Harvest of Fury (44 page)

Poston had died in 1902, living his last months on a small pension voted him by the Arizona legislature. So many were gone. Pete Kitchen, his ranch sold after the coming of the railroad, his fortune melted, had died in 1895; William Oury died in 1886, less than a year after defending the Camp Grant Massacre before the Society of Arizona Pioneers.

It was a new century, a new world, and copper was needed to build its machines and conduct its electricity. Fayte's partner, Colonel Greene, paid the highest wages in Sonora at his mines, but lately there'd been rumors of discontent, and as Lee Sung served dinner Fayte did what he seldom would; he aired his worries.

“Our Mexicans have always been happy with their wages till some of the Western Federation of Miners men came in and started stirring them up. Hell, they get three pesos a day—several times what they can get for ranch or other work!”

“But don't
norteamericanos
get five dollars a day, U.S. money?” asked Chris. “With a peso worth fifty cents, that means the Mexicans get less than a third of Yankee pay.”

“It's what they're worth.”

“Oh? Then how come Cruz made a coil spiral spring that kept the self-feeders behind the batteries going when your expensive American mechanic who gets paid five times as much could only turn out springs that broke in half an hour?”

“Somehow Cruz figured out that by hammering the drill steel and tempering it with fish oil, he could make forged steel, which is what springs are made of,” said Fayte. “No one gave him more credit for that than McAllen, our American mechanic.”

“But McAllen still draws his big salary, while Cruz gets four pesos a day.”

Fayte made an exasperated sound. “For top production we need Americans in key places. We can't get them without paying premium wages. Governor Izabal flatly told us early in May, with backing from Díaz, that we must lower wages by fifty centavos a day because our scale was throwing the economy out of balance and the ranchers and farmers were screaming.”

“A bad time to cut wages, just before Cinco de Mayo.” That was the great patriotic festival which celebrated the Mexican victory over the French at Puebla that had brought the collapse of Maximilian's puppet regime.

“The radicals played on it. They made a lot of inflammatory speeches and that new Marxist rag,
El Centenario
, reported them.”

“I read the text of some of the speeches. They didn't say anything that wasn't true. It's not right for foreigners to make huge profits here and pay workers next to nothing.”

Fayte's eyes narrowed. “We pay the highest wages in Mexico. We'd pay a bit more, probably, if the government permitted.”

“It's a bad government!” Trembling, Chris remembered the burning church at Tomochic, the faces of the women and children glimpsed before her world went dark.

“Díaz has got factories and railroads by encouraging foreign investments. He knows that's the only way to bring Mexico out of the dark ages.”

“It's still the dark ages for workers. They can be virtually enslaved for debt and their children inherit the burden. As for what's been done to the Yaquis, no words can describe it. Mexicans and gringos want their fertile bottomlands, so they're being killed or shipped off to slave labor in Yucatan.”

During the government's efforts to subdue the fiercely independent Yaquis, a number of Grande Sewa's and Grande Tía Juri's relatives had refuged on the Socorro or found work at the San Patricio. Others had taken rifles and gone back to hide out in the Sierra Bacatete and harass the soldiers.

Fayte shrugged. “God knows how much drill steel they've pilfered to make into machetes, knives and arrow points for war. Savages can't be allowed to raid and plunder at will.”

“The Yaquis only want to be left in peace to farm the lands their prophets and angels sang for them.”

“Your Yaqui blood is showing,” Fayte teased. Rising, he came around the big table and caressed her shoulders as he kissed her. “Come, love, let's have an early night. Colonel Greene wants me down at the Oversight mine early in the morning.”

Alarm shot through her. “Why?”

“Oh, there's talk of a strike. But the mayor's on our side, and the judge and justice of the peace. I think they'll talk sense into the men. All the same, stay out of Cananea tomorrow.”

“Can't something be done about the workers' grievances? Even if wages can't be raised, the company store could sell things cheaper, and the houses could be improved. Or—”

“The prices at the company store are lower than at any mine in Mexico,” Fayte said, jaw thrust forward. Drawing her to her feet, he put his arm about her, and as soon as they were out of Lee Sung's sight he swept her off her feet.

