“This truck’s got me,” Albert complained. “The God-damned truck’s just about two-bitted me to death.” He looked sadly ahead. His lips scarcely moved when he talked. “When I’m workin’ and I get three dollars to the good and I get set to look me up a floozy, somethin’ on this buggy busts and costs three dollars. Never fails. God damn truck’s worse’n a wife.”

Jim said earnestly, “In any good system, you’d have a good truck.”

“Yeah? In any good system I’d have a floozy. I ain’t Dakin. If Dakin’s truck could of cooked, he wouldn’t of wanted nothing else.”

At last the smile had faded from Bolter’s face. He said gravely, “The American nation has become great because everybody pitched in and helped. American labor is the best labor in the world, and the highest paid.”

London broke in angrily, “S’pose a Chink does get half a cent a day, if he can eat on it? What the hell do we care how much we get, if we got to go hungry?”

Bolter said hurriedly, “We don’t know anything about any vigilantes. But if the outraged citizens band together to keep the peace, that’s their affair. The Association knows nothing about that.” He smiled again. “Can’t you men see that if you attack our homes and our children we have to protect them? Wouldn’t you protect your own children?”

“What the hell do you think we’re doin’?” London cried. “We’re trying to protect ’em from starving. We’re usin’ the only way a workin’ stiff’s got. Don’t you go talkin’ about no children, or we’ll show you something.”

Bolter stood where he was. “I hoped you would listen to reason,” he said. “We have information that you’re being influenced by radicals, sent here by red organizations. They are misleading you, telling you lies. They only want to stir up trouble. They’re professional trouble-makers, paid to cause strikes.”

Mac stood up from his haunches. “Well, the dirty rats,” he said. “Misleadin’ American workin’ men, are they? Prob’ly gettin’ paid by Russia, don’t you think, Mr. Bolter?”

London set a match to the tin lantern and hung it on the tent pole, where it cast a pale, steady light. Mac took up a position in front of Bolter, and his muscled face broke into a derisive grin. “All right, Sonny Boy,” he said. “You been talkin’ big, but I know you been wettin’ your pants the whole time. I admit you can do all the things you say you can, but look what happens after. Your health service burned the tents in Washington. And that was one of the reasons that Hoover lost the labor vote. You called out guardsmen in ’Frisco, and damn near the whole city went over to the strikers. Y’ had to have the cops stop food from comin’ in to turn public opinion against the strike. I’m not talkin’ right an’ wrong now, mister. I’m tellin’ you what happens.” Mac stepped back a pace. “Where do you think we’re gettin’ food and blankets an’ medicine an’ money? You know damn well where we’re gettin’ ’em. Your valley’s lousy with sympathizers. Your ‘outraged citizens’ are a little bit outraged at you babies, and you know it. And you know, if you get too tough, the unions ’ll go out. Truck drivers and restaurant men and field hands, everybody. And just because you do know it, you try to throw a bluff. Well, it don’t work. This camp’s cleaner’n the lousy bunk houses you keep for us on your ranches. You come here to try to scare us, an’ it don’t work.”

“There aren’t any beginnings,” Burton said. “Nor any ends. It seems to me that man has engaged in a blind and fearful struggle out of a past he can’t remember, into a future he can’t forsee nor understand. And man has met and defeated every obstacle, every enemy except one. He cannot win over himself. How mankind hates itself.”

Jim said, “We don’t hate ourselves, we hate the invested capital that keeps us down.”

“The other side is made of men, Jim, men like you. Man hates himself. Psychologists say a man’s self-love is balanced neatly with self-hate. Mankind must be the same. We fight ourselves and we can only win by killing every man. I’m lonely, Jim. I have nothing to hate. What are you going to get out of it, Jim?”

Burton put his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know; I’m lonely, I guess. I’m awfully lonely. I’m working all alone, towards nothing. There’s some compensation for you people. I only hear heartbeats through a stethoscope. You hear them in the air.” Suddenly he leaned over and put his hand under Lisa’s chin and raised her head up and looked into her shrinking eyes. Her hand came slowly up and pulled gently at his wrist. He let go and put his hand back in his pocket.

London eyed him cautiously, as though his mind slowly circled Mac’s mind. “What do you get out of it?” he asked.

“Money, you mean? Not a damn thing.”

“Then what do you do it for?”

“Well, it’s hard to say—you know how you feel about Sam an’ all the guys that travel with you? Well, I feel that way about all the workin’ stiffs in the country.”

“Guys you don’t even know?”

“Yes, guys I don’t even know. Jim here’s just the same, just the same.”

“Sounds crazy as hell,” said London. “Sounds like a gag. An’ you don’t get no money?”

“You don’t see no Rolls-Royces around, do you?”

“But how about after?”

“After what?”

“Maybe after this is over you’ll collect.”

“There ain’t no after,” Mac said. “When this one’s done, we’ll be in another one.”

Mac lowered his voice. He moved close and put his hand on London’s knee. “Listen,” he said. “I guess we’re goin’ to lose this strike. But we raised enough hell so maybe there won’t be a strike in the cotton. Now the papers say we’re just causing trouble. But we’re getting the stiffs used to working together; getting bigger and bigger bunches working together all the time, see? It doesn’t make any difference if we lose. Here’s nearly a thousand men who’ve learned how to strike. When we get a whole slough of men working together, maybe—maybe Torgas Valley, most of it, won’t be owned by three men. Maybe a guy can get an apple for himself without going to jail for it, see? Maybe they won’t dump apples in the river to keep up the price. When guys like you and me need a apple to keep our God damn bowels open, see? You’ve got to look at the whole thing, London, not just this little strike.”

London was staring painfully at Mac’s mouth, as though he tried to see the words as they came out. “That’s kind of reva—revolution, ain’t it?”

“Sure it is. It’s a revolution against hunger and cold. The three guys that own this valley are going to raise hell to keep that land, and to keep dumping the apples to raise the price. A guy that thinks food ought to be eaten is a God damned red. D’you see that?”

London’s mouth was open. “Jesus, what a hell of a way to look at it. Don’t you guys get no pleasure?”

“Damn right,” said Mac. “More than most people do. It’s an important job. You get a hell of a drive out of something that has some meaning to it, and don’t you forget it. The thing that takes the heart out of a man is work that doesn’t lead any place. Ours is slow, but it’s all going in one direction. Christ, I stand here shooting off my face. I’ve got to go.”