CHAPTER XI
THE DESERTED CAMP
Three low taps sounded on the side of Koppy's shack. The underforeman rose and, standing well back in the gloom of the interior, peered through the open door to the boss's shack beside the grade. Then he went to the window that opened on the woods, swung it open, and without looking through whistled softly. Three men moved furtively across the opening and waited.
Koppy stepped to the door and carelessly examined the sky, drew tobacco and cigarette papers and rolled himself a smoke. Then, yawning lazily, he reached back and pulled the door shut and strolled away out of sight round the corner of the shack. With a nasty laugh to the three men waiting there he led the way back through the window.
"Boss watching. Door closed—me not here."
One of the three men, a pair of golden hoops dangling from his ears, lifted a listening hand. From below broke the loud music of the orchestra.
"Boss think-a me there," he sneered. "Boss easy guy. Morani's orchestra, he say. Morani here." He struck himself dramatically on the chest.
"Not so easy maybe, boss ain't," Koppy shook a doubting head. "Big and strong and—and thick here," touching his head. "Maybe—I don't know."
From a pouch of tobacco which Koppy had thrown on the table they were rolling themselves cigarettes; it seemed to be a common stock of which the Pole, in deference to his rank, had the guardianship. One of the men struck a match thoughtfully.
"Get it out of your noodles that the boss don't know nothing. He gets there mighty spry sometimes. He's had too much of things lately to keep his eyes shut. We got to work pretty slick, I say."
Koppy straightened with a show of resentment.
"He never had the Workers before. We take him like that"—he closed one big dirty fist with a relentless movement—"and we crush him, like we crush all our bosses."
"All right, Koppy." The other puffed a ring of smoke. "I wish you're right, if it makes you sleep better. I'm in on the crushing game. Course the Workers make a difference. All the difference in the world," he added hastily, catching Koppy's glowering glance. "But we got to go smooth, I say, all the same-e. He's getting suspicious. That whiffer he belted you to-day on the saloon-sign ought to about hold you for a while. When your toes curled over that log I thought we'd be measuring you for a coffin."
The face of the underforeman went livid; a flood of foul expletives clogged his utterance.
The one who had not yet spoken broke in soothingly:
"Lefty just means he hit you hard. Why no somebody knife him?"
The four men asked each other the question with their eyes and, receiving no answer, looked confused.
"Why no you, Heppel?" demanded Koppy. "I had no time."
"Time wasn't hanging about loose when he let drive," grinned Lefty
Werner.
"Mr. Conrad took your knife, Koppy," soothed Heppel. "You couldn't."
Morani, unobserved, had drawn from some hidden part of him a long stiletto and was whetting it slowly on the palm of his hand. Fascinated, they watched.
"We were a hundred to two," reflected Koppy in a low voice; and his eyes were puzzled.
That was as far as they ever got in the solution of the eternal puzzle of how one man holds a hundred under his thumb and sleeps the sleep of the unafraid.
"Which ain't quite to the point," Werner reminded them, "with this meeting due in half an hour. In the first place, are you sure the boss ain't on?"
The Pole lifted his shoulders haughtily.
"I do it—I, the president of the Independent Workers of the World."
"All right, old cock, but what do you do?"
"The orchestra." Morani waved a satisfied hand toward the music. "It play. No come-a to meeting."
"Can't say I'm sorry," muttered Werner under his breath.
"Men—many men—they play cards where boss can see," said Heppel, mildly chiding the lack of faith in his fellow-conspirator. "Camp same, boss think. Meeting in bush same time. Everything fine."
The local president of the Workers of the World spread his hands out in modest deprecation of such applause. Werner seemed convinced.
"You'd pull the wool over the eyes of a professional burglar, Koppy, while you stole his jemmy. But what's the idea of the meeting to-night? A crash—right off the bat?"
Koppy shrugged his shoulders; everything was in the lap of the gods; inspiration was one of his holds on his followers.
"'Cause every damn one of them will do what you say," Werner assured him, "from waiting to say grace before tackling the soup, to blowing that trestle to perdition. That is, if they can do it in the dark."
"In dark—it is our way," returned the leader crisply. "Laws? Bah! For the bosses they are, like everything else. We work down here." He passed a flat hand low above the floor.
"A bit lower than that, ain't it?" said Werner, hiding a smile.
"We cut off the feet of our bosses so they fall."
"Everybody take a high seat and keep your feet out of the water!" cried the irrepressible one. "But you want to make sure you don't cut so low the bosses hop out of the way. But I guess you're right—you're always right, Koppy. We got to do things in the dark, till we get the Labour Unions at our back. But they're a glass of water when it comes to the real thing."
