The Ancient Law Part 50

"You mean he actually fears violence?"

"Oh, well, when trouble is once started, you know, it is apt to go at a gallop. A policeman got his skull knocked in yesterday, and one of the strikers had his leg broken this afternoon. Somebody has been stonin'

Jasper's windows in the back, but they can't tell whether it's a striker or a scamp of a boy. The truth is, Smith," he added, "that Jasper ought to have sold the mills when he had an offer of a hundred thousand six months ago. But he wouldn't do it because he said he made more than the interest on that five times over. I reckon he's sorry enough now he didn't catch at it."

For a moment Ordway looked in silence under the hanging icicles into the cavernous mouth of the warehouse, while he listened to the smothered sounds, like the angry growls of a great beast, which came toward them from the foot of the hill.

Into the confusion of his thoughts there broke suddenly the meaning of Richard Ordway's parting words.

"Baxter," he said quietly, "I'll give Jasper Trend a hundred thousand dollars for his mills to-night."

Baxter let go the lamp post against which he was leaning, and fell back a step, rubbing his stiffened hands on his big s.h.a.ggy overcoat.

"You, Smith? Why, what in thunder do you want with 'em? It's my belief that they will be afire before midnight. Do you hear that noise? Well, there ain't men enough in Tappahannock to put those mills out when they are once caught."

Ordway turned his face from the warehouse to his companion, and it seemed to Baxter that his eyes shone like blue lights out of the darkness.

"But they won't burn after they're mine, Baxter," he answered. "I'll buy the mills and I'll settle this strike before I leave Tappahannock at midnight."

"You mean you'll go away even after you've bought 'em?"

"I mean I've got to go--to go always from place to place--but I'll leave you here in my stead." He laughed shortly, but there was no merriment in the sound. "I'll run the mills on the cooperative plan, Baxter, and I'll leave you in charge of them--you and Banks." Then he caught Baxter's arm with both hands, and turned his body forcibly in the direction of the church at the top of the hill. "While we are talking those people down there are freezing," he said.

"An' so am I, if you don't mind my mentionin' it," observed Baxter meekly.

"Then let's go to Trend's. There's not a minute to lose, if we are to save the mills. Are you coming, Baxter?"

"Oh, I'm comin'," replied Baxter, waddling in his s.h.a.ggy coat like a great black bear, "but I'd like to git up my wind first," he added, puffing clouds of steam as he ascended the hill.

"There's no time for that," returned Ordway, sharply, as he dragged him along.

When they reached Jasper Trend's gate, a policeman, who strolled, beating his hands together, on the board walk, came up and stopped them as they were about to enter. Then recognising Baxter, he apologised and moved on. A moment later the sound of their footsteps on the porch brought the head of Banks to the crack of the door.

"Who are you? and what is your business?" he demanded.

"Banks!" said Ordway in a whisper, and at his voice the bar, which Banks had slipped from the door, fell with a loud crash from his hands.

"Good Lord, it's really you, Smith!" he cried in a delirium of joy.

"Harry, be careful or you'll wake the baby," called a voice softly from the top of the staircase.

"Darn the baby!" growled Banks, lowering his tone obediently. "The next thing she'll be asking me to put out the mills because the light wakes the baby. When did you come, Smith? And what on G.o.d's earth are you doing here?"

"I came to stop the strike," responded Ordway, smiling. "I've brought an offer to Mr. Trend, I must speak to him at once."

"He's in the dining-room, but if you've come from the strikers it's no use. His back's up."

"Well, it ain't from the strikers," interrupted Baxter, pus.h.i.+ng his way in the direction of the dining-room. "It's from a chap we won't name, but he wants to buy the mills, not to settle the strike with Jasper."

"Then he's a darn fool," remarked Jasper Trend from the threshold, "for if I don't get the ringleaders arrested befo' mornin' thar won't be a brick left standin' in the buildings."

"The chap I mean ain't worryin' about that," said Baxter, "provided you'll sign the agreement in the next ten minutes. He's ready to give you a hundred thousand for the mills, strikers an' all."

