Page:The Cannery Boat.pdf/138

128 trying to deceive him and he felt it a crushing blow to his pride.

“Here, there, who said you could gather that?” With a deep, powerful voice, he roared at the women who were loitering there.

“All of us, we all gather it,” answered one woman in confusion.

“Who told you you could?”

“Everyone does it, so I thought the boss has given permission,” said another.

“You liars! You’ve been scheming with your old man so’s as to make it all coke like this. That’s what you’ve been up to, eh?”

“No.”

“You liars! You try to fool me, but you can’t fool these eyes. Plotting together, and cheating me over the coal, aren’t ye?”

The women gathered together in one spot and began taking council. There was no fear in their expressions; nothing of surprise; only rancorous defiance. Some of them angrily emptied the coke they had gathered out of their baskets. “He says we’re trying to cheat him. … It seems to me it’s him that’s cheating us!” came one voice from among the women.

That was the beginning of a new unrest.

They would have put up with not being allowed to use the coke for fuel, but to be accused of scheming together, husbands and wives, this they could not stand. Wasn’t it just equivalent to calling them thieves?

They pledged themselves to make the boss pay for that.