Nightmare

: The Iron Heel

I had not closed my eyes the night before on the Twentieth Century, and

what of that and of my exhaustion I slept soundly. When I first awoke,

it was night. Garthwaite had not returned. I had lost my watch and had

no idea of the time. As I lay with my eyes closed, I heard the same

dull sound of distant explosions. The inferno was still raging. I crept

through the store to the front. The reflection from the sky of vast

onflagrations made the street almost as light as day. One could have

read the finest print with ease. From several blocks away came the

crackle of small hand-bombs and the churning of machine-guns, and from a

long way off came a long series of heavy explosions. I crept back to my

horse blankets and slept again.



When next I awoke, a sickly yellow light was filtering in on me. It was

dawn of the second day. I crept to the front of the store. A smoke pall,

shot through with lurid gleams, filled the sky. Down the opposite

side of the street tottered a wretched slave. One hand he held tightly

against his side, and behind him he left a bloody trail. His eyes roved

everywhere, and they were filled with apprehension and dread. Once he

looked straight across at me, and in his face was all the dumb pathos

of the wounded and hunted animal. He saw me, but there was no kinship

between us, and with him, at least, no sympathy of understanding; for

he cowered perceptibly and dragged himself on. He could expect no aid

in all God's world. He was a helot in the great hunt of helots that the

masters were making. All he could hope for, all he sought, was some hole

to crawl away in and hide like any animal. The sharp clang of a passing

ambulance at the corner gave him a start. Ambulances were not for such

as he. With a groan of pain he threw himself into a doorway. A minute

later he was out again and desperately hobbling on.



I went back to my horse blankets and waited an hour for Garthwaite. My

headache had not gone away. On the contrary, it was increasing. It was

by an effort of will only that I was able to open my eyes and look

at objects. And with the opening of my eyes and the looking came

intolerable torment. Also, a great pulse was beating in my brain. Weak

and reeling, I went out through the broken window and down the street,

seeking to escape, instinctively and gropingly, from the awful shambles.

And thereafter I lived nightmare. My memory of what happened in the

succeeding hours is the memory one would have of nightmare. Many events

are focussed sharply on my brain, but between these indelible pictures

I retain are intervals of unconsciousness. What occurred in those

intervals I know not, and never shall know.



I remember stumbling at the corner over the legs of a man. It was the

poor hunted wretch that had dragged himself past my hiding-place. How

distinctly do I remember his poor, pitiful, gnarled hands as he lay

there on the pavement--hands that were more hoof and claw than hands,

all twisted and distorted by the toil of all his days, with on the palms

a horny growth of callous a half inch thick. And as I picked myself

up and started on, I looked into the face of the thing and saw that it

still lived; for the eyes, dimly intelligent, were looking at me and

seeing me.



After that came a kindly blank. I knew nothing, saw nothing, merely

tottered on in my quest for safety. My next nightmare vision was a

quiet street of the dead. I came upon it abruptly, as a wanderer in the

country would come upon a flowing stream. Only this stream I gazed upon

did not flow. It was congealed in death. From pavement to pavement, and

covering the sidewalks, it lay there, spread out quite evenly, with

only here and there a lump or mound of bodies to break the surface. Poor

driven people of the abyss, hunted helots--they lay there as the rabbits

in California after a drive.* Up the street and down I looked. There was

no movement, no sound. The quiet buildings looked down upon the scene

from their many windows. And once, and once only, I saw an arm that

moved in that dead stream. I swear I saw it move, with a strange

writhing gesture of agony, and with it lifted a head, gory with nameless

horror, that gibbered at me and then lay down again and moved no more.



* In those days, so sparsely populated was the land that

wild animals often became pests. In California the custom

of rabbit-driving obtained. On a given day all the farmers

in a locality would assemble and sweep across the country in

converging lines, driving the rabbits by scores of thousands

into a prepared enclosure, where they were clubbed to death

by men and boys.



I remember another street, with quiet buildings on either side, and the

panic that smote me into consciousness as again I saw the people of the

abyss, but this time in a stream that flowed and came on. And then I saw

there was nothing to fear. The stream moved slowly, while from it arose

groans and lamentations, cursings, babblings of senility, hysteria, and

insanity; for these were the very young and the very old, the feeble and

the sick, the helpless and the hopeless, all the wreckage of the ghetto.

The burning of the great ghetto on the South Side had driven them forth

into the inferno of the street-fighting, and whither they wended and

whatever became of them I did not know and never learned.*



* It was long a question of debate, whether the burning of

the South Side ghetto was accidental, or whether it was done

by the Mercenaries; but it is definitely settled now that

the ghetto was fired by the Mercenaries under orders from

their chiefs.