"Sign the agreement? I ain't got any agreement," protested Jasper, suspecting a trap, "and how do I know that the strike ain't over befo'

you're making the offer?"

"Well, if you'll just step over to the window, and stick your head out, you won't have much uncertainty about that, I reckon," returned Baxter.

Crossing to the window, Ordway threw it open, waiting with his hand on the sash, while the threatening shouts from below the hill floated into the room.

"Papa, the baby can't sleep for the noise those men make down at the mills," called a peremptory voice from the landing above.

"I told you so!" groaned Banks, closing the window.

"I ain't got any agreement," repeated Jasper, in helpless irritation, as he sank back into his chair.

"Oh, I reckon Smith can draw up one for you as well as a lawyer," said Baxter, while Ordway, sitting down at a little fancy desk of Milly's in one corner, wrote out the agreement of sale on a sheet of scented note paper.

When he held the pen out to Jasper, the old man looked up at him with blinking eyes. "Is it to hold good if the d.a.m.ned thing burns befo'

mornin'?" he asked.

"If it burns before morning--yes."

With a sigh of relief Jasper wrote his name. "How do I know if I'm to get the money?" he inquired the next instant, moved by a new suspicion.

"I shall telegraph instructions to a lawyer in Botetourt," replied Ordway, as he handed the pen to Baxter, "and you will receive an answer by twelve o'clock to-morrow. I want your signature, also, Banks," he continued, turning to the young man. "I've made two copies, you see, one of which I shall leave with Baxter."

"Then you're going away?" inquired Banks, gloomily.

Ordway nodded. "I am leaving on the midnight train," he answered.

"So you're going West?"

"Yes, I'm going West, and I've barely time to settle things at the mills before I start. G.o.d bless you, Banks. Good-bye."

Without waiting for Baxter, who was struggling into his overcoat in the hall, he broke away from the detaining hold of Banks, and opening the door, ran down the frozen walk, and out into the street, where the policeman called a "Merry Christmas!" to him as he hurried by.

When he gained the top of the hill, and descended rapidly toward the broad level beyond, where the brick buildings of the cotton mills stood in the centre of a waste of snow, the shouts grew louder and more frequent, and the black ma.s.s on the frozen ground divided itself presently into individual atoms. A few bonfires had started on the outskirts of the crowd, and by their fitful light, which fell in jagged, reddish shadows on the snow, he could see the hard faces of the men, the sharpened ones of the women, and the pinched ones of little children, all sallow from close work in unhealthy atmospheres and wan from lack of nouris.h.i.+ng and wholesome food. As he approached one of these fires, made from a burning barrel, a young woman, with a thin, blue face, and a baby wrapped in a ragged shawl on her breast, turned and spat fiercely in his direction. "This ain't no place for swells!" she screamed, and began laughing shrilly in a half-crazed voice.

In the excitement no one noticed her, and her demented shrieks followed him while he made his way cautiously along the outskirts of the strikers, until he came to the main building, before which a few men with muskets had cleared a hollow s.p.a.ce. They looked cowed and sullen, he saw, for their sympathies were evidently with the operatives, and he realised that the first organised attack would force them from their dangerous position.

Approaching one of the guards, whom he remembered, Ordway touched him upon the arm and asked to be permitted to mount to the topmost step. "I have a message to deliver to the men," he said.

The guard looked up with a start of fear, and then, recognising him, exclaimed in a hoa.r.s.e whisper, "My G.o.d, boys, it's 'Ten Commandment Smith' or it's his ghost!"

"Let me get through to the steps," said Ordway, "I must speak to them."

"Well, you may speak all you want to, but I doubt if they'd listen to an angel from heaven if he were to talk to them about Jasper Trend. They are preparing a rush on the doors now, and when they make it they'll go through."

Pa.s.sing him in silence, Ordway mounted the steps, and stood with his back against the doors of the main building, in which, when he had last entered it, the great looms had been at work. Before him the dark ma.s.s heaved back and forth, and farther away, amid the bonfires in the waste of frozen snow, he could hear the shrill, mocking laughter of the half-crazed woman.