“Three,” Dr. Booker said.

“They’ll need them,” said Dr. Mason.

A company of about eighty miners passed by in their blue overalls and red bandanas. They bore the bright blue banner of their local union hall, embroidered by their wives, emblazoned with two American flags and a golden eagle, hands clasped in solidarity, and the slogan, “United We Stand, Divided We Fall.” Unlike the men on the first day out of Charleston, they did not joke or call out, but trudged silently, their faces set. We had watched companies just like them pass by all day.

Within half an hour, a dead miner, a Negro shot through the head, was carried down to us. Shortly after, the first wounded men arrived.

Twenty-three

RONDAL LLOYD

THREE DAYS ON THE MOUNTAIN, AND I KNEW WE COULD BREAK through at Crooked Creek gap. Three days since, frightened and already weary from days on the march, we walked up the mountain in the quiet of the morning, no sound except our breathing and the snapping of twigs, no sound until we could see the blue sky above the ridge and the machine guns opened up on us. Three days back and forth, I scarcely slept and scarcely ate, and the briars ripped my clothes to shreds. I was everywhere, on Spruce Fork and Beech Creek and Hewitt.

Blair had the worst of it. The gun thugs waited in force at Blair, where the main road crossed. We soon decided it would be impossible to breach the defenses, and kept up a steady fire only to occupy the defenders. At Sharples I met a company of men just arrived from Pennsylvania. I sent them to the head of Hewitt, where Talcott was in charge.

Talcott and his men had taken over an abandoned mining works down holler from Crooked Creek gap. Besides his own Point Lick men, he had a company of Negroes all the way from Northfork in McDowell County. I joined him on the evening of the second day. We talked about Blair.

“The damn machine guns never stop,” I said. “The men git up the nerve to make a charge but they just git pinned down. Cant charge straight up the hill no how because of the goddamn bushes.”

Talcott spat. “Here too. Hit’s like the trenches only upside-down. Hit’s like climbing a damn wall, except they aint no place to git a toe hold.”

Above us the gunfire was more sporadic.

“They’re gitting tired,” said the man beside Talcott.

“Want to try again?” said Talcott. He waved his arm. “Come on, boys!”

We poured out of the rusting tin sheds, climbed over rotting timbers, reached a slippery pile of slate. Immediately the bullets kicked up the top of the slate pile. The man beside me fell wounded. Flying slate cut my face. The others ran back to the sheds. I followed, dragging the wounded man by the leg.