With an imperceptible movement Morani's knife was out again, swishing back and forward across his palm with a low hissing sound. And every eye was rivetted on it. Koppy dragged his away and spoke:
"You three, you go to boss—"
Werner gave a startled exclamation.
"Meeting for that," Koppy went on relentlessly. "We send you three to talk to boss—"
"I never was no talker, Koppy, you know that," protested Werner.
But Morani continued to whet his knife with smiling unction.
"You see boss," said Koppy, "and demand we boss ourselves—that I boss or job stops. We Workers know no boss; we please ourselves. We boss out here. If any one say no—slash!"
He struck downward with his right hand, as he would gladly strike when he had the chance. And Morani repeated the movement, only far more subtly and efficiently. Werner stumbled to his feet, his eyes on Morani's stiletto.
"Here, you butcher, I'm not a boss. Keep that sticker away from my shins. Put it up, Morani, for God's sake! You don't need practice."
Koppy motioned him roughly back to the bunk on which he had been lying.
"You three tell boss that."
"Like hell I do!" grumbled Werner, "when I'm off my nut."
"Like-a hell I do," repeated Morani fervently.
"Like hell I do," agreed Heppel solemnly.
"Like hell you all do," Koppy summed up acidly.
"And your precious skin—" began Werner.
"I order."
The unmistakable warning in the abrupt retort silenced Werner for the moment; the distant peril seemed the less ominous.
"There's no hurry," he suggested after an interval. "He thinks he's got the hole almost filled, but we can hold him up any time by pulling down some more of the trestle—"
"And I stand under!" snapped Koppy.
"Well, of course, you don't need to. You're president of The
Independent Workers of the World."
Koppy glanced at him from beneath lowering brows, but Werner assumed a look of blankest innocence as he rolled himself a fresh cigarette.
"Or," he reflected, "we might leave some one behind to blow it up after it's finished."
"Never finished," declared Koppy. "The bosses must know the Workers have spoken."
"But three of us, I notice, are to do all the speaking," Werner growled to himself. "Next thing to being President of the United States I'd be president of the Workers of the World—and the last's the safest job."
Koppy went to the window and looked through into the darkening shadows. A man slid through the undergrowth out there and disappeared. Several more drifted in and out of sight. As he looked, a half hundred passed furtively, slinking along, silent, moving back into the bush and the shadows, a procession of guilty mutes, glancing neither to right nor left, held to their course by the promise of the coming gathering.
"Come," ordered Koppy. "We go."
He lit the lamp and opened the door, and they climbed through the way they had entered. Outside they became as part of their fellow conspirators, crouching, silent, grim.
Over the bank came the sound of the orchestra, blaring with forced lung the message of the ordinary camp life. Half a dozen small groups idled on the ground before the cook-houses. A few walked lazily about the stables, and two white-aproned cooks passed from cook-house to cook-house on the night preparations for the morning meal. Outwardly everything was above suspicion.
Tressa thought so, as she stood beside her father in the doorway and looked out over the scene, while behind them Conrad read aloud the newest book to reach them. But her father was not at ease.
"Morani's giving us more than our money's worth to-night," he muttered, during a pause in the reading. "It should be made a law that every dirty bohunk had to join an orchestra, so a fellow could keep an ear on 'em when he can't see 'em. They're not likely to do much harm with a tin whistle between their lips."
"It's a beastly quiet night," he complained, when Conrad paused to light the lamp.
"I thought it was noisier down there than usual," said Tressa.
Conrad came behind them and stood without a word, when the eyes of the two men met significantly.
"Guess I'll be turning in," the younger man yawned. "It's been a bit of a hard day."
He turned back to place the book on the shelf, carefully marking the page. Tressa was there beside him, and her father was standing on the step with his back to them; but the young lover did not seem to see her. She walked with him to the top of the path leading down to his shack, but he only muttered an absent-minded good-night and left her, hastening down the path, knowing nothing of the hot tears behind.
He did not stop at his own door but passed on to the camp, all the time listening intently. The camp clamour was there, but it was forced, less general. He hurried his steps.
In the shadow of the first canvas covered walls he knew what he would find. Pushing suddenly open the door of one of the largest bunk-houses, he faced an empty room, though the lamps were lit. In another were two men instead of twenty, both lustily and unmusically blowing mouth-organs. Further on three before a door were making the noise of ten.
And then over the whole camp fell a sudden silence. In some strange way all knew he was there. Some animal instinct—or was it a dim sound from the corner of a near-by shack—made the foreman leap further into the open. A knife whistled past his shoulder and thudded into a door-sill across the way, where it stuck, quivering. Without excitement he pulled his automatic and stepped into the light from the open door. But he did not pause or turn.