“I can't get enough of you,” he said huskily, burying his face in her hair as he kicked open their door and strode to the bed. “My wild little sweet one, I'll never get enough of you!”

He loved her hungrily, as if it were the first time. When by the time they lay deliciously spent and drowsy, she decided it would be best not to irritate him by bringing up the rumored strike again that night. She fell asleep in her husband's arms, feeling safe, cherished, protected.

When she woke in the morning, he was gone.

XXIII

Chris spent an uneasy morning, though she made panocha and began an herb garden in the courtyard. Usually she was glad Los Robledos was cut off from a view of Cananea by the mountains but today she wished she could see what was going on. The skies above the mines were clear, not hazed and plumed with the usual smoke from the smelter. No distant sound of trains or mule packers drifted through the quiet hot morning of the first day of June, 1906.

Fayte didn't come home at noon. When Lee Sung asked if Chris would have her meal alone, she couldn't bear it anymore, not knowing what was happening.

“Thank you, Lee Sung,” she said. “I think I'll walk toward town to meet my husband. He should be along any minute.”

Lee Sung scowled. “Mister Fayte tell missy stay here.”

“I'm just going to meet him.”

“Mister Fayte say—”

“I know what he said.”

Turning sharply from the disapproving cook, she took her straw hat from a rack behind the door. On impulse, she collected some of Sant's old clothes she sometimes rode in, and went out into the dazzling light, taking a cow trail around the mountain to save time. She walked briskly in spite of the heat. Within twenty minutes, the tall smokestacks came in view, and the two-story house of Colonel Greene, clapboard with wide porches. Chris scarcely glanced toward it.

A group of flag-carrying workers was moving toward the lumberyard. She was too far away to be certain, but the man standing in front of the closed gate gripping a big fire hose looked like George Metcalf, manager of the lumber works, and that was surely his brother beside him.

Chris couldn't hear what was said as she hurried forward, but she saw a blast of water hit the workers. They rushed the men at the gate. Rifles barked. Three workers went down, the rest surged forward. The Metcalfs lay still when the men stabbing them finally rose from their bodies.

Frozen, Chris stood on the slope while the fire and blood of Tomochic clouded her vision. Where was Fayte? Had the workers already killed him? Had he killed some of them?

Some of the workers gathered up their dead, while others set fire to the lumberyard. The sight of real flames cleared the blinding haze from Chris's eyes. The workers, carrying their dead, were moving toward the town hall. Chris kept north of them, desperately watching Greene's house. She couldn't guess at the number of strikers, but it must have been several thousand.

Greene's two autos tore through the thick crowds at unbelievable speed, scattering people in every direction, and stopped at his house. The portly, mustached colonel ran up the veranda and emerged with a rifle and several armed men at the same time that about forty company employees from the bank and store, heavily armed, made their way to the mansion, along with the water-hose cart.

Fayte was beside Greene and got into one of the autos with him while several other company men got in the other. Apparently Greene hoped to check the mob at the bridge, but by the time the vehicles got there, the crowd had already passed.

The autos spun about, careened up the street, stopped in the vacant lots in front of the Greene house. Fayte, the colonel, and the others jumped out, ranging themselves with the other company men to confront the strikers, who were now past the jail and surging up the principal street, led by a man carrying a red flag.

A company man grappled with the leader. A striker fired, Greene shot one of the leaders, and Fayte and the others opened fire. Three more strikers fell.

The mob scattered, some making for the jail. Greene signaled his men to the house.

Fayte saw Chris then. Shifting his rifle, he ran toward her, caught her wrist, and hustled her into the house, where Mary Greene, the colonel's lovely young wife, was trying to calm several hysterical American women.

Eyes a tawny blaze, Fayte rasped, “What are you doing here?”

“I—I was worried when you didn't come home.”

“So now you're where I have to worry about you on top of those damned red-flaggers!” Fayte's grasp pained her arm. “Stay inside, hear? And don't come out unless the house starts to burn. If those strikers get hold of some dynamite they could wreck the whole town.”

