6 r ff- BROKEN SHACKLES BROKEN SHACKLES BY JOHN GORDON "Such is man that it is reality which surprises us." PHILADELPHIA DORRANCE AND COMPANY, INC. COPYRIGHT, IQ20 BY DORfcANCE AND COMPANY, INC. All rights reserved THE PLIMPTON PRESS NOSWOOD MASS U S A THE HEWERS OP WOOD AND THE DRAWERS OF WATER WHEREVER THEY MAY BE 2135920 This is a Novel of Work; and of the Wages of Work CONTENTS PACE WORK 9 WASTE 71 REFINEMENT 117 THE MARKET-PLACE 173 LAST WORD . 266 broken Shackles WORK ASTHETIC souls have pried in vain for Slab Fork's raison d'etre. The strictly business sort, however, would have quickly touched another side, seen that that side was business, and pro- nounced it good. Slab Fork was only a victim of cir- cumstances. Circumstances were forests, great counties of them ; and a man large of pocket, small of soul. The greater victim that was the Fork had shortly its trifling victims: men and women, red hands, lean bodies, tired feet. But they certainly did the business. The town sat at the wide-branched fork of a moun- tain river which sprang from climbing hills and trav- elled, swiftly first, then at an amble, to the sea. Looked down at pleasantly from hilltops all about, you would have claimed it "squatted" there, much more than sat, for Slab Fork was the most one-storied, sprawled-out sort of place man ever saw. It began beside the River, and reached back in a struggling sort of way to culled-pine forests. Woods choked it in and hemmed it close, throwing advance-guards of trees even to the Fork's back door. 10 BROKEN SHACKLES Great Moosehead River was a stream of much vicissitude. It rose, as you of course must know, near Canada. It started life as though it purposed going north, then like some pretty wilful woman changed, and shortly found its way on south, on by sharp peaks and quiet valleys of the Adirondacks. Silver at even- ing, at noon it held the color of the sky; and the woods that lay about it sighed in comfort and in happiness, so that at night their voices joined the noise of little waves and polished stones to make the quiet places glad. Its valley was a woods-set gem that Heaven long ago had hall-marked beauty. There occurred a speculator and a mill man, two in one, and the timber over-night changed hands. A mill screeched its siren one morning, and "Slab Fork" was come to stay. Waste wood littered the forest and town, slabs lay scattered about like water-lily petals on a long-fouled pond; and hilled-up sawdust blown around the mill formed drumlins high as that structure itself, but much more vast. At that time there was no insurance on the mill nor on the homes of its de- pendants. The latter were not worth it, but the former would not stand it. The stream still coursed on its way. But about the time that silver was well started on its struggle to be free, and folks still talked of the "sixties" as though they really remembered, the river had begun the man- found work. Streams are not meant to play, and in place of the forest came shacks upon its banks. Dams stored water in the spring, then let it out again; tumbled log-lengths stilled the noise of its chatter; and dust from the mill and chips from the work spotted the silver and dirtied the blue that sometime had lighted the river. At night a deer perhaps might jeopardize a life to drink its water; occasionally when snows WORK 11 were deep and foodstuffs scarce a wolf complained; but gradually the wild was tamed, the land was mod- ernized. The Man looked on, and saw that it was good. A climbing, struggling logger's road reached hi from a village fifteen miles below, one known as Mapleton and built there advantageously on standard-gauge which took the forest products of the hills, and carried them away to other centers which altered them to dollars, factories, homes. When there were any, this logging railroad carried passengers upon its one trip up and one trip down each day, and also mail. Were you a passenger as it left Mapleton at dawn one morning, riding in a caboose which trailed a load of flats or logging empties, you would slowly and not without some jerks and bounds have passed from coun- try and into forest. The road ran Indian-fashion, up, always up, on the sides of the hills and the ridges; and the tracks below and above you looked not unlike the shining folds of some huge, fairy-tale python stretched out in the warmth of the sun. At the journey's be- ginning, and well-nigh throughout, the forests passed were only faintly reminiscent of the first, for they were "skinned." Scrubby stuff now, but white pine nearly all the first of them had been, the pine that housed and warmed, and fortified and nourished thirteen puny Colonies till they gave birth to more. Decaying butts and fire-scarred, prostrate trunks of trees, disintegrat- ing now and huts for squirrels, still lay about. When the logging train had steamed to the edge of a heavier forest, next thundered clear across the long and slender bridge which spanned the Moosehead, Slab Fork and your journey's end were reached. An unpainted shed halted the train for passengers and mail before the empties went on to the mill. A shaky carryall took both to the Store. There was 12 BROKEN SHACKLES little formality with driver Pete. He simply spat on the platform boards, picked up his sack and grunted, "Get in if you're goinV The road he took was partly built of mud, the rest of sawdust. Erratically it passed by divers places which revealed themselves as dry-kilns, lumber-sheds, and yards. There were acres of yards, and more than a few of the others, but they dropped behind as the road led into the single street of a small, dun-colored town. It was the residential section, "exclusive," as a cheerful stranger said, "since one man owned it all." He owned the houses, owned the land; he owned the school, he owned the church; the Post Office and store, the rail- road and saloon were his; the mills, the yards; the homes, and most of those that in them dwelt. Born in his huts, baptized in his church, taught in his school, reared hi his town, worked in his mill or sold to his saloon, they sank at last in two poor yards of ground also his. You couldn't cheat. In days bygone the owner of them all, one Holden Gates of Mapleton, had sometimes summered here, with many guests, and then the town perforce had looked, if not attractive, at least presentable and liv- able. But the cottage where the Moosehead widened round an island had been cobwebbed many a year, and thin-laid paint on other homes had slowly peeled and flaked away. Beyond dead rows of squat and little-windowed shacks rose up tall mill-stacks and a smudgy burner, both belching smoke and showering soot, to sky, on neighborhood. To the left of the road there sagged a building little larger than its mates. It was only Social Hall. The road gave up completely at the Store, Pete left you there you had Slab Fork. If you remained so long, you saw at noon the Fork WORK 13 Hotel, so named, Jake Baker once averred, because "you used your knife." There, with messes of others, the traveller was served with a-plenty of "chuck." Chuck was generally boiled, after the fragrant fashion of the place, and it was also usually bolted. The Company boasted of its food. They had a right: didn't it cost them two bits per man per day? As they said, and it did sound -convincing, "You can't work men on an empty belly." Clerks ate one side in a sane atmosphere of commonplaces, most generally climatic; lumberjacks and sweating workmen bolted on the other amongst a gurgling silence. Talk took time; they ate. They said that if a man should stumble corning in, too late to reach his place, he might as well resign his mind to wait another meal. These chaps, care-free of wife or shack, were hungry. To a great extent they were self-helped. Some were apparently always there. The night-shift rose at 6 P.M. to breakfast at their fellows' supper, the latter falling into infested bunks just vacant. Come Sunday, half lay on the floor. So was a flop-house of the second class. Always the mill gave up its roar, and sent out prod- ucts for the New World that was building. Stacks reddened by night the skies they darkened by day. It could be wonderful, this game, man aiding man to build a great America, hand touching hand and heart kept close to heart to make a common land. Was it? Of course not man against money; hard dollars stacked against long days; a thousand builders to one dweller in a house up-built by blistered hands, smashed heads, and broken backs. Its utmost story felt some sun perhaps; but down below, deep down, was damp- ness, rot. No man of them knew more anent Slab Fork, its early, clinging forests, than old "Admirable" Rogers. 