The Forbidden Trail

"They think you feel to them just like you do to a machine and it makes them sore, all the time," said the boy.

"Heavens! what do they want? Must I kiss them good morning?" exclaimed Moore.

Roger laughed. "No, but I know what they mean. I've seen you when you talked as though you owned them--and not that either. It's sort of like if you could recollect their names, you'd hate 'em."

"Shucks, Rog! You're getting beyond your depth!" said his father.

The seven o'clock whistle did not blow that hot August morning. All the neighborhood of the factory was full of lounging men with clean faces and hands. It was like Sunday. Ernest went to work in his father's store. Roger spent the morning in the office with his father. In the afternoon he circulated among the men. At first many of them resented this. Naturally enough they looked on the boy as his father's spy.

But Moore had nothing to conceal nor had the men. Roger was intelligent and thoughtful far beyond his years, and little by little the men got in the habit of debating with him the merits of the case.

Roger forgot that summer that he was a boy. Even at Saturday afternoon baseball, his mind was struggling with a problem whose ramifications staggered his immature mind.

Ole Oleson, the forge boss, talked more intelligibly, Roger thought, than any of the others. There was a bench outside the picket fence that surrounded Ole's house, and Ole's house was not a stone's throw from the forge shed. Here nearly every afternoon Ole, with some of the strike leaders, would gather, and when not throwing quoits in front of the shed, they would talk of the strike.

Roger, his heavy black hair tossed back from his face, his blue eyes thoughtful, his boyish lips compressed in the effort to understand, seldom missed a session. The strike had lasted nearly a month when he said to Ole.

"My father says that if the strike isn't over in two weeks, he's ruined."

"That's a dirty lie!" exclaimed a German named Emil.

Before Roger's ready fist could land, Ole had pulled the boy back to the bench.

"What's the good of that!" said Ole. "Emil, this kid's no liar. Don't be so free with your gab."

There was silence for a few moments. The group of men on the bench stared obstinately at the boy Roger and Roger stared at the group of factory buildings. Unpretentious buildings they were, of wood or brick, one-story and rambling. John Moore had bought in marsh land and as he slowly reclaimed it by filling with ashes from his furnaces, he as slowly added to the floor space of his factory. Roger could remember the erection of every addition, excepting the first, which was made when he was only a baby. He knew what the factory meant to John Moore and with sudden bitterness he cried, "I don't see what good it will do you to ruin my father!"