The full course of the camp he paced, whistling lightly through his teeth, and every ray of light he passed glinted on the barrel of his pistol. Sheer defiance it was, but it succeeded. At the stables he turned about and retraced the crooked street.
Reaching the edge of the camp, he quickened his pace and where the shadows permitted ran swiftly up the slope to the grade. There he paused to recover his breath. In response to his warble Tressa opened the door. Conrad looked beyond her to her father and nodded.
"Almost empty," he said. "They're holding a pow-wow somewhere. Look out for squalls. Better keep the doors locked these nights, and fasten the windows so no one can get in."
"I'll lock the stable." The only menace Tressa could realise was the stealing of the horses.
Conrad crept over the grade; but he did not drop down the path to his shack. Instead he entered the bush. It was not so dark yet that he could not make good speed, once his eyes became accustomed to it. The northern bush was not thick, and the foliage failed to hide a star-filled sky of wonderful brilliance that overhangs the earth nowhere as in the Canadian West. By some bush-sense, aided by much good luck, he kept straight ahead until he arrived above the camp. A few minutes of search found him Koppy's shack. Though the door was open and the light burning, no one was there. Conrad hurried on.
Even before he was conscious of assistance from his ears he knew he was approaching a great gathering of men. He was picking his way as carefully as he knew how, but he was no woodsman; now and then a twig snapped and his heart beat nervously.
The first hint that he was heard came with the winding of an arm like a band of steel round his neck, while another held his arms to his side so that he could not fight. The hand about his neck dropped instantly to his mouth, as he braced himself against the relentless grip. Then he knew that his captor was as anxious as he not to be heard.
He was lifted from his feet, his head still in chancery and his mouth closed. He could hear the meeting breaking up, the crunching passage of the silent bohunks returning to the camp. Suddenly he was dropped, and a shadow faded noiselessly into the other shadows of night.
"Mavy!" he called in a low voice. "Mavy!"
Only two dull taps came back to him from the shadows.
CHAPTER XII
SERGEANT MAHON SKIRTS DEATH
Blue Pete, alias Peter Maverick, alias anything that seemed to suit the varied occasions of his checkered career, thrust aside the curtain of foliage covering the hiding place of his new raft. There was no reason why he should visit the raft just then; he could have no possible use for it until he had in his hands those two horses up in Torrance's stable. But ever since he had been forced to knock Koppy's pointing rifle from his hands to save Juno the half breed had been oppressed by a thousand fears.
He did not understand the bohunks—he did not want to. In his vivid life he had met most kinds of men, but the wild Continental scum that took to railway construction as its own special line of effort was beyond his experience. Hitherto he had been able to anticipate the villainies of his enemies—and in some of them he himself had revelled—but no one had yet charted the designs of creatures like Koppowski and his comrades.
Even as the foliage parted Blue Pete knew why he had looked. The raft was gone. He was not surprised, but his anger was none the less for that. With a muffled oath he let the foliage fall and dropped to the ground with the intuitive sense of the wild at evidence of an enemy.
A moment's thought raised him to his feet again, to strike recklessly back along the river's brink into the bush. Koppy and his crew, he knew, were busy about the bridge at that hour; the whole out-of-doors was his.
Blue Pete, a name once on the lips of every rancher and cowboy, sheriff and Mounted Policeman, from the Montana Badlands to Medicine Hat—once cowboy and rustler, again cowboy and Mounted Police detective, then thrown back to rustling by the blindness of a political judge—was not now the model of physical fitness of a year ago when his rifle and rope were respected over a prairie Province and State. The bullet that had brought mistaken mourning to the Police, and particularly to Sergeant Mahon, the friend for whom it was intended, had come within a hair's breadth of avenging Bilsy and Dutch Henry, the Montana rustlers who had hated him so. What he had escaped was due to his wonderful physique and to the untiring care of Mira Stanton.
With her his sole nurse and doctor, he had lain in one of their many retreats in the Cypress Hills until he was strong enough to entrust himself to the pace of the faithful Whiskers for the slow and painful journey to more expert treatment across the border. There he recovered rapidly. But Bilsy's bullet had extracted its toll. The blue-black face was darker now and more leathery, as if the blood behind were running more sluggishly. His cheeks were fallen in, and great hollows showed beneath the squinting eyes. It made him more the Indian than ever in appearance. He had lost weight and bulk, and the shoulder above the wound was an inch lower than its mate.
Time would perhaps return him his old form, as it had his strength.