14 BROKEN SHACKLES No man would have told you less. Mill men, while they laughed, respected the strange old fellow, not for what he was or had been, but for much that still survived. According to the Company his present value was a dollar-and-a-half per day. He doubtless earned it in the box factory in which he worked as able, when neither drunk nor sick. All, forest and mill and yards, were as tinder wait- ing a match. A fire of pine-wood slabs and curly shavings was the single luxury the poorest man among them could afford. And they were poor. They had never thought of ice, except in winter, nor sweet milk once a day for babies, in the summer. A great many of the babies died, but there were always plenty more. Wind-leaking, dirt-floored houses were slow to take the heat in winter, quick to lose it. Fires fell low; sometimes you froze; but really, not often. They were so poor that they were used to it. Having no contrasts, they came in time to know it well, and felt that it had always been. Which of course was a great help, and democratic. Families were greater than wages. Education, like the teacher, "stopped around." The teacher, maybe, stayed a week; the other lasted possibly three years. Attendance was one to a family, and there were always smaller ones to go to school. Graduates, aged nine or ten, at once matriculated in the box factory. Employment agencies outside had ever advertised the "steady work" obtaining at the Fork. They said little of wages, and knew what advertising meant. Pay-days occurred by months, with a wait of two weeks at the end of the month; that is, you were paid on the 1 5th of February some eighteen cents an hour for the time you had done in January, with deductions. Between months, though, small coin of the Company WORK 15 was paid, albeit somewhat at a discount. It passed current at the Store and "Pop's." They drew and spent, and charged things. Come pay-day, and an envelope which only held a notice. You had simply overdrawn, somehow the charge accounts ran high. Raises were not in vogue, much. "Take it or leave it," as genial Black-jack Larrabie, the mill boss, said, if by any chance your envelope held money. You were grateful there wasn't less, for it was really inexpedient to quit if owing money to the Store. Someone tried it once, and got to Mapleton. Mapleton was the county seat. The courts and jails were at Mapleton. But credit was often extended. In the meantime you worked. Twelve-hour days they were, sometimes fourteen, often more, for these are the times of a real man's work, not hindered by namby-pamby wage- scales, double-time, time-and-a-half, or a legalized limit of effort. Personal efficiency was at a discount; "work and we'll do the thinking" served as the simple credo. And Myra Barnes, who taught school there and lived around, was pleased to say at trying times, "They have no poetry in their souls." Yet these the breathing, moving, actual Slab Fork did not in the least disconcert you, being only what was expected.. They knew what sweat smelled like, and how it felt to freeze, numb inches at a time, in winter. The sun in its path had burned their faces, when their backs were wet; the winds of winter chilled and slowed the blood that in the torrid days had almost burst through veins. They were the weak left hand of wealth, a comic economic error. The foreigners, and they led, wore what they had, in summer for less discomfort, in winter for more heat. Suits of the old, their weaker parts removed, wrapped 16 BROKEN SHACKLES up the young. Style was unknown. It was something, sometimes anything, to wear . The native-born thought some of neatness, and their economies would cause the pallid, shame-faced cheek of old "threadbare gen- tility" to blush for opulence. Close-cropped women and long-haired men were they. If some of the women were not, in all good faith they looked it, with fading hair pulled back from vacuous faces, and bunched in small hard knots that capped their heads. As for their men it was one more economy, for in the barber's shop, kept open nights and Sundays by a whilom artist who meantime bent his fingers and abili- ities to supplementary employment in the box mill, it cost two bits to have the hair cut on the head and shaved dish-like above the neck. Such cuttings were endured when they might no longer be put off. Yet in good Slab Fork such things passed by un- noticed. No man was manly whose face and head lacked suitable adornment, and apparently their women satisfied them, for men at work stopped often at their tasks to gaze upon thin-breasted, slab-shaped fe- males that passed along the wooden trams whose pulpy boards formed nearly all the highways and the by- ways of the town. They were offering no disrespect, and many of the women smiled with the attention they excited. The workers of the woods and mill were boisterous. It was hard to plant refinement when one's shoes let in the snow. Occasionally some met in Social Hall. On Sundays it was "church" one religion and one God. Their church was sectless, and its comfort was not warm. God lived a far way off. The meetings of the week-day were sufficiently unsocial, but those of Sunday chilled and non-sectarian throughout. Social democracy breeding discussion, they added little to that barren day WORK 17 which dangled hope all through a breaking week, then by its awful emptiness made man and woman turn again to work. It was a one-man Sabbath. II Two raggedly unkempt urchins struggled over a wooden threshold, and with their feet on the hard- packed ground outside the elder turned to close the door. He relinquished for the moment a hand of the smaller one, till then held in his own. The little chap began to whimper. He wept as if he knew how, as though he had before that very day, and over the small, brown face, for the most part wind-chapped and very grimy, appeared two paler places where that day's tears an hour or two be- fore had fissured out a crooked way. New drops paused at the verge of his eyes, and stopped for a bit to launch themselves from reddened lids to the parallel lines that made way down his cheeks. The other lad saw it, for he was quick to place a small, weak arm across the shoulders of the mournful one. He, now the man, had been crying too not many minutes gone, for the length of the night before and through the day that followed he had been the humbly feeling host of a commonplace, insistent eareache. Unable to remedy the ill themselves, in time his older folk had tried to get him to the Doctor. And they had, at least to the Doctor's office. A pity he was so often away, as on the night before, and still that morning. A good soul, too, but he wasn't a man-Doctor, really, as even the children said, for this good Company was 18 BROKEN SHACKLES wise enough to hire a nurse for the brute animals that aided in the conduct of their business, and added not a little to the profits of their old and very meri- torious concern. Teams cost real money. "Doc" Wimple was meant for a purpose, and kept to a task. And, far ways from superman, the "Doc" could sel- dom cope with the impossible of sick-visiting two spots at once with but a single work-complaining body. His course in life was a horse-path, and it seldom lay convenient to the rough-graded, broader highway where lay the men, and the children of men, he knew. As long as live-stock kept healthy, the men and women with their children and they had them worried along with his converted services quite well, but since there were so many of the other creature- patients in his sour little settlement, still more about the woods and camps outside, quite naturally the harassed Doctor often roved afield on other mission bent than on the healing of the sick among plain people. Since all of them were poor, sickness was not uncommon; and as they often came into the world without outside asssistance, so did they frequently escape as simply from it. Every man's home was his hospital; the Company veterinary did what he could to them; and the Company store sold castor oil and turpentine. The boy's father had gone with him to the Doctor's on the night before, and his mother just that morning when the other had obeyed the whistle of the mill. For it was persistent, and it would not be denied. Small lives came and spent lives went, and troths were plighted; men danced and wasted and drank, but women seldom sang to the tune of its hoarse-voiced blast. Late that night the father, suffering, gulped once or WORK 19 twice when they were home and said, "Well, Andy Johnson, boy, you'll have to stand it for to-night." Andy did, and the others had not been shorn of their rest, but he well, of course, he didn't sleep so very much. Then came his second visit to the Doctor, an hour or more ago. Again at home and freshly disap- pointed, the young boy's mother bethought her of a cure-all his father's father used across the seas. For Andy was a New World member of an Old World race, and the waters of the Skager Rack another day had cast their salty mist against the fresh-skinned faces of his ancestors. The scrimpy medicine chest came forth, and from the part-full, vari-shaped vials of wintergreen essence, peppermint, cherry-bark pectoral, turpentine, also something like oil, she chose the last. Andy, on his knees, so placed his head in the mother's lap that she was quickly able to inflict an earful of the liquid without the spilling of a drop. The shock of in- undation helped him to forget the pain, and the drops that shortly percolated out and trickled down his back as he arose diverted him so effectually that the tears which had foregathered round his tired eyes for several hours were sucked back out of sight again. That duty done, the mother furnished Andrew a little scrap of iron metal stamped by their Company "five cents," and sent him out to buy the bread that she had no time to bake. She saw that the younger George went with him, for the store was not so near that the absence of the pair might not afford her some much- needed time to work, and think, and a little perhaps to rest, all functions which the worthy woman but seldom found compatible with care and bearing of a family. Clutching their mite of bread-money in one hand, George Anderson by the other, Andy went adventuring. 