The Forbidden Trail | Page 9

a hired girl. Moore couldn't earn a cent without us. He's got to give us enough of what we earn him so's we can live easy as he does.'"
"He don't live easy," retorted Roger. "You ought to see him. He works harder than any of you, day and night, he never stops. My mother's always complaining that she's lost him. And if he's your age, Ole, he looks ten years older. I tell you carrying that factory is an awful load. None of you folks could run it. You haven't got the brains. Father ought to be the big earner. He's got the big brains."
"He can be the big earner," said Canute, a thin, slow speaking Dane, "if he gives us a chance to save and enough time to enjoy a little every day the sunshine and make gardens or bowl or play with our children. That's what we came to America to get and, by God, we're going to get it."
"He doesn't get it." Roger spoke with an unboyish sadness in his voice. "That factory has him body and soul. I don't see what's the use."
Again there was silence. Then Ole said, "I guess the thing that makes me hate him is how he's changed already. Look, Rog, I'm an American citizen. I can't have any man curse me like I was a slave. No money can pay for it. And one reason this strike's going to hang on till your father gives in is because he don't know how to boss men. And they all hate him."
"And envy him!" cried Roger.
"Sure," agreed Emil. "Envy him, we do. That's why we're striking."
"And supposing the factory goes out of business?" Roger asked. "You'll all have to move away or take any old job. This is the only factory in this town."
Ole laughed. "Your father's got you bluffed too, Rog."
"You'll see!" returned Roger, through his white teeth. "You'll see." And he started abruptly for home.
The first week of September slipped into the second. The night of the fourteenth, John Moore said at the supper table, "I bought the old Preble place, to-day. Traded in this place for it, so we'll have that free and clear out of the wreck."
"What do you mean?" faltered Mrs. Moore.
"What I say," he snapped. "The Russian contract has been canceled. Money never was so tight in thirty years as it is now. Wolf says he thinks there's a panic coming, and so does the bank. I can't borrow a cent more. I'm through with my fling, Alice, and I'm going back to a farm."
Roger choked a little on his tea. His mother said, unsteadily, "John dear, if going back to the farm brings you back to me, I shall thank God for the strike."
Roger's father scowled at his wife for a moment, then suddenly something, perhaps the gentleness of her voice and the sweetness of her eyes, caused him to push his chair back and going around to her side to kneel with his head against her shoulder.
Roger slipped out of the room, blowing his nose. He went into the back yard and sat scowling at the swimming pool until he heard the front door click on his father, then he went to bed.
The following day when Roger went into the office, his father's coat was hanging on the accustomed hook, but his father was not there. Vaguely alarmed, Roger started a search through the factory. His alarm proved unfounded, for he discovered his father in the little building that had been the original factory. He looked up when Roger came in.
"Look, Rog," he said. "I'd like to take this old machine up to the farm with us. We could store it somewhere. It's the first machine--the one I started business with."
Roger nodded but could not speak. Moore looked around the room.
"Well, I've had a good run for my hard work," he said, bitterly. "An old man at fifty and a worn out farm to spend my old age on."
"You've got Mother and me. And why don't you start again, Father? I'd help."
"I'm too old, Roger. I've lost my vim. We'll close the shop, to-day. A man's coming up from Chicago to buy in the machinery."
A half hour later, Moore posted a great sign on the office door. "This factory goes out of business to-day." Then with the various keys of the buildings in his pocket, he went home. Roger hung about to see how the men took the news.
By noon, the two hundred employees of the factory with many of their wives and children were gathered in the factory yard. At first they seemed cynically amused by what they called Moore's bluff. By mid-afternoon, however, after repeated assurances from Roger that his father was going to be a farmer, the crowd became surly. A strange