But time was the very thing Blue Pete could not wait for.
Recklessly as he commenced his return along the banks of the river, instinct won; in a few steps he was moving with all the old soundlessness. Twigs and crackling leaves seemed to evade his feet; eye and ear were ever alert. Though he knew he was alone in the bush, the way of a lifetime refused to sleep within him. By a circuitous route he approached a tangle of trees that hung out from a steep projection in the rising sides of the ravine. His eyes were flitting now about at his feet, and sometimes he carefully passed a boot over marks only he could detect. Once, whistling in soft surprise, he scattered a handful of spruce needles.
Into the heart of the thickest clump of trees he disappeared. The green fell behind him, the woods was lifeless again.
In the dim light of the cave Mira knew he was worried, but he would tell her when it was good for her to know.
"It's gone," he growled, after a long silence.
In their intimate way she understood.
"Perhaps it broke loose."
He looked his surprise that she should imagine he had not satisfied himself. She came to him and laid tender hand on his arm.
"I'm sorry, Pete, for your sake. Really it doesn't matter. We could go now—"
He moved away from her, not irritably; he just could not trust himself to refuse her anything.
"Thar's them two horses yet 'fore we got 'em all back."
"Can't we buy them? They ain't worth the trouble and risk."
He shook his head doggedly.
"Not now. They're after me—again."
There was a rending sadness about it, as if some overwhelming desire had escaped him forever, some dreaded fear returned.
"But you can give up the job on the trestle any time you like. They can't touch you for that, can they?"
He had told her of the incident at the trestle, and the hatred now boiling in the breasts of the bohunks. But of the scene in Torrance's shack, of Sergeant Mahon, he had not said a word; he felt he dare not. That the Sergeant should be there oppressed and threatened him. Loving Mahon with the full strength of his wild nature, he vaguely foresaw the complications that might arise; and he wished to save Mira the worry of it as long as he could. He had no conscious thought that Mira's early infatuation for the Sergeant continued; he knew that he, halfbreed though he was, had her whole heart. The Sergeant's fancy for the prairie girl had been but the reaching out of his fine nature for the beautiful, where so little of the beautiful existed. His marriage to Mira's Eastern-trained cousin had spelled the end of that.
What the halfbreed dare not face was the discovery by the Police that he whom they thought dead was alive. He was still on the Police black-books; in spite of their affection for him, he had months of rustling—if it was rustling—to pay for.
"Got to git them two horses—somehow," he persisted. "Then we kin start all over agin, you 'n' me. The P'lice can't hev anythin' agin us, when the horses are all back whar they belong."
He searched her face anxiously. So often they had talked it over, and always neither was quite satisfied. A conflict of emotions was in her face now; her life's dream was there, her great fear.
"They shouldn't be hard for you to get," she marvelled. "Far easier than the camp stables."
"I lef 'em to the last. The boss is cuter'n a thousand bohunks. I wanted to be able to git clear away 'fore he got thinkin' too hard. . . . Las' night the stable was locked. Suthin's scared 'em."
"I don't understand why he hasn't told the Police. But I guess he knew they were stole—stolen when he bought them."
Juno lifted her head, ears pointing, and rumbled in her throat. Blue Pete grabbed the revolver he had discarded on his entry and thrust it into his belt. Then he vanished into the trees that covered the entrance.
Worming along the ground, another clump a stone's throw distant swallowed him. There in the darkness of a second cave he pressed the noses of the two horses, the familiar command to silence, and a moment later he was outside again.
Somewhere above on the hillside was a sound only he and Juno could hear. Blue Pete looked through the leaves and saw Sergeant Mahon.
The Policeman was bent over the ground. Presently he moved slowly onward, eyes ever at his feet, dropping yard by yard down the tree-lined slope. Evidently dissatisfied with what his eyes told him, he stooped at times until his face was within a few inches of the dead leaves and moss; often he rose to full height and looked away toward the camp with a puzzled frown.
Lower and lower he sank toward the river's edge.
Blue Pete glided away before him. He himself had taught this man to trail, had roused in Mahon the quick eye of suspicion that questioned every turned leaf; and now he was to pay for it. Silently he cursed the luck of things. He was satisfied no prying eye about the camp could follow his tracks, but he had not counted on the Sergeant.
Down, step by step, moved Mahon, a zig-zag course that missed nothing. Nearer and nearer he approached the cave home of the one who was watching him with fevered eyes.
Blue Pete pictured the penalty he must pay were he taken now. Another week or two and it would be different. There were still the two horses in the boss's stable before his name was clear, and the bunch down in the Cypress Hills was waiting to be returned to their rightful owners. He could not face what the law would demand of him—Mira would not live through it. Imprisonment—disgrace—death to all the hopes that had sustained them both since his recovery!
