Hal found himself forced to accept the decision of the labour-leaders. They had had experience, they could judge the situation. The miners would have to go back to work, and Cartwright and Alec Stone and Jeff Cotton would drive them as before! All that the rebels could do was to try to keep a secret organisation in the camp. Jerry Minetti mentioned Jack David. He had gone back this morning, without having seen the labour-leaders. So he might escape suspicion, and keep his job, and help the union work.
“How about you?” asked Hal. “I suppose you've cooked your goose.”
Jerry had never heard this phrase, but he got its meaning. “Sure thing!” said he. “Cooked him plenty!”
“Didn't you see the 'dicks' down stairs in the lobby?” inquired Hartman.
“I haven't learned to recognise them yet.”
“Well, you will, if you stay at this business. There hasn't been a minute since our office was opened that we haven't had half a dozen on the other side of the street. Every man that comes to see us is followed back to his camp and fired that same day. They've broken into my desk at night and stolen my letters and papers; they've threatened us with death a hundred times.”
“I don't see how you make any headway at all!”
“They can never stop us. They thought when they broke into my desk, they'd get a list of our organisers. But you see, I carry the lists in my head!”
“No small task, either,” put in Moylan. “Would you like to know how many organisers we have at work? Ninety-seven. And they haven't caught a single one of them!”
Hal heard him, amazed. Here was a new aspect of the labour movement! This quiet, resolute old “Dutchy,” whom you might have taken for a delicatessen-proprietor; this merry-eyed Irish boy, whom you would have expected to be escorting a lady to a firemen's ball——they were captains of an army of sappers who were undermining the towers of Peter Harrigan's fortress of greed!
Hartman suggested that Jerry might take a chance at this sort of work. He would surely be fired from North Valley, so he might as well send word to his family to come to Pedro. In this way he might save himself to work as an organiser; because it was the custom of these company “spotters” to follow a man back to his camp and there identify him. If Jerry took a train for Western City, they would be thrown off the track, and he might get into some new camp and do organising among the Italians. Jerry acce............