20 BROKEN SHACKLES He posed as a man and protector, a rdle he often played, and filled. The door shut them out, and for just a moment the woman sank against a wooden rest to gain her strength, as the two small chaps outside braced the searching, inquisitive breath of a cold North spring. The boys were six and eight, the former even the junior hi that phthisical settlement where broods were only limited by force of parent vine, no thought bestowed on what should fill requiring mouths when they were weaned to mushy stews of the Old World, or the pork and bread of the New. The slattern creature who had seen them go did not reflect like this. She was only tired. Neither boy, outside, was in any way encumbered with overcoat or jacket to shield an ill-built body from the frost-bit air. Andy turned up the small coat-collar for the younger, afterward thought of his own. Both shivered slightly. About the head of Andy was loosely tied a piece of cotton cloth. It was chiefly dirty and worn, this wrapping, and kept a clumsy place a-cock his head as by legerdemain. Perhaps one day it had contributed to make his mother's underskirt, for it was dimly figured, even hemstitched just a bit along the edge. Over an eye it hung, and farther back as loosely wrapped the oil-filled ear. Had any other boy observed him, he would certainly have chuckled, loudly; some mother might possibly have cried. Andy's clothing and that of George was shabby and old, well-darned of knee and seat and where the little bony elbows had helped to thin the sleeves in all good time. The shoes of course were poor, stubbed-out affairs, scant of toe and low at heel. The stockings that stretched from WORK 21 the shoes to the much-bagged, cut-down or grown-out trousers, as it happened to be George or Andy wearing them, were no more innocent of mending nor of holes. Neither had mittens, but two red hands sought for and held each other tight, the while two others dug deep in their respective pockets. They passed nobody as they walked, and it would not have mattered if they had. They might have seemed pitiful to a "foreigner" from the great outside, had there been such an idler in the place where men rose to labor from whistle to whistle, and laid aside oppressing work at night just so it might be handy for another day. They simply coughed and froze from the reluctant light of cold auroral dawnings, through chilly noons to ice-marked nights; or bent with other days, sun-dried with seething heat, slow-coming of shadowy dusk and toil-marked nights which only seemed less hard because there was no light to see the sweat. Men lived, and finally died to find the easy way; while women worked and saved and slaved, to make the meagre wages of the toil and toll yield up poor food and poorer clothing for far from meagre lacks of always needing families. The left-over crust of a day was respectable fare for the next, as the passed- up clothing of one was fitted down to another. Families seldom grew up. The elder children married early. They courted responsibility; wed work; and bred trouble. Re-enforcements took their places. It was a System, an earth-old System of father and son, mother and daughter and children. It nicely en- gendered stupefied minds and soul-sick men; drab, grubbing women barren of hope as they were not of child. Meeting, the two brought forth new shoots well- fitted to replace them. The offspring? They were beaten before they were born. The mills themselves 22 BROKEN SHACKLES went on, and on. They paused not, and they ground fine. It was a place of derelicts. It may have been the air, perhaps a little craving for the bread, that set the pace for Andy and the al- most-running George. The walk was not a short one from their corner of the Fork's undecorated shacks to the Company emporium, where buck-shot was purveyed with tea of the near-East, and coarse flour sold for a consideration along with "views" of that fair city's pock-marked spots. For the most part these sang of log ponds, or of mills which filled the air with smoke while the photographer exposed a plate, so giving off a most desirable effect of a fall-born haze which was delightfully enhanced by the ascending efforts of a giant burner stood beside the mill. Outsiders called the pictures "interesting." To those who saw the views, first-hand, they were "the Fork." Habitually, such dabs of home-grown color were met and passed unseen by the two now going up the hill that flanked a grinding, smoking mill, painted and painting in soot, filled with the hollow cries of men, alive with the shriek of machines that took and tore and kept unsatisfied. To their father it was bread; to the philosopher, "big business"; to a woman it was dirt; to the boys, "the mill." As they came to the clamoring bull-chain thick of link, heavy of load, as it portaged its logs from pond to saw their father saw them. He thundered down a welcome. As quickly he looked to his task as the trunk of a squat white pine bade him raise to the ut- most the swinging door that opened inward to admit the log, and out again to half exclude the air when it was cold. The children answered as they passed, for work was something to be undisturbed. Nor did they stop just after, at an open, steaming WORK 23 engine-room, inviting by the open door and the warm look of it within. It stood a little up the path, where stout Bill Boddfish officially an engineer, in pay a fireman, always friend bawled out to ask the elder all about his folks at home, and just by chance to inquire of the bandaged head. Of course he had a remedy, and re-enforced his loudly-shouted questions with others of the health of Andy's mother, and if in fine his elder brother Hans had not been drinking even more of late. For Bill was always kindly interested, he being a typically worthy oaf, and in the case of men and their affairs obliged in leaving any little thing like work he had in hand. To whom he talked didn't matter. He pestered men, had gossip with their wives, chaffed oddly with their daughters. "It kind of eases things along," Bill used to say; and probably the Management, forever stern, would have eased poor Bill along some years ago had not the ample energy belonging to Bill's father, and for long expended to Company glory and profit, made total restitution for any mental hookworm of the son. He would have talked now had the boys stopped, but they didn't. Not encouraged, no more dis- couraged, he merely finished as they passed, "Nice day anyhow, ain't it?" then heaved a sigh and re- turned to his shovel. Ah, well, he could work when there was nothing else. "Wordy Bill" had a single cardinal sin. From beyond the mill the path dipped down and showed a bit of the lake beyond the log-mussed shore and huddling buildings, a little lake fringed sparsely in abandoned pine and hemlock, now bathed by sun, now ruffling with the wind. It was all as old as Andrew and George and it appeared much older, for to 24 BROKEN SHACKLES them it seemed as if it must have always been. Scenery, if it had been there, would probably have failed to make the younger boy forget the effort to make a summer cap come down across his ears, or the elder stop his hustling both to keep the younger warm. For a while in the face of the wind, it caught and struck at them again as the path curved round a yard of rot- ting, low-grade boards, on up a short incline, just past the Fork Hotel and to the Store which was its neighbor. The store was set between two well-known build- ings, for next it on the other side was Pop Baum's "Drug Store." Pop apparently had always been on deck, waxing increasingly fat, growing exceedingly rich, on the nickels and dimes of such as came his way; and they in truth were not a few, for the solace of drink was denied to no man of that fair city. If he earned much, he could afford it; if he didn't, he would fall behind in spite of Hell, so just what difference could it make? Perhaps it left the wife a little woebegone at times, but then it sure made him feel a whole lot better. Married men usually worked for a wife, and the children. Liquor stood next. Single ones toiled by the month for an evening in town. Liquor was first. Six months of work equalled one wild night: a bodyful of whiskey that ran down and burned; a jade; a dying of the senses; a waking; an empty pocket-book; a headache; possibly more. "Hard come and easy go." Well, it was all in the way of the woods. It was all right. Of course occasionally some sotted fool gave to the mill an arm or leg, and some frail woman there- by lost her right to eat. But the Company agreed they had to have it, so for a slight commission they tolerated Pop and everyone was satisfied. Just now a crowd of idling men were gathered on a very shabby porch. Pop "didn't believe in airs; WORK 25 might scare the trade." Men from the night crew lined the railing and spotted the steps of his grog shop. The day crew, being at work, was not then filling the beds, and these