[Illustration:  Ray Becker

Logger, American born.  Twenty-five years of age.  Studied four years for the ministry before going to work in the woods.  His father and brother are both preachers.  Becker joined the Industrial Workers of the World in 1917 and has always been a strong believer in the cause of the solidarity of Labor.  He has the zeal of a prophet and the courage of a lion.  Defended himself inside the hall with an Ivor Johnson, 38, until his ammunition was exhausted.  He surrendered to the authorities—­not the mob.]

The Human Fiend

But with the young logger who had been taken out into the night things were different.  Wesley Everest was thrown, half unconscious, into the bottom of an automobile.  The hands of the men who had dragged him there were sticky and red.  Their pant legs were sodden from rubbing against the crumpled figure at their feet.  Through the dark streets sped the three machines.  The smooth asphalt became a rough road as the suburbs were reached.  Then came a stretch of open country, with the Chehalis river bridge only a short distance ahead.  The cars lurched over the uneven road with increasing speed, their headlights playing on each other or on the darkened highway.

Wesley Everest stirred uneasily.  Raising himself slowly on one elbow he swung weakly with his free arm, striking one of his tormentors full in the face.  The other occupants immediately seized him and bound his hands and feet with rope.  It must have been the glancing blow from the fist of the logger that gave one of the gentlemen his fiendish inspiration.  Reaching in his pocket he produced a razor.  For a moment he fumbled over the now limp figure in the bottom of the car.  His companions looked on with stolid acquiescence.  Suddenly there was a piercing scream of pain.  The figure gave a convulsive shudder of agony.  After a moment Wesley Everest said in a weak voice:  “For Christ’s sake, men; shoot me—­don’t let me suffer like this.”

On the way back to Centralia, after the parade rope had done Its deadly work, the gentlemen of the razor alighted from the car in front of a certain little building.  He asked leave to wash his hands.  They were as red as a butcher’s.  Great clots of blood were adhering to his sleeves.  “That’s about the nastiest job I ever had to do,” was his casual remark as he washed himself in the cool clear water of the Washington hills.  The name of this man is known to nearly everybody in Centralia.  He is still at large.

The headlight of the foremost car was now playing on the slender steel framework of the Chehalis river bridge.  This machine crossed over and stopped, the second one reached the middle of the bridge and stopped while the third came to a halt when it had barely touched the plankwork on the near side.  The well-dressed occupants of the first and last cars alighted and proceeded at once to patrol both approaches to the bridge.