waggon was locking and blocking and adding to the
confusion. The
meat
waggons halted. The police were trapped. The roar at the
rear increased as the mob came on to the attack, while the vanguard
of the police charged the obstructing
waggons.
"We're in for it," Drummond remarked
coolly to Catherine.
"Yes," she nodded, with equal
coolness. "What
savages they are."
His
admiration for her doubled on itself. She was indeed his sort.
He would have been satisfied with her even if she had screamed, and
clung to him, but this - this was
magnificent. She sat in that
storm centre as
calmly as if it had been no more than a block of
carriages at the opera.
The police were struggling to clear a passage. The driver of the
coal
waggon, a big man in shirt sleeves, lighted a pipe and sat
smoking. He glanced down complacently at a captain of police who
was raving and cursing at him, and his only
acknowledgment was a
shrug of the shoulders. From the rear arose the rat-rat-tat of
clubs on heads and a pandemonium of cursing, yelling, and shouting.
A
violentaccession of noise proclaimed that the mob had broken
through and was dragging a scab from a
waggon. The police captain
reinforced from his vanguard, and the mob at the rear was repelled.
Meanwhile, window after window in the high office building on the
right had been opened, and the class-conscious clerks were raining
a
shower of office furniture down on the heads of police and scabs.
Waste-baskets, ink-bottles, paper-weights, type-writers - anything
and everything that came to hand was filling the air.
A
policeman, under orders from his captain, clambered to the lofty
seat of the coal
waggon to
arrest the driver. And the driver,
rising
leisurely and
peacefully to meet him, suddenly crumpled him
in his arms and threw him down on top of the captain. The driver
was a young giant, and when he climbed on his load and poised a
lump of coal in both hands, a
policeman, who was just scaling the
waggon from the side, let go and dropped back to earth. The
captain ordered half-a-dozen of his men to take the
waggon. The
teamster, scrambling over the load from side to side, beat them
down with huge lumps of coal.
The crowd on the
sidewalks and the teamsters on the locked
waggons
roared
encouragement and their own delight. The motorman, smashing
helmets with his controller bar, was
beaten into insensibility and
dragged from his
platform. The captain of police, beside himself
at the
repulse of his men, led the next
assault on the coal
waggon.
A score of police were swarming up the tall-sided
fortress. But
the teamster multiplied himself. At times there were six or eight
policemen rolling on the
pavement and under the
waggon. Engaged in
repulsing an attack on the rear end of his
fortress, the teamster
turned about to see the captain just in the act of stepping on to
the seat from the front end. He was still in the air and in most
unstable
equilibrium, when the teamster hurled a thirty-pound lump
of coal. It caught the captain fairly on the chest, and he went
over
backward,
striking on a wheeler's back, tumbling on to the
ground, and jamming against the rear wheel of the auto.
Catherine thought he was dead, but he picked himself up and charged
back. She reached out her gloved hand and patted the flank of the
snorting, quivering horse. But Drummond did not notice the action.
He had eyes for nothing save the battle of the coal
waggon, while
somewhere in his
complicatedpsychology, one Bill Totts was heaving
and straining in an effort to come to life. Drummond believed in
law and order and the
maintenance of the established, but this
riotous
savage within him would have none of it. Then, if ever,
did Freddie Drummond call upon his iron inhibition to save him.
But it is written that the house divided against itself must fall.
And Freddie Drummond found that he had divided all the will and
force of him with Bill Totts, and between them the entity that
constituted the pair of them was being wrenched in twain.
Freddie Drummond sat in the auto, quite
composed, alongside
Catherine Van Vorst; but looking out of Freddie Drummond's eyes was
Bill Totts, and somewhere behind those eyes, battling for the
control of their
mutual body, were Freddie Drummond the sane and
conservative sociologist, and Bill Totts, the class-conscious and
bellicose union
working man. It was Bill Totts, looking out of
those eyes, who saw the
inevitable end of the battle on the coal
waggon. He saw a
policeman gain the top of the load, a second, and
a third. They lurched clumsily on the loose
footing, but their
long riot-clubs were out and swinging. One blow caught the
teamster on the head. A second he dodged, receiving it on the
shoulder. For him the game was
plainly up. He dashed in suddenly,
clutched two policemen in his arms, and hurled himself a prisoner
to the
pavement, his hold never relaxing on his two captors.
Catherine Van Vorst was sick and faint at sight of the blood and
brutal fighting. But her qualms were vanquished by the sensational
and most
unexpectedhappening that followed. The man beside her
emitted an unearthly and un
cultured yell and rose to his feet. She
saw him spring over the front seat, leap to the broad rump of the
wheeler, and from there gain the
waggon. His onslaught was like a
whirlwind. Before the bewildered officer on the load could guess
the
errand of this conventionally clad but excited-seeming
gentleman, he was the recipient of a punch that
arched him back
through the air to the
pavement. A kick in the face led an
ascending
policeman to follow his example. A rush of three more
gained the top and locked with Bill Totts in a
gigantic clinch,
during which his scalp was opened up by a club, and coat, vest, and
half his st
arched shirt were torn from him. But the three
policemen were flung far and wide, and Bill Totts, raining down
lumps of coal, held the fort.
The captain led gallantly to the attack, but was bowled over by a
chunk of coal that burst on his head in black
baptism. The need of
the police was to break the
blockade in front before the mob could
break in at the rear, and Bill Totts' need was to hold the
waggontill the mob did break through. So the battle of the coal went on.
The crowd had recognized its
champion. "Big" Bill, as usual, had
come to the front, and Catherine Van Vorst was bewildered by the
cries of "Bill! O you Bill!" that arose on every hand. Pat
Morrissey, on his
waggon seat, was jumping and screaming in an
ecstasy, "Eat 'em, Bill! Eat 'em! Eat 'em alive!" From the
sidewalk she heard a woman's voice cry out, "Look out, Bill - front
end!" Bill took the
warning and with well-directed coal cleared
the front end of the
waggon of assailants. Catherine Van Vorst
turned her head and saw on the curb of the
sidewalk a woman with
vivid
colouring and flashing black eyes who was staring with all
her soul at the man who had been Freddie Drummond a few minutes
before.
The windows of the office building became vociferous with applause.
A fresh
shower of office chairs and filing cabinets descended. The
mob had broken through on one side the line of
waggons, and was
advancing, each segregated
policeman the centre of a fighting
group. The scabs were torn from their seats, the traces of the
horses cut, and the frightened animals put in
flight. Many
policemen crawled under the coal
waggon for safety, while the loose
horses, with here and there a
policeman on their backs or
struggling at their heads to hold them, surged across the
sidewalkopposite the jam and broke into Market Street.
Catherine Van Vorst heard the woman's voice
calling in
warning.
She was back on the curb again, and crying out -
"Beat it, Bill! Now's your time! Beat it!"
The police for the moment had been swept away. Bill Totts leaped
to the
pavement and made his way to the woman on the
sidewalk.
Catherine Van Vorst saw her throw her arms around him and kiss him
on the lips; and Catherine Van Vorst watched him
curiously as he
went on down the
sidewalk, one arm around the woman, both talking
and laughing, and he with a volubility and
abandon she could never
have dreamed possible.
The police were back again and
clearing the jam while
waiting for