took drink instead of sleep. They were ringed about someone so closely that only the sound of a voice reached out, one sadly well known to the boys as it rose, in tottering tenor, to conclude a woods- man's drink song "So we'll wrinkle up our lips, And take another sip Oj the good old mountain dew" The fragment ended, the song died. The group parted with the last line, and the dis- ordered person of a man emerged, a man so drunk with the squirrel liquor of the place that he half-fell down the steps. His walk was a roll, and another lent the first his staggering company. Strangely, the boys recognized this second comer first. He was one who had long been tabu in Slab Fork, for Red-eye Ed was generally and not unjustly known by a repu- tation as rank as his breath, a reputation that had first cost his job, then home, and finally forced de- parture, worse than pauper, from the town. Now and again the outlaw appeared, from where nobody knew nor cared so he got back there fast enough. The hat of the other was over his eyes, but with an oath he raised it, threw it off, and stamped it on the ground. This was Hans. "Hello, li'l brothers, whasshu doin' way up here? Better g'home. Ain't a place for li'l men like you. Whasshu doin' here, anyway? Spick up. Ain't afraid, hey?" A boy better reared would not have answered; quite possibly he might have disappeared, afraid. Andy still 26 BROKEN SHACKLES held his younger brother's hand, and said instead that he was there to buy a loaf of bread. "Bread, eh? Whaddoes an'body want of bread? Wheel Lesh have another drink?" He looked at Ed. Ed nodded. "Yeh, lesh have 'nother drink." Ed was an echo: he was always primed for drinking; and never solvent for a drink. When he "treated" he forgot to pay. That was Ed. Drink-glutted as he was, Hans looked at Ed, and recollected. He sobered a very little, and gave a side- long glance in the direction of the boys. Wonder and fear were painted on the face of the smaller, a young surprise, not fear, causing the fine blue eyes of Andy to open, the hand on his brother's to gradually tighten. The other hand relaxed, the bit of money fell. It rolled a little way. He took a step, and stooped to pick it up not so quickly though but that the fuddled Hans had caught his shoulder roughly as he rose. "Gimme it, Andy," he cried, "gimme it!" The boy to the drunkard was only his brother; the money a drink. He caught the boy not over-gently, wrenched at his hand, and would have shortly had the coin, too, had not another witness just come up. One "Admirable" Rogers had approached, till then un- noticed, and the drunken fellow was set spinning by the hand of a stooped old man, a man that rough life and worse manners had as yet not altogether spoiled of a cleaner and better-thinking manhood than was com- mon. Even Boddfish's curiosity surrendered to an exception. The boys were satisfied. Not waiting to see more, they left. The storekeeper was waiting at a window. Had the Store been his and not the Company's, there is no doubt but that the wily Louis Frank would have arrived before the "Admirable," for Louis was a busi- WORK 27 ness man and would not tacitly have seen bread money so diverted from his store to Pop's. He took it now, and in a piece of old print paper that had once upon a time no doubt been news, twisted a poor, pinched-looking loaf grabbed from an open case, a crumby goods-box at this season mercifully bereft of flies, though of their memory still clear. He shoved their package at them crossly and omitted to say "thank you," walking to the Post Office along the other side to finish distribution of the one day's mail. He would read such of it as had not been sealed, for Louis' post was a dull one, and he simply made the most of it. It was even related that he could take a paper from its wrapper, inspect it, and put it back again with nothing so much as a crease in the paper or a doubt in the mind of the ultimate customer. As for the "thank you," it was unadulterated waste. "Thank you" impliedly denoted "call again." Well, the fewer the better, thought he, and it wasn't his old store anyway. And even if it were, it wouldn't change the status much. The Company town had one store; it was the Company Store. "If people didn't like it, they could go without." Buying by mail out- side was pitifully transparent, express agent-post- master-storekeeper being as one. It might have saved the laborer a little money; sometimes it cost men jobs. They usually spent where they earned, all of it. Andy had the bread, also enough of walking. Taking the same way home, the mother opened for them when they reached her door. She had had a little rest, had done a bit of work, and she was glad to see them back. Sometimes the tired woman told herself that she was almost glad to see them go; and still their comings- home, even from little journeys, gave her joy. 28 BROKEN SHACKLES "But ain't you been a long time, Andy? What's kep' you? Where'd you go?" George's attention centered on warming his feet at the red-heated stove which was a cooking range and furnace, while Andy mumbled some reply. She would know soon enough; she always did. Hans came home when he could not go elsewhere. The mother bustled about, too busy to catch the boy's half-heard reply, sliced up her bread for one good meal, and set the stew a little forward on the stove. For noon was on its quickening way. The empti- ness of morning was due to meet the need of night. His all-in-all of meals, his plain-cooked, noon-served dinner, must await the worker. It took a spell to come and get it. There was no time to linger. The meal was usually partaken of in gulping silence, an indi- gestion-making gorge. Andy sat down on the dirt-packed floor, hi a half- warmed corner out of the way. He chose the floor, for the chairs were at the table. The house was cold, and he. A whistle far-off blew, and hi a little time his father came. The man's eyes showed his pleasure hi stepping into the little home that he had quitted some six hours before. His smile took in the room, the mother, then Andy at the stove, his head now shorn of aural covering. "Feel better, don't you, Son?" he called to him, and then the mother summoned them to table. Their grace was unsaid gratitude, though the father's face clouded at the empty chair beside his wife's. Questions he might have asked had answer soon enough. The pine door swung upon its hinges heavily, Hans stood there for a moment in the opening, then spilled into the room. Not speaking, they carried him upstairs, frail mother, wretched father. They said nothing; it was not new. WORK 29 Again they were at the table. Andrew touched his mother's hand, and she smiled wanly at the child. Her smile was full of love; she had done with being happy. Heart- tragedies were simply spelled. There was no need to mourn. Indeed, it was nearly time for the whistle. Ill To such of the old-American as Hamlin County boasted in its Slab Fork corner came the freshest stock of Europe, well-formed men, hearty women, who had frankly come to get and take away. Citizen, mer- cenary, earned alike; one striving to support a soul, the other happy with a body. A nation lent its warmth, but clinkers filled the melting pot. The citizen gave of himself, heart, body, soul; auslanders laughed, and took. They gave as little as they could, grabbed what they might, in the end turned with sneers from Samaria. Their patriotism was business; they worked for the Old and lived by the New. They left the former, peasants, young and poor and cursing; they went back with gold.. After all, there was no place like home. Yet not all of the alien Fork were of these. Those there were, from the Northern lands of the Old World, who with the first emigres' spirit had come to get, and give. Them the born sons of the new land met and married, though as yet they had not perfectly ab- sorbed the other ones of Scandanavia, blue of eye and fresh of face, sturdy of hope, true of heart. This might have been a happy meeting. 