Chapter Three Rudy the Mule On October 21st, the newsmen in Boulder were focused on a concert by superstar and patriot extraordinaire John Philip Sousa. The news that miners had voted to bring the strike to the northern counties had gone ignored. By the middle of November, three weeks later, the strike could be ignored no longer. The long lines of miners who had commuted to the Columbine were now replaced by even greater crowds. The throngs of people made their way along the highway out of Lafayette, up the county road, to picket at the Columbine's perimeter fence. Amidst the chants of Solidarity, Elizabeth Beranek marches to the front of the picket line with a pile of blankets. "Listen up!" yells Beranek, "I've got blankets from church. Everyone chipped in to get you these, so take one. I don't want to hear a whimper or a whine that they're too thin. The way these strikes go, it might be over before lunch today, so at least you got a free blanket out of it." "Over before lunch?" asks Davis. "I was up all night working on my sign." Beranek looks at Davis' hand-drawn signboard, showing an arched, hissing black cat, the well-known symbol of the Wobblies. She shrugs and tells Davis, "Use it to scare rats away." Adam Bell hops off his improvised stool, an empty dynamite box. "That's what we're here to do, Mrs. Beranek, only the rats I'm after sleep in mansions, and eat off fine china." Beranek walks over to Bell. "Mister Bell, you can parade with Trotsky later. For now--" Berankek throws the blanket pile at Bell with a hearty *fwoomf* "--you can help hand out supplies." Jacques, Ortega, and Spanudakhis arrive at the gate, dressed in fresh-pressed shirts and jackets. Miners spend six days a week covered in grease and soot. Their clothes were ragged, their boots held together with leather straps. Their wives worked on their hands and knees, scrubbing floors and washing dishes. To be able to wear a suit on Sunday was a blessing. There was another reason for the suits. Every miner knew the next day of work could be the one where the roof caves in, the dynamite misfires, an enraged mule shatters their ribs, or the cage's cable snaps, sending them plummeting down into the abyss. Their wives would hear that terrible sound: three short blasts from the the mine's whistle. A miner needed a fresh suit ready at all times, since it might be the suit he got buried in. For this reason, all laundry was done on a Monday. "That was another excellent church service" says Jacques. "Not bad... for a Catholic ceremony" says Spanudakhis. "Someday I must invite you all to an Orthodox service." "Perhaps, my Greek friend," says Jacques. Ortega says nothing; he inhales the crisp air and flexes his arms. The air seemed fresher now, with the mines shut down. From the Columbine Mine, the hills descend to the county-line road, up to the hills of Lafayette, and back down to the great Boulder Valley, where all of a sudden the high peaks of the Rocky Mountains rise up, white and violet in the distance. All across the valley, and in the Carbon Valley to the north, were mines Ortega's *familia* worked at. One by one, the miners had begun to say *enough*, demanding honest pay and safety. Ortega had learned early on, as a boy in Pueblo, that a bully will take you for all that you're worth, unless you stand up and are ready to fight. It felt good to make a stand again. Bell, the old Wobbly, had said it best when he talked about the mine owners, sitting in their private clubs, clinking glasses of scotch and charting out the courses of their empires. Why was it, asked Bell, that it was okay for the owners to talk among themselves, and make plans, but the people digging the coal couldn't talk or make plans? Why did the owners who organized get the keys to the city, but the workers who organized were jailed as agitators? "A good service..." adds Eastenes, "all except for Bell over here, trying to debate the priest!" Bell tosses his last blanket to a picketer, adjusting his glasses. "I'm telling you, read the Bible. Here we have a union carpenter..." "Not again," moans Jacques. "...a man who preached compassion for all men," continues Bell. "*Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the Kingdom of Heaven!* *Woe unto you that is rich, for you have received your consolation!