The Forbidden Trail | Page 8

It's sort of
like if you could recollect their names, you'd hate 'em."
"Shucks, Rog! You're getting beyond your depth!" said his father.
The seven o'clock whistle did not blow that hot August morning. All
the neighborhood of the factory was full of lounging men with clean
faces and hands. It was like Sunday. Ernest went to work in his father's
store. Roger spent the morning in the office with his father. In the
afternoon he circulated among the men. At first many of them resented
this. Naturally enough they looked on the boy as his father's spy.
But Moore had nothing to conceal nor had the men. Roger was
intelligent and thoughtful far beyond his years, and little by little the
men got in the habit of debating with him the merits of the case.
Roger forgot that summer that he was a boy. Even at Saturday
afternoon baseball, his mind was struggling with a problem whose

ramifications staggered his immature mind.
Ole Oleson, the forge boss, talked more intelligibly, Roger thought,
than any of the others. There was a bench outside the picket fence that
surrounded Ole's house, and Ole's house was not a stone's throw from
the forge shed. Here nearly every afternoon Ole, with some of the strike
leaders, would gather, and when not throwing quoits in front of the
shed, they would talk of the strike.
Roger, his heavy black hair tossed back from his face, his blue eyes
thoughtful, his boyish lips compressed in the effort to understand,
seldom missed a session. The strike had lasted nearly a month when he
said to Ole.
"My father says that if the strike isn't over in two weeks, he's ruined."
"That's a dirty lie!" exclaimed a German named Emil.
Before Roger's ready fist could land, Ole had pulled the boy back to the
bench.
"What's the good of that!" said Ole. "Emil, this kid's no liar. Don't be so
free with your gab."
There was silence for a few moments. The group of men on the bench
stared obstinately at the boy Roger and Roger stared at the group of
factory buildings. Unpretentious buildings they were, of wood or brick,
one-story and rambling. John Moore had bought in marsh land and as
he slowly reclaimed it by filling with ashes from his furnaces, he as
slowly added to the floor space of his factory. Roger could remember
the erection of every addition, excepting the first, which was made
when he was only a baby. He knew what the factory meant to John
Moore and with sudden bitterness he cried,
"I don't see what good it will do you to ruin my father!"
"'Twon't do us no good," returned Ole. "He ain't going to be ruined.
Look here already, Rog. I got a girl, your age. She goes in your class.

What kind of girl is she?"
"She's a smart girl. Smart as lightning," answered Roger.
Ole nodded. "Sure she is. Now Emil, he's got two boys and three girls.
Canute, over there, you've got three little girls, ain't you? Yes--and
Oscar, you got one boy, and John Moore, he's got one boy. Now, listen
once, Rog. I tell you about myself and that tells you about all of us
here.
"I am born in Norway, the youngest of nine, and when I am ten years
my folks come to America. They come to give their children a chance
to live comfortable and not have to work like dogs all the time, just to
keep alive. All right. They come here to this town. My father gets a job
and my big brothers get a job and we all do fine. They put me into
school and my father says I can go clean through the University. Then
he dies and my brothers all marry and when I have just one year in the
High School I have to quit and go to work.
"All right! I get a job in a machine shop where a fellow named John
Moore has a machine next to mine. He's a good smart fellow. We're
good friends, many years. But he has a good education."
"He has not!" interrupted Roger, flatly. "He's never been in school
since he was twelve and he's supported himself ever since he was
twelve."
"He's educated all the same," insisted Ole.
"He taught himself everything he knows," Roger cried.
"All right! All right! Anyhow, he makes a new kind of a machine and
takes his savings and starts to make plowshares, ten a day, over in that
little brick house, there. And he works like the very devil. Why? Why,
so that little Roger Moore that's come along can have it easier than he
had. Same as I'm working for my little Olga and same as Canute