30 BROKEN SHACKLES The father of Andy was Norse, his mother Ameri- can-bred. From Mandal, near Christiansand, he came, where had you only seven-league eyes you could see Denmark to the South of you; the Cattegat and Sweden to the East; more Viking country to the North; but a great vastness over all the West. Johnson, father, was a large, keen-visaged man. He had a weathered look, and a weary walk. His clothes never fitted; he didn't care. His wife, the children's mother, looked tired, and worked tirelessly. New England ancestors had once owned property; she still had conscience. Were Andrew to describe her, he might have only said that she was good. She was good to them and they were good to her, if anybody thought about it. She knew the coming of a child, with clumsy hands to give it life; and what it meant to nurse that little one on starved-out hope, and slipping faith, and food that scarcely kept the spark alive in her, the mother. The father aged and grew old in the crushing dis- appointment of his life, but in the woman still lived the spirit fresh, strong, courageous. Yet in this freez- ing, God-abandoned corner of the land her days had changed. Her forbears were not rich, but free. She had existence, always poverty, often suffering. While the husband marvelled, her courage and love still bloomed, like the sprig of bleeding-heart in its small, cracked jar that stood at one of her windows. He did not know it, but he loved the little plant which still flowered in a land where all things left that could and all the past was barren. Indeed, they felt no need of tenses. Hans promised well at first, and almost as soon the promise failed, his decency and virile manhood swallowed, bit by bit, by the swill which claimed at times the greater part of Slab Fork. WORK 31 Men could not earn enough to keep their families, anyway, so as the rum helped them their families helped themselves. There was a box factory which lived on waste of the mill, and fed on a stock of women and childhood, the child from its school, the woman from home. The factory was a dust-filled, noisome place, cold as a barracks in winter, a parching hell in summer. Its pennies merely held the scales between a profit and a loss. Profit was life. They usually worked. The workers had reached a stopping-place, though they did not know. They could feel it, perhaps, they must have, and sometimes Andy waked at night to cry out, in the darkness and the chill, until he touched his brother George beside him, or heard the heavy sleeping of the elder Hans across the room. For a while he would lie and stare up, unseeing, in the blackness of the room, the shingled ridges just above his head. Perhaps his father stirred uneasily and loudly on his hay- stuffed mattress in the room below; and then the eerie soughing of the wind across the shack might send him off again, to hear almost at once the early whistle of the mill, his mother hurrying about in her kitchen underneath. She was always hurrying, young Andy thought, hurrying and working, working and hurrying. But she put an arm about him, sometimes, to show that she was satisfied. Except in mid-summer it was pitchy dark. Some- times, for the moment before stepping shivering from bed, he wondered idly how long she had been up. Late at night he heard her at work, as in the morning, often a song upon her lips which lilted happily up, through boarded ceiling and pine-matched floor, while she washed the clothes that they would wear next day. He often wondered when she rested, but that he never knew till late. She and his father left the loft for their 32 BROKEN SHACKLES sons, since the house, like the greater number of its kind, had just three rooms, if such you called that one where Andy and his brothers slept. There was a bit of stringy matting for the floor. The sides and sloping ceiling of the whole were bare and rough, with places in them where you scratched your head upon a nail, or saw by day a goodly chink of light between the loosely- fitted wood. Their breakfasts did not differ much from dinners, since silence made the grace and and haste the sauce. It was generally a case of sour-raised bread and raw tomatoes, re-enforced at times by coffee-colored fluid which was hot. The master of the house and Hans stood not upon the order of their going. They were both large men, the son of the mould of the father. A gap of years separated Hans from the next, since there had been another little one who had not stayed to share their life. As his mother sometimes said, "George sorta favors me." But Andy's was the true complexion of the Norse, which means to those who know a head of curly yellow hair, eyes deep with all the color of the sea, and round, smooth cheeks as clear and pink those days as tender petals of an early-blooming flower. His limbs and body, straight, well-formed, assured strength. There was every chance for early use in the tasks which packed those hours between their breakfast and the coming of the night. That was the portion of the day they all antici- pated. The father's work was done, the mother's nearly, and the lolling heads of youth fell easy prey to the warmth that filled the room and made the rough shack home. The mother's face gloated with contented pride when all the coarse food disappeared with many a sincere, appreciative smack. The father backed his chair against the wall, carefully chose a WORK 33 splinter from the ready wood-box, and let his wife re- move her dishes to the tiny, crowded table in another corner of the room. While she did the work they talked of a future which was brighter at night than at breakfast; when Hans had gone, of his wedding to the little Emmy just next door, and of what the wholesome child, although a woman here, might do for him where they had failed; and now of Andy, old enough to take his place in school "come fall." They expected much of Andy, since his mother, not rich in learning but more lucky in ambition, had already taught him how to read in simple words, and there were other things he knew. And when her work was done, her man built up a hot pine fire in the little stove which warmed the small "spare room." There, sitting at their great extrava- gance, she played upon a small old organ quaint pieces learned as a girl. The father smoked a fumy pipe or whittled cut-plug, with now and then a snatch of hoarse Norse song. To placid mind and welling heart the clumsy fingering of "Comin' through the Rye" or "Annie Laurie" was as the finest chords that ever sprang to life from a Beethoven. As tired fingers quit the keys the old man fell to musing of the days when he had been a soldier of this great Republic. Young, very young, to America, he yet had done a man's work in the "sixties." Those fiery strugggles were dim, but he kept toward his flag an ardour and love as rarely splendid in the native-born as it is noble from adopted. And all of this the eldest of the house of Johnson was. Honorable and brave in war, the petty strife and selfish bickerings of peace, less understood, had found him timorous and vacillat- ing, until his drifting stranded him at last at Slab Fork, to leave him high and dry. But hi his tales, 34 BROKEN SHACKLES were George and Andy old enough to see, their father was himself as he would never be again. And Andy listened to his tales until the colorful Ben Hur, across from where he sat, assumed less hueful tints; the horses grew a blur upon the wall; and Hur was falling from his car. Whereat Andy himself dropped loudly from his chair, forgetting the picture entirely; which was usually the signal for the evening's end. A sharply-featured dawn leered early at the Fork. IV THERE came to the woods town a morning in May when the sun shone, and the cold was not, and the winds with their ear-aches and frost-touched fingers and toes had ceased to blow. It was spring. The birds were glad, and in their tuneful fashion lifted up their voices to the sky, and said so. The woodpecker set his wire- less to "sending" on a tree-trunk near the mill; when a squirrel came out of the top, and sat on his haunches, and made a mock obeisance to the sun. The children, those that could, were early at play, while the women sang as they toiled, in kitchen or garden patch. The men, as near daybreak they started out, cried back and forth in home-spun English, "Fine day!" "Yeh! Fine day, all day," and quite as if they meant it. At Johnsons' none set out to toil, but all were busy. Holidays were two in Slab Fork, every year, and the day of vacation was not yet, but the week before a lot of freshly printed invitations had come up on the log- ging train to Mrs. Hanson, the neighbor on the John- WORK 35 sons' right. These said, in rather an erratic type that might have been Old English but looked a great deal more like German script, that on this day, now come, would be the marriage of her daughter Emmy to Mr. Hans Anderson Johnson, both of Slab Fork. The groom's family breakfasted early as was usual, when dishes were cleansed with dispatch and somewhat hurried neatness. While Hans and his father removed the parlor organ by their front room window and portaged it across the little square of yard to Emmy's, Andrew brought up with the stool, which was not so very massive, having sometime lost one-half the top. Though there was much to do, a day lay ahead, for the wedding ser- vice came that night at eight o'clock, someone once having vouchsafed in the hearing of good Mrs. Hanson that such was a fashionable hour. Six o'clock or high- noon weddings had never been tried on Slab Fork. If bride and groom and minister could possibly have slipped away to meet respective obligations, the mill and factory would certainly have yielded up no more, for guests. A crowd was the thing. The pine-board doors of the Johnsons and Hansons sagged open from the morning, and their respective owners fetched and carried. A calico-shaded light, pride of the Johnsons, followed their organ, and Andy was proud to carry the breakable parts while George behind made shift with the shade. The Johnsons' dinner was eaten from boxes, and supper was served from the stove. Hans, too, prepared. In excitement, a pink tie, and a three-parts shoddy suit bought as a bargain from a "Yew" who had a little shop in town, he quieted his nerves against the Drug Store bar. Glass in hand, foot touching rail, elbow on top, he responded with 36 BROKEN SHACKLES drinks and cigars to numerous jests and coarser jesters. By close application, Hans shortly grew as witty as the best. He even made it warm for Wordy Bill. Bill that week was working on the night-shift, which left