* The evidence is clear, comrades: Jesus was a socialist." Spanudakhis puts a giant hand on Bell's shoulder. "Mister Bell, you are a good man, and I am proud to picket with you, but that is the stupidest thing I have ever heard." Bell changes the subject. "I've heard good news from Walsenburg in the southern fields: twelve thousand miners are on strike so far." Jacques says "Maybe the mine owners will give us a fair shake this time." "As usual," says Bell, "the state's coming down hard. The police are raiding union halls. I heard they even arrested Flaming Mamie and her sister up in Delagua Canyon." "Flaming Mamie?" asks Spanudakhis. "She's a new recruit to the Wobbly cause," says Bell. "She's nineteen years old, with a passion for justice and the working man like we've never seen. When the police came to put down the protests, she held her ground against men twice her size." Bell holds his hat over his bosom and closes his eyes. "Oh, she's been stirring up absolute hell down south, a Wobbly woman after my own heart!" Bell opens his eyes to find himself face-to-face with a mule. Bell bolts back, and the men laugh as the foreman leads the mule away. "I see the foreman has a special someone in his life," says Eastenes. The foreman gives the mule's rope a tug. "Keep away from 'em, Rudy," he growls to the mule, "I don't need you gettin' ideas about class warfare or nothin'." "If it isn't Rudy, whaddaya know?" exclaims Jacques. He pats the mule's flank, and it responds with a low braying. "What's he doing out of the mine?" "One of his shoes came loose," says the foreman. "I'm sending him back down with the next cage." Mules lived in special stables far down in the coal mines. They usually came to the surface when the mines shut down in the summer, and were sent to farms. To see a mule in the daylight in winter was like seeing a kangaroo on Pikes Peak. The foreman swings an arm at the men, shooing them away. "Get back outside the gate!" he barks. "It's hard enough running this place without you worthless freeloaders mucking about." "You think a strike is easy, *jefe*?" asks Ortega. "You should try it sometime." "Or pay us a wage we can live on," adds Bell, "or dare I say, pay us with actual money, not this scrip you shamefully peddle." The crowd of picketers applauds, and when Rudy the mule lets out a hearty *hee-yaw*, the applause turns to roars of laughter. The foreman's face flushes red, and he ties the mule to a hitching post outside his office. "You want wages?" shouts the foreman as he opens the office door. "Here's a week's advance!" The foreman produces a gesture most inappropriate for a Sunday morning, and slams the door behind him. The men look on at the mule, half-blind, balding in patches, and aloof to the plight of the miners. The miners all came to respect the mules, viewing them as companions in the daily struggles of their work. Even Jacques, whose own brother was kicked to death by one, could name every mule at the Columbine, their strengths and weaknesses, and whether they preferred oats or vegetables. "Just think, *amigos*, says Ortega, "Rudy lives down in that mine, away from the wind and rain; cool in the summer, warm in the winter." "With three square meals a day," says Eastenes. "I wish the mine paid for my food," says Jacques. "The Blue Parrot in Louisville won't let you pay with scrip." It was a wellspring of gallows humor for the miners that mules really did have the better end of the deal. A mule had its lodging, food, medical care, and equipment all paid for by the mine; a miner had to pay for all of these himself. If a miner quit, got sick, or died, there were a hundred hungry miners ready to replace him. Breeding a mule, and raising it to working age, represented an sizable investment on the part of the mine company. Ortega had told his friends about a mine down by Trinidad. The foreman had felt the ground shake, and heard the steam whistle blow three times. The tunnels had been ripped apart in an explosion. Dozens of lives had been snuffed out in an instant, and wives had been widowed. Children would be shunted off into orphanages since there was now no money to raise them. The foreman sprinted out of the office, horror in his eyes, and cried out, "How many mules were killed?" The miners had howled like wild dogs when Ortega first told that story, the same laughter and macabre fraternity shared by death row inmates or soldiers in combat. According to Bell's trusty law book, it was illegal in Colorado to kill or mistreat a mule. The miner who hurt a mule was sure to never work again. Moreover, it was was illegal for a miner to even complain in public about his working conditions. Bell knew all too well that to stand on a soap box, armed only with your voice and ideas, was too great a threat to the state, and the mine companies that owned the state. To protest in public was to risk a month in the local jail, the first night spent blinded by the blood dripping from your scalp. Yes, the men had decided that no-one had it better than a mule. Bell, Ortega, Jacques, and Eastenes are laughing about the absurdity of it all when the bags come down over their heads, and are dragged by their necks into a black van that speeds away before anyone can notice they're gone.