I have faint memories of breaking a window and hiding in some shop to

escape a street mob that was pursued by soldiers. Also, a bomb burst

near me, once, in some still street, where, look as I would, up and

down, I could see no human being. But my next sharp recollection begins

with the crack of a rifle and an abrupt becoming aware that I am being

fired at by a soldier in an automobile. The shot missed, and the next

moment I was screaming and motioning the signals. My memory of riding in

the automobile is very hazy, though this ride, in turn, is broken by one

vivid picture. The crack of the rifle of the soldier sitting beside me

made me open my eyes, and I saw George Milford, whom I had known in the

Pell Street days, sinking slowly down to the sidewalk. Even as he sank

the soldier fired again, and Milford doubled in, then flung his body

out, and fell sprawling. The soldier chuckled, and the automobile sped

on.



The next I knew after that I was awakened out of a sound sleep by a man

who walked up and down close beside me. His face was drawn and strained,

and the sweat rolled down his nose from his forehead. One hand was

clutched tightly against his chest by the other hand, and blood

dripped down upon the floor as he walked. He wore the uniform of the

Mercenaries. From without, as through thick walls, came the muffled roar

of bursting bombs. I was in some building that was locked in combat with

some other building.



A surgeon came in to dress the wounded soldier, and I learned that it

was two in the afternoon. My headache was no better, and the surgeon

paused from his work long enough to give me a powerful drug that would

depress the heart and bring relief. I slept again, and the next I knew I

was on top of the building. The immediate fighting had ceased, and I

was watching the balloon attack on the fortresses. Some one had an arm

around me and I was leaning close against him. It came to me quite as a

matter of course that this was Ernest, and I found myself wondering how

he had got his hair and eyebrows so badly singed.



It was by the merest chance that we had found each other in that

terrible city. He had had no idea that I had left New York, and, coming

through the room where I lay asleep, could not at first believe that

it was I. Little more I saw of the Chicago Commune. After watching the

balloon attack, Ernest took me down into the heart of the building,

where I slept the afternoon out and the night. The third day we spent

in the building, and on the fourth, Ernest having got permission and an

automobile from the authorities, we left Chicago.



My headache was gone, but, body and soul, I was very tired. I lay back

against Ernest in the automobile, and with apathetic eyes watched the

soldiers trying to get the machine out of the city. Fighting was

still going on, but only in isolated localities. Here and there whole

districts were still in possession of the comrades, but such districts

were surrounded and guarded by heavy bodies of troops. In a hundred

segregated traps were the comrades thus held while the work of

subjugating them went on. Subjugation meant death, for no quarter was

given, and they fought heroically to the last man.*



* Numbers of the buildings held out over a week, while one

held out eleven days. Each building had to be stormed like

a fort, and the Mercenaries fought their way upward floor by

floor. It was deadly fighting. Quarter was neither given

nor taken, and in the fighting the revolutionists had the

advantage of being above. While the revolutionists were

wiped out, the loss was not one-sided. The proud Chicago

proletariat lived up to its ancient boast. For as many of

itself as were killed, it killed that many of the enemy.



Whenever we approached such localities, the guards turned us back and

sent us around. Once, the only way past two strong positions of the

comrades was through a burnt section that lay between. From either side

we could hear the rattle and roar of war, while the automobile picked

its way through smoking ruins and tottering walls. Often the streets

were blocked by mountains of debris that compelled us to go around. We

were in a labyrinth of ruin, and our progress was slow.



The stockyards (ghetto, plant, and everything) were smouldering ruins.

Far off to the right a wide smoke haze dimmed the sky,--the town of

Pullman, the soldier chauffeur told us, or what had been the town of

Pullman, for it was utterly destroyed. He had driven the machine out

there, with despatches, on the afternoon of the third day. Some of the

heaviest fighting had occurred there, he said, many of the streets being

rendered impassable by the heaps of the dead.



Swinging around the shattered walls of a building, in the stockyards

district, the automobile was stopped by a wave of dead. It was for all

the world like a wave tossed up by the sea. It was patent to us what

had happened. As the mob charged past the corner, it had been swept, at

right angles and point-blank range, by the machine-guns drawn up on the

cross street. But disaster had come to the soldiers. A chance bomb must

have exploded among them, for the mob, checked until its dead and dying

formed the wave, had white-capped and flung forward its foam of living,

fighting slaves. Soldiers and slaves lay together, torn and mangled,

around and over the wreckage of the automobiles and guns.



Ernest sprang out. A familiar pair of shoulders in a cotton shirt and a

familiar fringe of white hair had caught his eye. I did not watch him,

and it was not until he was back beside me and we were speeding on that

he said:



"It was Bishop Morehouse."



Soon we were in the green country, and I took one last glance back at

the smoke-filled sky. Faint and far came the low thud of an explosion.

Then I turned my face against Ernest's breast and wept softly for the

Cause that was lost. Ernest's arm about me was eloquent with love.



"For this time lost, dear heart," he said, "but not forever. We have

learned. To-morrow the Cause will rise again, strong with wisdom and

discipline."



The automobile drew up at a railroad station. Here we would catch a

train to New York. As we waited on the platform, three trains thundered

past, bound west to Chicago. They were crowded with ragged, unskilled

laborers, people of the abyss.



"Slave-levies for the rebuilding of Chicago," Ernest said. "You see, the

Chicago slaves are all killed."