day- times free for talking. The songs and joking grew, for they and Hans looked on it as a final celebration in the spirituous. And there was much rejoicing. At the house of his bride approached seven o'clock, and guests who wished to be sure of the show. Small- ness marked the house as had generosity its invita- tions. Milady and her man, buxom daughters and sheepish sons, came early, converged upon the house, and entered it with giggling and much craning. Many an arm in faded brocade, or encased in a wear-worn coat, was sharply bulged out by paper-rolled bundles that gave off mystery. Wedding gifts were not dis- couraged here, aping a better world, and to the end there might be no mistakes each giver brought his present with him. In ones and twos or families of ten they entered the open door. The bride? Was all but ready, so they whispered; "and waitin' for the groom," Bill Boddfish mentioned sotto voce. Soon after eight Hans came, some said a-leaning on his father's arm. He was red of face, and made his presence felt. This never caused a stir. Nothing lacked. The organist was in her place, the bridal-party waited on the staircase. It was a steep and winding way, the top well hidden from below. Almost at once Andy sang out, "All ready," and anxious visitors had almost put their heads together across the foot or two of space reserved with difficulty for the nuptial way. Miss Myra Barnes was underneath the staircase. From broken stool and panting parlor organ she offered up in minor key her very best, "The Maiden's Prayer." The stairway creaked. Andy him- WORK 37 self, in haste to see the end, was easily first. He landed on his hands. The "Prayer" perceptibly stag- gered. Then the squeak of the stairs attuned to the creak of the organ, so that one of several worthy women looking on was heard to murmur, "Ain't it grand?" and shed a tear. Hans' collar yet contained the new pink-cloth cravat. Even this bride wore white. Likewise her maid of honor, and each held a clump of crimson, spotted flowers. They were artificial, but they were very red, and the bride she had a gown that "rustled!" The best man was brave in a red sweater-vest and a nice blue ring just tattooed on a little finger. They pushed through the guests, losing step and finding it again, each marching as seemed good to him and rather care- less of the music which was welling up and down in leaps and bounds that made Miss Myra's touch seem strange and sensitive, a wondrous thing. The Rev. Leonard Olson, severe and dark of coat and Sabbath manner, was watching for them in the parlor. The organ gave a parting wheeze. The pastor's words came haltingly at times, but his success was ultimate. Religion was a side-line, its fees about a grub-stake for the church-mouse. So Reverend Olson strove at other things, mainly at nail- ing boxes. Boxes were his vocation, souls his avoca- tion. On the whole, he was probably better at boxes, as there were now and then delays and gaps of knowledge in joining couples and depositing his dead. He seldom had a chance to use the blither service, though praised for doing thorough work. No one among his dozen nuptial-takers had later heard his wedding-bells die out in a divorce. Yet his charges were poor. At length the shaky Hans had found his ring and 38 BROKEN SHACKLES slipped it on her finger, and the Reverend One had said, "I call you man and wife." There was a little murmur of applause about the room. There was tear- letting, too, but in the main hardened old females and blushing young things bore up wonderfully, with usual sympathy extended to the mother of the bride. "Hearts and Flowers" was ground from the organ, and the world was glad. Then at last the gifts were heaped on all the tables in the room, and those who still kept coigns of vantage on the chairs and sofas began to clamber down and look about. And what a gathering was there, for sure. The low ceiling fairly cracked with the clatter of all the shrill, unmusical voices, the patois, the accent and brogue; the high-pitched voices in all their unchecked stridency, as they are heard in little homes and in the far-wide places of the country. Belles of the Fork, Annie Jensen, Lizzie Berg, Anna Hanson, and Myrtle Mickelby, all were there; Joe Jensen and William Mickeluski, and even the stern old "Admirable" were of the merry-making. While the scolding mate of one, Ardella Hansen, for once in all her wretched life forgot to watch her husband in a very timely eagerness to see that thing the neighbors from next door had given. There was Big Business too, which for a space forgot great cares to mingle with its fellow-men again. Pop Baum had come to give his beery blessing, and even "old Doc" Wimple had left a poor, sick equine to be present. The house was honored. Slab Fork's police force, Sandy Jackson, had left off his patrolling of the yard for half an hour that he might come, while Chapman Jones, who held rank sway above the Company's Hotel, was there, as was his head and only waitress, Miss Ophelia Claiborne, in much ado and real blue denim. She had humanly WORK 39 that night postponed her dishes to another day to come with Louis Frank. The latter, of their local store, was greatly in demand, since he could lend a little light in cost of others' gifts. There he was, looking, talking, letting little escape. He had as many prices as there were wage-scales for the customers ; and he didn't like to give even information. Thirsty Ed had projected his tell-tale presence part-way through the rear door, when he was easily induced by some refreshment to leave them for a time at least; and Wordy Bill was "talking scandal" to everyone with ears. One of the happiest of mortals there was Mr. Charlie Wall, Slab Fork's laughing undertaker. He had a very long and dank moustache. At sober times he smirked without its being seen. To those who may not know, Charlie it was who brought the "Fifty-Dollar Funeral" to Slab Fork, one of its cheapest boons and best. He had a sunny, buoyant soul, a man well- wrapped in his future. Just now he was inquiring with nice and no doubt actual concern as to the precise and present state of so-and-so's condition. He was ever thoughtful of the helpless, the infirm. He seemed alarmed, yet interested, in conning o'er the "shootin' rheumatiz" of poor old Mother Witzke. Even Jack Larrabie, boss of the mill, was noted among those present. Admiring gifts, he now and then exclaimed "Jemima! I'll be swiggered if I ever seen the like o' that before!" Which was winning, as usually true, and givers right and left were apt to smile, quite audibly. Each donation was plainly marked, oh, very, and Mr. Larrabie, when all was said and done, was not a half-bad sort. He was as near all right as he could be and hold his job, and if at times he seemed even harder than the hand that encircled them all, you must remember he had once 40 BROKEN SHACKLES been underneath himself. It is a school which shrivels hearts. Some of the gifts were elaborate, and nearly all were interesting. From bridegroom to bride had come a crayon drawing of self, a local artist's work. And she had given him a pair of cotton blankets, with an accordion. The mother of the bride had brought an old-time print of "Every Man His Own Physician." The groom's own mother had made for them a book of home-tried recipes, each one a gem of doing much with little, the while his father had contributed a large round cheese and steel engraving of Niagara Falls. One friend had sent five yards of sheeting, another chickens, with a pair of towels; a dear old lady brought a rather skimpy piece of quilting yet made entirely of cast-off clothing of the groom. A maiden aunt of Emmy's, down in Mapleton, had sent them by the logging-train a large tin canister of quite efficient, withal slippery, soap. She had made it herself; she said it would "do up" anything. There were others: dishes and vases and handkerchiefs; shoes for the bride and gum-boots for the groom; a salt and pepper service sans the salt; one or two pitchers with chips and cracks, yet still tricked out to hold; knitted wash-cloths, hand- stitched towels, a "comforter"; even a large, nicked bowl which Mrs. Minsky brought (as if everyone hadn't known it without the poor soul's name). It had been a very nice bowl, probably for fruit. She never had any, so she thought she'd pass it on, "wishin' 'm luck." There was ware of silver, some of it like to hold its pale gray flush until the morrow. And in Mrs. Minsky's bowl, because the largest, were quarters and dimes, a half or two, and even a dollar, from those who had no other thing to bring. More silver came WORK 41 its clinking way as dancing started up to Myra's jingling "Old Gum Stump" and "Shake a Leg, Mariar." When the gallant well-to-do had a kiss and a dance with the bride of Hans, and in token thereof threw much largess in the dish. Emmy blushed, though the bowl was half-way filled, and there was much rejoicing. To one side Andy served the older, stiffer ones with resiny beer and limp cake, while their sons and daughters trod a measure. His father kept it flowing from the keg and held the drinkers in a friendly mood with many an ill-remembered joke and tale. The jokes were stale, the beer was fresh. They went down well together. Anyhow, they were so happy it hardly mattered what you told them. Hans' mother, here and everywhere, looked to the comfort of their guests and seemed to have a deeper pleasure in the laughter of the others. It was loud, usually rude, and sincere. Laughing and dancing, dancing and drinking, cake, cut-plug and beer. Some sipped because they danced, the rest because they could not. All soon fetched twelve. The boss had long since gone, but here and everywhere still fluttered out the coat-tails of the merry undertaker. Those coat-tails, how they danced to the old, and their wants; how zealous and careful of the lame, the halt, and the drinking. Charlie oozed kind- ness of this world, and promised even better. As they had come, in ones and twos and tipsy little groups they left. Andy and the rest stayed on to straighten things around. Nothing was put off till to- morrow, tomorrow being more of today. Finally all was done. The Johnsons went on home and Andy to bed, before their fire downstairs. It was no longer very cold; the dirt floor thinly blanketed would do. Long after the others beside him slept he heard from the loft the nervous voice of the little girl, and now and again the rough, hard tones of the groom. 