Quotation from: The Valley of the Moon

Written by: Jack London


JOBS ARE BONES; JOBS ARE BONES. The phrase was an incessant
iteration in Saxon's brain. Much as she might have wished it, she
was powerless now to withdraw from the window. It was as if she
were paralyzed. Her brain no longer worked. She sat numb,
staring, incapable of anything save seeing the rapid horror
before her eyes that flashed along like a moving picture film
gone mad. She saw Pinkertons, special police, and strikers go
down. One scab, terribly wounded, on his knees and begging for
mercy, was kicked in the face. As he sprawled backward another
striker, standing over him, fired a revolver into his chest,
quickly and deliberately, again and again, until the weapon was
empty. Another scab, backed over the pickets by a hand clutching
his throat, had his face pulped by a revolver butt. Again and
again, continually, the revolver rose and fell, and Saxon knew
the man who wielded it--Chester Johnson. She had met him at
dances and danced with him in the days before she was married. He
had always been kind and good natured. She remembered the Friday
night, after a City Hall band concert, when he had taken her and
two other girls to Tony's Tamale Grotto on Thirteenth street. And
after that they had all gone to Pabst's Cafe and drunk a glass of
beer before they went home. It was impossible that this could be
the same Chester Johnson. And as she looked, she saw the
round-bellied leader, still wedged by the neck between the
pickets, draw a revolver with his free hand, and, squinting
horribly sidewise, press the muzzle against Chester's side. She
tried to scream a warning. She did scream, and Chester looked up
and saw her. At that moment the revolver went off, and he
collapsed prone upon the body of the scab. And the bodies of
three men hung on her picket fence.

PREVIOUS GROUP HOME SITE HOME NEXT
Old Dominion University CS Dept
Designed by Joan A. Smith for the CRATE project
Created: 2007-2-22T12:35:29Z
Part of the CratePreservation Project
Change Tag: ~~ 0 ~~
Part of a series of experiments in web preservation under the direction of Michael L. Nelson, Ph.D.