City and town life -- Fiction; United States -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
Here is a part of the narrative that George Kirwin got from Joe
Nevison: Joe began with the coal strike at Castle Rock, Wyoming, in
1893, when the strikers massed on Flat Top Mountain and day after day
went through their drill. He told a highly dramatic story of the
stoutish little man of fifty-five, with a fat, smooth-shaven face, who
pounded that horde of angry men into some semblance of military order.
All day the little man, in his shrunken seersucker coat and greasy white
hat, would bark orders at the men, march and counter-march them, and go
through the manual of arms, backward and forward and seven hands round.
When the battle with the militia came, the strikers charged down Flat
Top and fought bravely. The little man in the seersucker coat stayed
with them, snapping orders at them, damning them, coaxing them. And when
the deputies gathered up the strikers for the trial in court two months
later, the little man was still there. He was prospecting on a
gopher-hole somewhere up in the hills, and was trying to get his wildcat
mine listed on the Salt Lake Mining Exchange. No one gave bond for the
little man in the seersucker coat, and he went to jail. He was
Balderson. He seemed to give little heed to the trial, and sat with the
strikers rather stolidly. Venire after venire of jurymen was gone
through. At last an old man wearing a Loyal Legion button went into the
jury-box. Balderson saw him; they exchanged recognising glances, and
Balderson turned scarlet and looked away quickly. He nudged an attorney
for the strikers and said: "Keep him, whatever you do."
After the evidence was all in and the attorneys were about to make their
arguments, Balderson and one of the lawyers for the strikers were alone.
"They told me to take the part about you, Balderson; you were in the
Union Army, weren't you?"
Balderson looked at the floor and said:
"Yes; but don't say anything about it."
The lawyer, who knew Balderson's record, was astonished. He had made his
whole speech up on the line that Balderson as an old soldier would
appeal to the sympathies of the jury. Over and over the lawyer pressed
Balderson to know why nothing should be said of his soldier record, and
finally in exasperation the lawyer broke out:
"Lookee here, Baldy; you're too old to get coy. I'm going to make my
speech as I've mapped it out, soldier racket and all. I guess you've
taken enough trips up Look Out Mountain to get used to the altitude by
this time."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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