42 BROKEN SHACKLES AT noon of the following day a siren, high-up from its place on the ridge of the mill, sent out its kindest summons to all laborers below to quit; to lay off from their task, and for the space of one-half hour store up new energy to take them through another six. Shortly before a smaller blast apprised the ones in- side the mill itself that power would stop as soon as "Flapjack" Boddfish, engineer, could throw his switch. What it was most of them knew not, none of them cared. A shut-down was never unwelcome; hang the cause! A moment earlier a very sturdy log of old white pine had ridden up the bull chain. Old Johnson threw it on the narrow wooden roll-way. Such thick-boled stuff men of the woods called "accidents." Once the rule, the woodland round about the Fork was only thinly peppered with them now. The thicker log lay on the roll-way until the smaller ones ahead had run their course out on the carriage. Gleaming bandsaws tore the boards from logs that flashed their length but half a dozen times upon the track, then passed from sight, leaving new boards for edgers and trimmers, bark slabs for the burner that ever ate all which entered its fire-red maw. It was the big one's turn. Perhaps from the thick, crooked root-stub still clinging to its butt, there was delay in settling it upon the carriage that Hans and the two others rode. Hans was there, as usual, for there was a holiday to marry and another one to die. Honey- moons were not. Still elated and flushed with the happiness of his late venture, he was equally un- steadied and unnerved today. WORK 43 The carriage stopped, the endless band screamed out impatiently in countless revolutions. Hans worked at the head, nearest the saw when the carriage was at rest. Cant-hook in hand, he now stepped quickly forward to roll the heavy trunk his way. While he did so a man at the other end of the thirty-foot stick cut away its one projecting root. Released, the log rolled quickly to the front and not unnaturally it found Hans off his guard. The hook fell from his hands and flew another way. He swayed uncertainly a moment, then screamed and fell. The log stopped when the man was carried with it, to the blade. So the little whistle blew, and when the saw was stopped there was no need. It was sharp, and it was free. The boy's body was nearly in two and he was dead. The father fainted, though of men called tough; a douse of water was all he wanted. The smaller whistle blew, shrilly, impatiently, and the men were back at work. Others filled the places of father and son. They worked along just the same; soon they had the great log sliced; then it was noon. To a corner behind the sawyer's pit first came the Doctor, without fault of his, miraculously near. Charlie Wall appeared on time. It was his job. He came in a lumber wagon. Just then the mill's loud siren blew noon, and he had help with his load. In the wagon it was covered loosely with a bit of sack, and Charlie drove along. He drove rapidly, being efficient. He reached the house before the father or the men. While he drove a little fleck of crimson appeared about the sides and bottom of his wagon-box; a stray dog sniffed at his rig. The horse jogged com- fortably along. They passed knots of men who had seen it, and nearly all had heard, news travelling quickly. One 44 BROKEN SHACKLES who had not liked Hans looked at the passing cart, and laughed. He said that as for him he just "allowed as how that one'd be a darn-sight more of use to folks just that-a-way than if he'd hung around." There was a low, angry murmur when this was heard, for in their free-and-easy way Hans had been liked. Another said that that was "pretty brash" for him, stepped up, and struck the first across the face and felled him. The rest went home to dinner. At the Johnsons' door the undertaker stopped. He and another got down. They rolled their burden on a plank, stepped briskly to the house, and as Andy opened at the knock of the man ahead they raised the plank a little at the sill, slid it across the room, and in Charlie's cheerful voice announced to those inside, "Wai, here he is!" Then Andy ran to keep his mother from the door, for the canvas sack had slipped away. But she was there with Emmy, and little George. Johnson himself en- tered at the front as Emmy ran from the rear door, crying wildly. Andy's mother fainted, while George fell sobbing on the floor. They must have felt some loss, though ignorant. Andy crossed the room. Putting an arm around his father's neck, he led him away from "it." Together they went to where the mother was lying. They lifted her and carried her away. On a still, warm afternoon a few days later the body of him who had loved and wed, and lived and died in only a few poor hours, was deposited among the pine trees on a hill beyond the mill. The Rev. Leonard Olson came once more. It was a Sunday. His spiritual comfort was ashes, although he said, in part, "the mother here will wait and watch no longer for her son when the toils of a day are done; the WORK 45 father, robbed of his companionship, will struggle on alone where once they labored side by side; the wife, a wife for hours, a widow for the rest of time, will hark in vain at night, when the day's work is at an end, for the footsteps of the man she loved, and lost. And all may look, or they may listen, and he will come not." His words of healing smelled of the poor-souled, earth-daubed man who sees God from afar. There were people outside, too. They were waiting to see "the box." VI IT was a small, close-fitting building, even as such things go at the Fork, this graded school over whose dustiness Miss Myra Barnes was arbiter. Certainly she herself was as unresting energy. "My stars! how she does fly about," old women used to say. Indeed she did move nervously from place to place, and not unlike the dust that hovered over everything inside, dirt that a poor old janitress' broom never actually ousted but just stirred on. It blanketed walls and the floors and the ink-wells. First duty for early-coming pupils was the furrowing of names in desk-tops covered fairly with the morn- ing's coat. It was really quite remarkable that not a weed or two was seeding in a filth-blown corner. It was a pity, too, for Mother Minsky's man had been a very faithful laborer, and when he lost his job through being killed she and the dust had filled this berth per- sistently these many terms. The Company wished to do something. Who cared for rubbish in the school? But it was not the dust on their desks that ever 46 BROKEN SHACKLES really hindered. The dust of the mill and the mill town lay many years deep on their minds. It was a slowly- gathered pall. You did not move it with a brush; you could not make initials with it. It got in people's eyes. It thickened life. There was a great deal of it. Miss Myra liked to hear "The Graded Slab Fork School," which was true. It came in two parts, one being the primary, the other elementary. Others called it what they liked, but few could give it a better name. In fact, it was "Miss Myra's." Herself a product of that town in the valley below, she had been dedicated early to a lifetime's teaching, nature not having gilded her as a lily, nor yet as the rose. No Mapleton affording that latitude she sought for in her inmost soul, she had come years since to the town in the hills, bringing her ambitions with her. They both stayed. She came to create, a school; and she stayed, to dictate. The Fork was better for her. Socially, Miss Barnes had good demand. In music's realm she constituted Slab Fork's all-in-all. She organed them to wedlock, played for the church, gave them material for dancing, and finally, at least in very urgent cases, could sing for them, ah, sadly, at the end. When Andy entered this school he was nudging eight, and in the course of his first year there he probably evinced neither more nor less ability that the re- mainder of the little Bergs, and Mickelbys, and Han- sons, who cluttered up the place. Indeed, he was more than once allowed to stay behind at night for fighting. There was a boy named Harry