On the trail of the unsuspecting Policeman he crept, and his face was grim and gaunt.
Where the river bottom ran more level, Mahon halted and looked about with a more general interest. The halfbreed felt safer, for he had taken greater precautions nearer the caves. But there was always the chance of a mistake, none knew it better than he who had profited so often from the mistakes of others. And Mira's horse might fail them at the vital moment; he had no fear of Whiskers.
Sergeant Mahon let his eyes fall to the ground again and started. Dropping to his knees, he bent close above the spot where the halfbreed had scattered the spruce needles not an hour before. With careful breath the Policeman blew. After a time he sank back on his heels and passed a hand across his forehead. All about him he peered with piercing eyes.
Blue Pete slowly drew the revolver from his belt.
Mahon came to his feet and moved forward, bent over the tell-tale moss and half overgrown sand. He was making straight for the cave.
The arm of the halfbreed lifted. Perspiration was breaking out on his swarthy face, and his left hand opened and closed. But his teeth were gritted, and the hand that held the gun was steady as steel. At least his old friend would never know who killed him.
A short ten yards from the cluster of trees that hid the cave Mahon stopped, a perplexed, self-deprecatory twist to his face, like a man who has been dreaming. Then he edged off toward the river, carelessly, smiling reflectively. The halfbreed wriggled after him. For several minutes the Sergeant stood looking out across the water, then, shrugging his shoulders, skirted to the east and slowly climbed the bank.
Blue Pete threw himself on the ground, dark face pillowed in a shaking arm.
Mira came to him and touched his shoulder.
"I saw, Pete," she whispered huskily. "I, too, had him covered. . . .
We'll have to move again."
He looked up into the loving face, his heart thumping so fiercely that his ears drummed. Suddenly he realised how much it meant to him that now he was the only one that counted; she would have pulled the trigger rather than risk his capture by the Police.
"You knew he was here?" There was no reproach in her voice.
"I didn't want to skeer yuh," he replied weakly.
She smiled: she could read him so well.
"We must cross the river and find a place over there," she decided.
"The construction raft at the trestle will get the horses over. . . .
If the Sergeant caught only a glimpse of Whiskers he'd know."
Blue Pete laughed. "When I git through with the ole gal her own mother wudn't know her. I ain't bin in the rustlin' game all these years not to pick up a few tricks to make a woman pinto look like a blood stallion."
"But if he ever saw us—either of us."
The halfbreed spent the evening pondering on that.
CHAPTER XIII
THE VISIT OF THE INDIANS
"Tressa! Quick!"
But Tressa was too busy in the kitchen.
"Tressa Torrance. It's a free show—I wouldn't miss it. It's an epoch."
She came skipping through the door. "If it's only the trestle again—"
Torrance pointed dramatically across the trestle to the far bank. "This time it's our first callers." He turned to the pair of saddled horses tied to rings in the wall beyond the front door. "No, we're not riding to-night. We're entertaining. That is, if the local nabobs over there don't funk the trestle. I'd run the speeder over if I thought it wouldn't give them a fit. You never know what scares an Indian."
On the distant bank an Indian and his squaw were seated like statues on horses as motionless as themselves. The former, his horse seemingly on the very brink of the chasm, was leaning forward, his eyes shaded by his hand. The squaw, on higher ground, outlined against the sky, waited phlegmatically.
"Are you sure they're alive, daddy?"
"Certain. I saw Mrs. Indian's horse's tail flicker. Like to have a close-up, wouldn't you? Staring at us like that, it makes a fellow feel as if he's been stealing something of theirs and they're taking a good look in time for the scalping season."
He climbed the loose sand of the grade and waved.
The response was immediate. At a jerk of the squaw's hand her horse cantered down to where her lord had taken his stand. And for a time they sat side by side watching the distant welcome of the white man.
Suddenly the Indian's heels flew out and in, and the odd little broncho wheeled on its hind legs and swung into a wide circle. The squaw did not even look interested.
"Some rider, eh?" applauded Torrance. "If your old dad could ride like that he'd never have taken up railway building. Funny nag, that of his. Looks like a hobby horse come to life. What's he trying to tell us? Regrets he can't come? Or is it a challenge to bring my bow and arrow and settle the old feud? Anyway, it's a rattling good stunt—and I'd like to know the answer."
"I think he wants time to consider your invitation."
"By hickory, Tressa, another year and we'd have missed this. It takes only about one season to muddle up their riding with the white man's booze—or the white man's treaty money. Why don't we leave well enough alone—that is, if they'd let us build railways?"
