labor if it don't stand together? For two cents I'd chuck the whole
thing up an' go over to the employers. Only I wouldn't, God damn them!
If they think they can beat us down to our knees, let 'em go ahead an'
try it, that's all. But it gets me just the same. The whole world's
clean dippy. They ain't no sense in anything. What's the good of
supportin' a union that can't win a strike? What's the good of knockin'
the blocks off of scabs when they keep a-comin' thick as ever? The whole
thing's bughouse, an' I guess I am, too."

Such an outburst on Billy's part was so unusual that it was the only
time Saxon knew it to occur. Always he was sullen, and dogged, and
unwhipped; while whisky only served to set the maggots of certitude
crawling in his brain.

One night Billy did not get home till after twelve. Saxon's anxiety was
increased by the fact that police fighting and head breaking had been
reported to have occurred. When Billy came, his appearance verified
the report. His coatsleeves were half torn off. The Windsor tie had
disappeared from under his soft turned-down collar, and every button had
been ripped off the front of the shirt. When he took his hat off, Saxon
was frightened by a lump on his head the size of an apple.

"D'ye know who did that? That Dutch slob Hermanmann, with a riot club.
An' I'll get'm for it some day, good an' plenty. An' there's another
fellow I got staked out that'll be my meat when this strike's over an'
things is settled down. Blanchard's his name, Roy Blanchard."

"Not of Blanchard, Perkins and Company?" Saxon asked, busy washing
Billy's hurt and making her usual fight to keep him calm.

"Yep; except he's the son of the old man. What's he do, that ain't done
a tap of work in all his life except to blow the old man's money? He
goes strike-breakin'. Grandstand play, that's what I call it. Gets his
name in the papers an makes all the skirts he runs with fluster up an'
say: 'My! Some bear, that Roy Blanchard, some bear.' Some bear--the
gazabo! He'll be bear-meat for me some day. I never itched so hard to
lick a man in my life.

"And--oh, I guess I'll pass that Dutch cop up. He got his already.
Somebody broke his head with a lump of coal the size of a water bucket.
That was when the wagons was turnin' into Franklin, just off Eighth, by
the old Galindo Hotel. They was hard fightin' there, an' some guy in the
hotel lams that coal down from the second story window.

"They was fightin' every b