Larrabie, a stocky ten- year old who was the "little boss's" son, and by that token and his own fair size a kind of bully-born among the chidren. Yet when this lad had said to another from out a hard boy-heart that Andy's dad couldn't be WORK 47 much of a soldier to work on a bull-chain now, which certainly was not heroic, Andy had picked himself a billet from the wood pile and eased it down on Harry's head. To the end that others were edified, and Harry wore a bump. The autumn went and the shivering, pinching chill of the winter came while Andy went to school; and in mid-winter he stayed away two months for school was closed, since education was a seasonable thing in Slab Fork and a single rusted stove, although quite full, could not suffice to keep the clapboard building warm. In spring it would open again; by summer the children were ready for box-work. It was a tight winter, even as such things go in the wooded hills of northern Hamlin County. Feet were frozen within the mill, and out among the board-piles in the yard; and in the houses old women hugged the stoves while chills clutched them; the younger moved about in shawls, with clumsy frost-marked fingers. Clothing lacked. Sometimes the larder ran low and there was talk, among the men. The Company had seen its like before ; it looked for things to slacken with the coming of the thaws. Emmy went back to live next door. Mrs Johnson came and went with many dishes "I just ran over with this; we had so much we just couldn't eat it" a state of affairs that had probably never existed except in her mind; and Andy fetched them, often, bundles of pine-knots and air-dried fagots. Winter settled a grizzly hand. It had time in plenty. The Company, business-like and anxious to get rid of all the "dead- wood," would gladly have sent the Hansons out of its house at the first passed rent; but Larrabie somehow forbore, at least for a time. It might have brought an undesirable effect just then. 48 BROKEN SHACKLES In mid-winter good Dame Fortune smiled upon the Hanson woman and her daughter, for the Company paid its death benefit in full on Hans. You must know that for everyone who gave his life in serving them the Company would pay his widow or his children, and there were nearly always both, one hundred dollars, cash. If after that they came to want, surely it had scrubbed off its hands. Winter ultimately waned, as this hundred of money passed to the Store, and flamed in their lamp and sat upon their table. It was well; the present was enough, hi Slab Fork. Maybe the God would help them, though they had never looked to Him. Somehow He seemed a long journey away. Among the men there was a little talk. Some spoke of the accident, others of the women; a few, thinking, of rights. But what were they? One night there came to the Hansons a caller, to whom many looked up and some called "Brother." Parentally dubbed Cosmopolis Thorn, he came from none knew where. Of course he worked. The Com- pany, it was said, looked upon him as about pure fool, but if the men agreed with this they did not say so, since he was treated decently and conspicuously, often as "Mr." Thorn. Conspicuously, for Mr. was re- served for the minister when he was not in the box- factory, and the owner if he were present. When the talk was of the latter, it was just "the damned Old Man." As to the "Brother," the men for about a year had been starting up among themselves a kind of semi- secret brotherhood. They called it Eureka Lodge. In the beginning the Company approved, in fact had tacitly encouraged it: "for the promotion of good- fellowship and sociability," the Charter read. As the WORK 49 Old Man aptly stated when Jack had put it up to him one day in Mapleton, "Let 'em have it; give 'em some- thing to think about. Shouldn't cost us anything. Even save a bit. C'n step in when we like." Eureka grew and flourished and soon had passed original expectations. The Company at first had paid but scant attention. They only knew or thought of it as once-a-month or so assemblies of their men, fore- gathered in the Social Hall that had gone up about a generation back for goodness knows just what. The "Lodge" waxed fat. It swelled with the interest of many, but the credit mostly went to "Cosmo" Thorn. He certainly filled a place among men who had opinions and beliefs a-plenty, but did not know what to do about it. When their caller had quitted the Hansons he left behind a little bag of money, exchanged for fresh ideas. A few days later, it was pushing the first of May, Andy was restless when he had finished supper and had satisfactorily performed his part in the general order of things. It had been a trying day, all around. Early that morning his father had fallen and injured himself at the mill ; not badly, just enough to dock his pay for three, four days or a week. On top of that he, Andy, had gone to school, where he had had to lick a boy who trampled on his rights, also his cap, at recess. He had not emerged unscathed when the teacher whipped him in school, so that his fruits of victory were very near to ashes. Lessons he had had about as usual, yet as a whole his day had dragged. The night at least was fine. He would go out. Leaving by the door at the front, and lightly hopping the low slab fence that bordered his house toward the road, Andy swerved to the right and headed away from the mill. 50 BROKEN SHACKLES As he turned, he saw it sending showers of incandes- cent sparks about, some red, some white, all dulling as they swept above the stacks. Smoke darkened the sight of the mill below, noise fixed it strongly in the hearer's mind, as now and again hoarse calls or shriller yells broke away from the greater clamor that filled the still blacker building and overflowed in failing echoes sent out to lose themselves in night. Black ants, the men, in their still blacker hole, thought Andy. He did not think that ants are self-governed. They were working hard tonight, for logs were coming in a steady stream, and the owner had just got an order which was good for several months. Behind the boy was nervous life and restless din; nearer, he could have heard great shaggy men curse tools, machines, each other in a very dispassionate way. Ahead was sober darkness for the most part, and the night-lent quiet of dark forest places. Here and there faint lights peeped from small-sashed windows; a dog lifted his head to bay at the thin sickle of a moon which sent its first, pale-saffron rays between and through the scraggy branches of a lone, upstanding pine across the town. Some of that night's splendor reached in to the boy. For a space the spot was obscured where men like mill "culls" warped and shrank, and did not know nor care. The poor, small town transcended itself. The boy felt it. His spirits rose in cadence to a breeze that made a soothing music in the trees along his path. A light flared brightly ahead. The boy came near, seeing it burned in Social Hall. What was afoot to- night? The place was seldom lighted, and he had heard no talk of any dance; unless yes, that was it, Eureka met that night! Skirting the front of the shack, he slid boylike to a corner. Here, he knew, a WORK 51 hole existed. He had peeked through, and blown in peas during Bible School one Sunday. Not stopping to consider the right or wrongness of his plan, he pushed through the weeds, close to his corner, and listened. Then he looked. Yes, he was right. They were in session now. Late arrivals were even entering, for now and then the single door in front creaked, opened, then as quickly closed. A buzz of conversation and occasionally a grating word or syllable reached out to him. It was new, and it was therefore very interesting. The other boys could hardly know what they were missing. He would have to tell them all tomorrow. VII "WHO is there?" cried a voice in the front of the room. Andy could see that the challenge came from a person dressed in a dirty, torn robe, with a thick stick in his hand. Another voice said, "La "; " bor," replied the first, the keeper of the door. "Come in." They came mostly one-by-one, and as they knocked, paused at the door, and were passed, they went toward the front, and through a smoke-haze of pipe and cigarette clouds Andy saw there many whom he knew. So far back at his end as to be hid from sight, addressed as "Chief" by those who entered and saluted, Andy knew more from the voice replying to the men than from what he might see that this Chief was Cosmopolis Thorn. Three other chairs were ranged about the hall a little higher than the rest. As each 52 BROKEN SHACKLES man entered he saluted the Chief, then passed in succes- sion around the hall, from the first to the third of the others. Andy knew from what had filtered through his crack that the lesser three were styled the first, second, and third "Autocrats." Just what did that mean? He didn't know. Something pounded at the Chief's end, and Thorn's voice rose while conversation stopped. There seemed to be preliminaries they all passed through together, when Thorn's voice was heard again and all sat down. "Brothers of Eureka, we are here tonight to con- sider a number of matters. The first of them is suffi- ciently important to affect each one of us; and after us, our people. "Last week at your request I called upon the widow