Children of the rich -- Fiction; Industrial relations -- Fiction; Married people -- Fiction
One of these, discreetly distant from the front, hurled half a brick
into the line of police. It was a vicious suggestion. Other bricks and
missiles followed, while the crowd surged forward. Suddenly the line of
patrolmen opened to let through a squad of mounted police, who charged
the mob.... It was a thing requiring courage, but a thing ordered by an
imbecile.
Horses and men plunged into that dammed river of men.... It was a scene
Bonbright could never erase from his memory, yet never could have
described. It was a nightmare, a sensation of dread rather than a scene
of fierce, implacable action.
The police drew back. The strikers hesitated.... Between them, on the
square of pavement, lay quiet, or writhing in pain, half a dozen human
forms.... Bonbright, his face colorless as those who lay below, stared
at the bodies. For this that he saw he would be held responsible by the
world....
He ran down the steps and began struggling through the mob. "Let me
through.... Let me through," he panted.
He broke through to the front, not moved by reason, but quivering with
the horror of the sight of men needlessly slain or maimed.... He must
do something. He must stop it!
Then he Was recognized. "It's young Foote," a man shouted, and snatched
at his shoulder. He shook the man off, but the cry was taken up. "It's
Foote--young Foote.... Spying again."
Men sprang upon him, but he turned furiously and hurled them back. They
must not stop him. He must not be interfered with, because he had to
put an end to this thing. The mob surged about him, striking,
threatening, so that he had to turn his face toward them, to strike out
with his fists. More than one man went down under his blows before he
could break away and run toward the police.
"See what you've done," he shouted in their faces. "This must stop." He
advanced another step, as if to force the mounted officers to retreat.
"Grab him," ordered a sergeant.
Bonbright was promptly grabbed and hauled through the line of mounted
police, to be thrown into the arms of waiting patrolmen. He fought as
strength was given him to fight, but they carried him ungently and
hurled him asprawl upon the floor of a patrol wagon, already well
occupied by arrests from the mob.
"Git 'em to the station," the driver was ordered, and off lurched the
patrol wagon.
That rapid ride brought cooling to Bonbright's head. He had made a fool
of himself. He was ashamed, humiliated, and to be humiliated is no
minor torture to a young man.
Instead of giving his name to the lieutenant on the desk he refused to
give a name, and was entered as John Doe. It was his confused thought
to save his family from publicity and disgrace.... So he knew what it
was to have barred doors shut upon him, to be alone in a square cell
whose only furnishing was a sort of bench across one end. He sank upon
this apathetically and waited for what morning should bring.
CHAPTER VII
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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