When a strike came on he was told by the
mine manager to go on back to work or move out of his house. He
thought of the garden and the work he had done and went back to his
routine of work in the mine. While he worked the miners marched up the
hill and destroyed the garden. The next day the Italian also joined
the striking miners.
In a little one-room shack on the hill lived an old woman. She lived
alone and was vilely dirty. In her house she had old broken chairs and
tables picked up about town and piled in such profusion that she could
scarcely move about. On warm days she sat in the sun before the shack
chewing on a stick that had been dipped in tobacco. Miners coming up
the hill dumped bits of bread and meat-ends out of their dinner-pails
into a box nailed to a tree by the road. These the old woman collected
and ate. When the soldiers came to town she walked along the street
jeering at them. "Pretty boys! Scabs! Dudes! Dry-goods clerks!" she
called after them as she walked by the tails of their horses. A young
man with glasses on his nose, who was mounted on a grey horse turned
and called to his comrades, "Let her alone--it's old Mother Misery
herself."
When the tall red-haired boy looked at the workers and at the old
woman who followed the soldiers he did not sympathise with them.
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