The horse continued to gyrate, its rider performing the familiar Indian tricks—now leaning far over until his twin braids brushed the ground, now leaping off in full flight and on again as the horse came round in the circle; lying flat along the horse's side until only one leg from knee to foot was visible, leaning far over to peer at them under the horse's neck. As a finale he stood erect while the broncho dashed headlong for the bank. At the very brink it dropped back with braced legs, and the Indian, leaping gracefully backward, turned a somersault and landed on his feet.
"By hickory!" Torrance whistled through his teeth. "I know a showman would swop his whole caboodle for half an hour of that. I wonder what I'm expected to do over here to hold up my end. I want to be civil. I don't know anything that wouldn't look cheap after that. Wish I'd done mine first. Hi, you!" He was adding voice to arms. "That trestle'll bear you anyway. Trot over and shake. Bring that little beast that looks like a horse, and I'll get you the biggest audience this side of Winnipeg."
Down in the camp half a thousand bohunks were watching every move.
The Indians had dismounted. He was pointing across the trestle. His squaw seemed to hesitate.
"If I made a sound like a bottle of fire-water," grinned Torrance, "he'd beat the record."
"You're not to let them have a drop. Now remember, daddy."
"The nearest bar's too far away to waste it on an Indian, my dear. But there's methylated spirits somewhere in the stores—and you've a bottle or two of flavoring extract, haven't you? All it needs is a smell. . . . They're tackling the trestle, Tressa. Bully for you, Big Chief! You got Murphy beat a mile. Must have heard us talking about fire-water. Wonderful ears, them Indians have."
Adrian Conrad, ready for his evening visit, slipped his automatic in his pocket and hastened up the slope. He arrived as the squaw, with a nervous little run, covered the last few yards of the trestle and stamped moccasined feet on solid ground. The Indian, frightened as he plainly was, stalked stolidly on to her side. "Nothing the white man can do," he seemed to say, "will flurry me."
Torrance met them with extended hand.
"I hope my little conversation with my daughter didn't raise false hopes, Big Chief. I haven't a drop that's fit to swallow."
The Indians stared at the extended hand in silence.
"I don't know whether they shake hands in your language," explained Torrance, "but it's all the rage with us. I'm straining to show how pleased I am. Ah—how's all the little papooses? Has the hired girl kicked for another afternoon a week, and who's the latest married man to run away with another woman? That may not be wigwam gossip, but it's all we know in our set; it's all the small-talk I have."
The Indian solemnly accepted the preferred hand, studying it curiously as his own brown one shook to Torrance's welcome.
"Me spik English," he grunted.
Torrance grinned foolishly. "Good—Lord!"
"Me spik English, too," murmured the squaw sweetly.
"Well, I'm bunco'ed!" Torrance rolled his eyes helplessly. "Take a hand, Tressa. Fancy meeting a family of redskins a thousand miles from nowhere and asking what make o' car they use!"
"Both spik English," said the Indian without a smile.
Torrance groaned. "Can you smile in English? This is getting on my nerves."
The Indians looked at each other, and as if one spring worked the mechanism their faces relaxed.
"Look at that, Adrian. That's prairie manners for you. I suppose if I asked him to jump off the trestle—"
The Indian shifted about and gravely regarded the long drop. Torrance clutched his arm and led toward the shack.
"Don't you do it, Chief. I ain't worth it."
He brought chairs from the sitting room.
"I don't even know whether you sit down. I haven't a pipe that would go round, but there's a fair tobacco you're welcome to. It don't make bad chewing. Tressa's awful glad to see you. We haven't had a caller since the new curtains went up."
The Indian was not listening; his eyes were on the two horses tied beyond the door. Gathering his blanket about him, he went to them, running a hand over them with the air of a connoisseur. He stooped to their feet, his two braids, twined through and through with bits of coloured cloth, falling over his ears.
"Good!" he grunted.
"Just what I said," agreed Torrance amiably, "—of course, after I'd paid for them. Best bits o' horseflesh this side of anywhere. Broke 'em myself, so I ought to know."
"Daddy!"
"Maybe not quite broke 'em," corrected Torrance easily, "but they nearly broke me. Picked 'em from a bunch of the finest animals ever came off a ranch—"
"Daddy!"
"That was a fine lot, Tressa—and those two were the best of the bunch."
"How much?" The Indian's face was expressionless.
