And then the Jimson weed moved back in.
But the cop was right.
A crop raised—why, that makes ownership.
Land hoed and the carrots eaten—a man might fight for land he’s taken food from.
Get him off quick!
He’ll think he owns it.
He might even die fighting for the little plot among the Jimson weeds.
Did ya see his face when we kicked them turnips out?
Why, he’d kill a fella soon’s he’d look at him.
We got to keep these here people down or they’ll take the country. They’ll take the country.
Outlanders, foreigners.
Sure, they talk the same language, but they ain’t the same.
Look how they live.
Think any of us folks’d live like that?
Hell, no!
In the evenings, squatting and talking.
And an excited man: Whyn’t twenty of us take a piece of lan’?
We got guns.
Take it an’ say,
“Put us off if you can.”
Whyn’t we do that?
They’d jus’ shoot us like rats.
Well, which’d you ruther be, dead or here?
Under groun’ or in a house all made of gunny sacks?
Which’d you ruther for your kids, dead now or dead in two years with what they call malnutrition?
Know what we et all week?
Biled nettles an’ fried dough!
Know where we got the flour for the dough?
Swep’ the floor of a boxcar.
Talking in the camps, and the deputies, fat-assed men with guns slung on fat hips, swaggering through the camps: Give ’em somepin to think about.
Got to keep ’em in line or Christ only knows what they’ll do!
Why, Jesus, they’re as dangerous as niggers in the South!
If they ever get together there ain’t nothin’ that’ll stop ’em.
Quote: In Lawrenceville a deputy sheriff evicted a squatter, and the squatter resisted, making it necessary for the officer to use force.
The eleven-year-old son of the squatter shot and killed the deputy with a .22 rifle. *
Rattlesnakes!
Don’t take chances with ’em, an’ if they argue, shoot first.
If a kid’ll kill a cop, what’ll the men do?
Thing is, get tougher’n they are.
Treat ’em rough.
Scare ’em.
What if they won’t scare?
What if they stand up and take it and shoot back?
These men were armed when they were children.
A gun is an extension of themselves.
What if they won’t scare?
What if some time an army of them marches on the land as the Lombards did in Italy, as the Germans did on Gaul and the Turks did on Byzantium?
They were land-hungry, ill-armed hordes too, and the legions could not stop them.
Slaughter and terror did not stop them.
How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children?