. A wild pagan stir whipped her blood, giving the blasphemous counsel that she should throw herself into his arms. It was the proximity of the male calling to his mate; it was more--it was the answering tremor of the woman of a lower, darker race, the mountain wildness dominant in her blood, when chosen by the man of the higher, lighter strain.

The stern Puritanism of her training fought against this. She must save herself whole for a man of her own color; she thought of the negro poet's magnificent lines about the black Mary, who was to bring forth the black Messiah to lead his brethren out of bondage....

"Gimme your lips, honey."

She pulled back, trembling, from the dominant triumph in his voice. His arm swept tightly around her, she was dragged against him. Her weakness melted to nothing in the presence of this mighty outer and inner strength.

Slowly she felt herself losing. Her prisoned hands struck out feebly against his face; yet even in her fighting she fancied that the man whose face was hidden in the night before her was not the repulsive, leering mine foreman, but the dim white knight of her hid dreamings.

With startling suddenness she yielded to his command. His lips fastened to hers, clung there. She felt that the whole universe became a kiss; melted, eddied together into one point of mad moist contact. Her struggles to free her lips drew her closer to him. She was conscious of his hot hand pressing against her body, burning through the thin calico waist. Then she lost consciousness of bewildering details.

With rude courtesy Jim Hewin steadied her feet as she walked down the last sharp slope to the road.

He turned to leave; an arm detained him. Her tones were low and pleadingly sweet. "A good night one, now."

Head bowed, tired blood pounding, she slipped with furtive haste toward the darkened windows of the shack that was her home.

IV

THE CLASH

XVIII

Jim Hewin picked his satisfied way over the ramp's top and along the road below, toward the gap and the gap offices. He eyed the midnight stars with unseeing animal contentment, sluggishly at peace with the world.

A voice from the watchman's hut blurred upon his hearing. "Hey, where you going?" The man peered closer. "Where the h.e.l.l have you been? The old man's been looking for hours----"

"I been right over in Hewintown."

"He wants you, now."

"What's up?" Reawakened briskness bristled in his tones.

"Bringing in them carloads of miners."

"Oh!"

"He's in the guard auto by the machine house. Better hump yourself."

Jim idled off, then changed his gait to a run as he heard the preliminary whirr of the engine. "Hai!" he shouted, as the lighted nose turned up the hill. "Hai! Wait! It's Jim!"

Tom Hewin made room for him on the front seat. "Take this rifle. Got your automatic?"

They joined the three other cars, ran on too far by the viaduct, and doubled back. The thin pop of fire-arms reached them, then the distant crackle of a volley. The men hunched together excitedly, blood tingling at the prospective ambuscade of the man-hunt.

The wash of the headlight on the tall pines beyond the cut located the engine.

"There!" came Tom's stabbing whisper.

The cars coursed to the curve, and turned parallel, facing the tracks.

The angry glare of four searchlights burned against the black figures huddled above the stalled train.

The startled crowd eddied together, then scattered in headlong panic.

Gunfire thunder and pelting lead poured from the rows of rifles toward the fleeing bodies.

Jim sprang out, crouched beside the searchlight, blazed away. He ran forward, stumbling against a pungently resinous stump. He rested his rifle on it to aim. Crack! The clumsy figure halted, raised wild arms grotesquely, fell spinning toward him. He caught up with the foremost guards, and stood with them for a volley across the narrow railroad gulch.

"Come on," boomed Huggins, the deputy sheriff in charge, running to the top of the cut.

Jim followed.

A wounded miner on the left trembled to his knees; his pistol aimed uncertainly at the man ahead. Jim's automatic plupped; the man's face b.u.t.ted against the rocky ground.

"Hey, there," Huggins bellowed, "Whatcher stop for?"

"We're goin' on," a gunman below shouted back. "We're goin' on, I say."

"Go on, then," he replied, disgustedly.

"Don'cher hear him, Ed?" to the engineer. "Go on, he says."

"Ain't I going?"

The whistle wailed against the sky, the gunmen piled on cowcatcher and carsteps. The train choked laboriously up toward the company depot at Hewintown.

"None left," said Tom reflectively, joining Huggins on the crest.

"A few," the other grinned casually, his arm indicating the awkward blotches against the searchlit hillside. "Go back," he called to another deputy, "phone from the gap for a truck to carry them stiffs to the main office. It's been a morgue afore."

The shaken eight in the shadows beyond the fill saw all of it. Dawson kept his hand beside Wilson. "No you don't," as the hothead raised the pistol again, when the train coughed its way toward them. "Wanter make us all swing?"

"We could manage a get-away----"

Dawson pushed him into the car; the rest crawled in, sobered, sorrowing, fiercely resentful.

"G.o.d! What a story!" whispered Brant, the reporter.

Jensen's big voice shook tearfully. "Shot 'em down like rats, the black-hearted b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! If I'd a gun----"

"No, you wouldn't," said the big organizer savagely, squeezed beside the silent son of Paul Judson. "You can't lick 'em that way. It's the last thing.... They'd call out their soldiers--where'd we be then? Oh h.e.l.l!

If we can just hold all the boys together, we can make 'em come crawlin'