The contractor blinked. "You don't want to buy? I thought Indians always stole what— The worst of me is I talk too fast. You see I lost a lot of horses not long ago, and it's temporarily affected my judgment. I don't say it was Indians stole 'em—in fact I saw the guy, but it was too far to catch his pedigree. Anyway, he was dressed white. One of three got 'em—either my own men, or contractors out west, or the Indians. If I thought it was my men there'd be a new line of graves to-morrow—and I don't somehow think the contractors would risk it. It seemed safer to blame the Indians then. Now? Oh, I guess I must have been crazy. Them horses weren't stolen. They've taken a holiday to get a drink, or gone for the World's Series baseball games."
"How much?" repeated the Indian stoically.
"But you don't want horses like them, when you've a circus beast over there would make them look like a wheelbarrow without the wheel."
"How much?"
Torrance sighed. "Is that all the English teacher knew at your school? Conrad, he's making me name a price, because I don't know any other way to stop him. Indian-who-spiks-English, they cost me two hundred dollars each, and—"
"Daddy!"
"Oh, bother!" Torrance mopped his forehead. "That's the worst of bringing up a daughter too strict. A real liar hasn't half a chance. Did I say fifty dollars?"
"Fifty dollars," offered the Indian, unfolding a wallet from his blanket.
"One hundred dollars—in cold cash—out here in the bush! Say"—he walked reverently round the Indian, looking him over—"where d'you keep his scalp? I warn you I haven't ten dollars in the shack—and I'm getting bald about the crown."
"Fifty dollars!" grunted the Indian.
"I got to turn it down, old friend. They're the only saddle horses, bar the Police, within a week's journey."
"One hundred dollars."
Torrance walked reverently over to the horses and stared at them.
"I bet they're a damn sight better'n I thought."
"Two hundred each!" There was a finality about the extravagant offer that impressed Torrance.
"Big Chief," he murmured, "let's see that bank again. To tell you the truth, I paid exactly ten dollars each for them—and I couldn't rob a decent citizen. So you see the deal's off: I wouldn't take the money, and you couldn't go back on your offer."
The Indian was holding out a huge roll of bills. Torrance blinked at it and turned to Tressa.
"You can't sell, daddy. One is mine, and I'm learning to ride. But we'll give them the horses for nothing when we leave."
Torrance extended his hands helplessly. "That ends it, you see. She's boss. We can't sell, but we'll hand 'em over f.o.b. when we go—and if you've oats enough in your tribe for that red fellow I wish you'd give me your address and let me know when nobody's home."
The eyes of the Indian and his squaw met. The latter sighed. The Indian slowly thrust the wallet within his blanket. Then without another word he took her hand and they started back across the trestle.
Torrance watched them with amazement "Hi—say!"
The Indians stalked on.
"I might be able to scare up a bottle of fire-water—"
No response. Torrance sank into a chair and drew his sleeve across his forehead.
"Talkative? By hickory, they reek with it. They sure got my goat. All the squaws I ever saw before were so thick with grease, and the things that stick to it. . . . I'm beginning to feel for the squaw-man after seeing that girl."
"Wasn't she pretty?" Tressa was staring regretfully after the receding couple. "I didn't know they were so dainty—-"
"Wasn't I telling you they aren't—"
Conrad spoke for the first time: "I've seen that chap before."
"Me, too," said Torrance. "But I can't imagine not picking him out of any Indians I ever met. They don't grow 'em like him. Our fire-water, with here and there a missionary for good measure, sees to that. Oh, hello, Sergeant!" Unheard, Sergeant Mahon had come along the soft grade and was watching the Indians now almost at the other end of the trestle. "You missed the fun. Highest velocity conversation on two words ever."
The Sergeant whipped out his binoculars. He did not move again until the Indians had galloped out of sight.
"What d'you make of 'em, Sergeant?"
"Strange!" muttered the Policeman, slowly replacing the glasses.
CHAPTER XIV
THE FIGHT IN THE SHACK
Big Jim Torrance was thrilling with incipient twinges of a great triumph, though the superstitions of his kind struggled against their display. For two weeks his eager, hopeful eyes had been fixed on those twin lines of steel above the trestle, and not an atom of bend could he detect.
What if at last he had choked that insatiable maw on the river bottom!
What if his great task was nearing its end!
A timetable, against his inclination, began to form in his mind. Another week of foraging for those omniverous jaws, of bolstering up the structure of the trestle. If by that time its appetite had not revived, only the new foundations and the light task of filling in. Perhaps then he would relieve himself of half his staff; he was suddenly aware of the strain of such a lawless crew. Unexpectedly and without precedent he found himself anticipating the six months' winter rest.
