Snow on the Headlight. Cy Warman
as her husband's election to the position of Grand Master of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, and she changed the subject. Presently the door-bell sounded, so loud and piercing that the sound of it waked the baby. The man who had pulled the bell knew at once that he had made no mistake. He had noticed when he called that morning that the bell upon the door had once done service in the cab of a locomotive, and had made a note of the fact. While Mrs. Cowels hushed the baby her husband answered the bell and when Mr. Hawkins gave his name and made his wants known, Cowels told him shortly that they did not keep lodgers. He knew that, he said, and that was one of the reasons why he was so anxious to come, but Cowels, who liked to show his authority at all times, shut the door, and the stranger was not taken in.
That night when the orator was dreaming that he had been chosen Grand Master of the Brotherhood, his wife stole out of the room and put the things in Bennie's sock, and then, just to please Bennie, she put a rubber rattle in the baby's little stocking. Her husband, being a great thinker, would not consent to having his hosiery hung up, so she would wait till breakfast time and hide the gloves under his plate. Then she went over to tuck the cover in around Bennie. He was smiling—dreaming, doubtless, of red sleds and firecrackers—and his mother smiled, too, and kissed him and went back to bed.
CHAPTER FIFTH
It was a rough, raw, Chicago day. The snow came in spurts, cold and cutting from the north and the scantily dressed strikers were obliged to dance about and beat their hands to keep warm. Special mounted police were riding up and down the streets that paralleled the Burlington tracks, and ugly looking armed deputies were everywhere in evidence. The forced quiet that pervaded the opposing armies served only to increase the anxiety of the observing. Every man who had any direct interest in the contest seemed to have a chip on his shoulder.
At ten o'clock the strike was to be extended to all connecting lines, the switching yards and stock yards. When the hour arrived the switchmen threw up their caps and quit. Now the different companies made an effort to replace the strikers and trouble commenced. The deputies, who had been aching to get a whack at the strikers for countless cursings which they had received, now used their guns unmercifully upon the unprotected heads of the men, and the police, who disliked and refused to associate with the deputies, used their clubs upon all who resisted them. By eleven o'clock the whole city was in a state of riot and men bruised and bleeding were loaded into wagons and hurried away until the jails were filled with criminals, bums, deputies and strikers. The police courts were constantly grinding out justice, or decisions intended to take the place of justice. Mothers were often seen begging the magistrates to release their boys and wives praying for the pardon of their husbands. These prayers were often unanswered and the poor women were forced to return to a lonely home, to an empty cupboard and a cold hearth.
In the midst of the rioting on this wild day came Patsy Daly strolling up the track singing:
"Always together in sunshine and rain
Facing the weather atop o' th' train.
Watching the meadows move under the stars
Always together atop o' th' cars."
"Hello! there!" came from a box car.
"Hello to you," said Patsy as he turned out to see what the fellow was in for. "Now, what the divil you doin' caged up in this car?"
"I'm hidin' from the strikers," said the man, peeping cautiously out.
"Faith, and I'm one of them myself," says Patsy, "and I suppose you're after takin' my place, ye spalpeen; I have a right to swat your face for you, so I have."
"You couldn't do it if I was opposed," said the stranger opening the door.
"Oh! couldn't I? then let yourself drop to the ground till I take a little of the conceit out of you."
"No, I won't fight you," said the man, "I like your face and I want you to help me out."
"And I like your nerve; now, what's your pleasure? Have you been working in this strike?"
"I started to work this morning only to get something to eat on."
"Are you a railroad man?"
"I'm a switchman. I was foreman in the yards at Buffalo, had a scrap with the yard-master who had boasted that he would not have a switchman he couldn't curse, an' got fired."
"Did you lick him?"
"Yes."
"Good and plenty?"
"Yes."
"Go on with your story."
"Well," said the man, seating himself in the door of the car, "I started out to get work—had my card from the Union and felt sure of success. I had only been married a year, but of course I had to leave my wife in Buffalo until I got located. When I applied for work I was asked for references and I had none. I told them where I had worked; they asked me to call later, and I called, only to learn that they didn't need any more men. This performance was repeated in every town I struck, until I began to believe that I had been blacklisted. In time my money gave out. I wrote to my wife and she sent me money. When that was gone I sent for more, not stopping to think that she had to eat, too, and that I had given her but ten dollars when I left home; but she sent me money.
"Then there came a time when she could not send me anything; I could not keep up my dues in the Union, so was expelled. After that I found it hard to get passes. Lots of times I had to steal them, and finally—for the first time in my life—I stole something to eat. Say, pardner, did you ever get so hungry that the hunger cramped you like cholera morbus?"
"No."
"Then I reckon you've never stole, or what's worse, scabbed?"
"No."
"Well—I've done both, though this is the first time I've scabbed. As I was sayin' I got down so low that I had to steal, and then I thought of my wife, of how terrible it would be if she should have to steal, or maybe worse, and the thought of it drove me almost crazy. She was a pretty girl when I married her, an orphan only eighteen and I was twenty-eight. I determined to go home at once, but before I could get out of town I was arrested as a vag and sent up for sixty days. I thought at that time that my punishment was great,—that the mental and physical suffering that I endured in the workhouse was all that I could stand,—but I've seen it beaten since. At last they told me that I could go, but that I would be expected to shake the city of Chicago before the sun rose on the following day, and I did. I hung myself up on the trucks of a Pullman on the Lake Shore Limited and landed in Buffalo just before dawn. As I hurried along the old familiar streets I noticed a crowd of people standing by a narrow canal and stopped to see what the excitement was. I saw them fish the limp and lifeless form of a woman out of the muddy water and when the moonlight fell upon her face it startled me, for it was so like her face. A moment later I got near enough to see that the victim was a blonde, and my wife was brunette. Presently I came to the house where we had lived, but it was closed and dark. I aroused a number of the neighbors, but none of them knew where the little woman had gone.
"'Shure,' said an old woman who was peddling milk, 'I don't know phere she's at at all, at all. That big good-fur-nothin' man o' hern has gone along and deserted of her an' broke the darlint's heart, so 'e 'as an' the end uv it all will be that she'll be afther drownin' 'erself in the canal beyant wan uv these foine nights.'
"All through the morning I searched the place for her, but not a trace could I find. It seemed that she had dropped out of the world, utterly, and that no one had missed her. Finally I was so hungry that I begged a bite to eat and went down by the canal and fell asleep. Here a strange thing happened. I had a dreadful dream. I dreamed that I saw my wife being dragged from the dark waters of the canal. She had the same sad, sweet face, but not the same hair. I awoke in a cold sweat. I was now seized with an irresistible longing to look once more upon the face of the dead woman whom I had seen them fish from the foul waters that morning, and I set out for the morgue. I entered unnoticed and there lay the dead woman with her white hands folded upon her dead breast. She had the same sad, sweet face, but not the same hair, but it was she—it was my wife."
The vag let his head fall so that his eyes rested upon the ground. Patsy fished something from his