Greene called for volunteers to go guard the jail so the police could try to control the strikers. Fayte went with this detachment. Greene's men were well armed because the night before, warned of the strike, he'd ordered a passenger car and engine to take him to Bisbee, where he collected all the guns at the Copper Queen store—ninety-eight rifles and twenty pistols—and ammunition. Getting back to Cananea about four in the morning, he'd passed out the weapons to his most trusted employees. He'd also sent a messenger to Hermosillo, the Sonoran capital, to urge Governor Izábal to send troops.

Telegraph wires hummed messages to President Roosevelt, the Secretary of State, and the commander at Fort Huachuca. If help came, it would have to be from across the border in the United States. Mexican troops were stationed at Magdalena, as were Emilio Kosterlitzky's feared and famed
rurales
, but it would take them several days to reach Cananea. Colonel Greene phoned Walter Douglas, manager of the Copper Queen mine at Bisbee who got the Bisbee marshal to ask for volunteers.

While news of various appeals for help buzzed through the Greene mansion, shooting echoed in the streets. The strikers had broken into pawnshops and taken guns and ammunition. Some drunken American cowboys got on the roof of the hotel and fired at anything that moved, from chickens to their own countrymen.

Late that afternoon Fayte came wearily in. “Twenty more of the bastards dead and dozens in jail,” he said, gulping the coffee Chris brought him. “A train's taking the women and kids to Bisbee tonight. You'd better go.”

She stared at his haggard face, stepped to one side so that she could hold his head against her without anyone noticing. “I won't leave you.”

Stiffening, he drew away from her. “You'll do as you're told.” He wolfed down some bread and meat before he went down to the streets.

Mary Greene touched Chris's arm. “I can lend you some clothes and a suitcase, dear. It'll only be for a few days.”

“Thank you,” said Chris, choosing to avoid argument. As soon as the colonel's gentle wife moved off to comfort a sobbing young bride, Chris quietly made her way to the back of the big house and slipped out. If she were at Robledos when the refugee train left for Arizona, Fayte would probably let her stay.

Her thoughts were a welter as she made her way down the hill to the valley that led home. The smoke from the lumberyard lingered in her nostrils as the sight of men dying haunted her inner vision. The Metcalfs had been stabbed to death with the sharp, pointed ends of miners' candlesticks.

The strikers, by force of numbers, might kill all the Americans, but when the troops and
rurales
arrived, there'd be such bloody vengeance that Chris shuddered from the thought.

Cruz had miner friends, even some relations. She'd tell him what was going on, ask if he'd try to reason with the men. She found the giant Tarahumare in the smithy, hammering out a prospector's pick. Fayte swore the ones Cruz made from ⅞-inch bars of drill steel were the best to be had and would outlast any number of commercially manufactured ones.

Face broadening in a smile, the barrel-chested Indian put down his hammer, then sobered as he read her distress. “Doña Christina, what is wrong?”

She told him quickly. Before she had finished, he reached for his shirt. “I'll talk to my cousins and friends. Maybe the fighting can be stopped before anything worse happens.”

“Don't you need your rifle?”

“I'm not going to shoot anyone.”

That simplicity made the giant seem dangerously vulnerable. “Let me go with you,” Chris said.

“Doña Christina! It is not possible.”

“Not for Señora Riordan, perhaps, but—one moment, Cruz!”

It took her only a few minutes to shake out Sant's old trousers and shirt, pull them on, stuff her hair up into her hat. The clothes were baggy enough to disguise betraying curves. Cruz gave her a look of dismay when she rejoined him, but she tugged at his arm.

“Let's go!”

They went the other way around the mountain. The lumberyard was still burning. A group of armed men, still in their Sunday suits, begrimed now, some of them bloody, were making for the smelter.

“There's Jorge,” breathed Cruz. “Stay here, señora!” Striding forward, he called out, “Cousin!” just as one of Greene's autos plummeted in front of the men, blocking their way.

It all must have happened in seconds, though to Chris, watching as the setting sun glanced off rifle barrels, it seemed to happen in eternity, in a timeless moment when she tried to scream and nothing would come from her throat.