His excited joy had been assuming peculiar expression. Sitting down for more than a few minutes at a time became a strain. He insisted on helping Tressa with the housework, and his interest in the books they were reading was so perfunctory that Conrad and Tressa went on to the end without bothering about his attention. Not infrequently he strolled down to the river bottom and paced up and down beneath the trestle. Again he would walk out on the sleepers above the quicksands and glory in the solidity beneath his feet.
One evening when Conrad had gone to the Police barracks to make a report on recent trifling but significant occurrences, and to complete plans for a more systematic protection of the trestle now that it was nearing completion, Torrance moved his chair to the open doorway and sat dreaming.
"You haven't locked the stable yet," Tressa reminded him, breaking a long silence.
He laughed recklessly. "What's the need? We'll be away in a month.
Big Chief gets 'em then. Funny if they were stolen. You bet the
Indian would find them."
"Don't be too sure of things, daddy. Adrian doesn't feel as comfortable as you do—or want to make yourself think you do."
He whirled about in his chair, scowling. "What do you mean—'make myself think I do'?"
She looked him steadily in the eye. "I don't believe you're as easy as you make out. The trees are thick ahead yet."
"It's you, saying things like that, makes me moody," he returned sulkily.
Tressa rose to find something in her room, and her father turned back to the out-of-doors with an impatient exclamation.
In reality he was no more easy about things than Adrian. It was the gripping anxiety of it made him struggle to convince himself. But it was not the quicksands he feared, as Tressa supposed, but the bohunks. Things were going too smoothly in bulk—the disturbing incidents were so trifling and ineffectual. Accustomed to difficulties, the absence of friction since the tragedy of the falling log was oppressive to him. It was unnatural. Koppy was too tractable, the camp too peaceful. In the idleness of those days he had time to brood over that.
But he set his face stubbornly against the fears her words aroused. He could see the trestle sound and solid as a rock. The camp lay beneath him, as quiet as a country village. Only a week or two and everything would be settled. He scoffed at his fears. As he looked out over the tumble of log and canvas, he vowed that when it was all over he would provide a bang-up feed that would send the bohunks away with one pleasant memory at least. Murphy and his engine would scurry off to Saskatoon and fetch such grub as bohunk never before tasted. It would be a finale befitting—
And just then three men topped the grade a score of yards away.
Torrance's sky suddenly darkened—Lefty Werner, Chico Morani, and Heppel, Koppy's special cronies. But he hid his concern beneath a grunt.
He had no intention of making his grunt an invitation, but the three came on without pausing, and Werner greeted him with an embarrassed "good-evening, boss." Torrance rose and stepped back into the sitting room. Some instinct made him wish to move things beyond the eyes of the camp. For a moment the men hesitated, then, pushed into the lead, Werner led the way inside.
"Now," snapped the contractor, "get it off your chests. Where's Satan himself—Koppy, I mean?"
The most intelligent of the visitors, the most capable of estimating the underlying significance of tone and inflection, was Lefty Werner. The other two, maintaining their usual expression of phlegmatic and stubborn sullenness, left the delivery of their message to him, the glibbest talker. And plainly he had taken a dislike to it. A wild and fleeting wish that civilisation were nearer, wherein to hide himself, struggled with a goading appreciation of the comforts in Torrance's shack; for Werner often of late was oppressed with the futility of his present sphere as malcontent.
His aberrant reflections were interrupted by Torrance's rising impatience.
"Here, Werner, what is it? Speak up!"
Werner removed his hat and twirled it in his hand. Twice he cleared his throat before he could bring himself to speak.
"We've been sent—sent by the general body of workmen—"
"The bohunks, you mean," drawled Torrance with deliberate insult.
"Drop the gush, Lefty. What do you want? . . . And you won't get it."
Werner turned anxious eyes on his two stolid friends for moral support. He noted Morani's hand slide to the waistband of his trousers, and a cold sweat broke out on his forehead.
"They appointed us to tell you—to tell you that the time has come"—he was stammering, his eyes fastened on the Italian's supple hand—"the time has come when we, the workers, have decided—have decided that—"
Torrance lounged round the corner of the table that separated them, but
Werner had eyes only for Morani's hidden hand.
"—have decided that we must be freed from the yoke of bondage. We demand the right to control ourselves, under our own leaders—"
He saw the wall of the room rush toward him—felt it strike him dizzy; and he lay wondering what had happened. Gradually he became aware of a great tumult about him, and he knew he was vitally concerned. His idea of fighting happened to centre in a knuckle-duster with an ugly dagger on the end of it. He drew it mechanically before his scattered wits told him where to direct it.
The tumult increased. With the roar of a bull Torrance had turned his attention to the other two. But they had taken surprisingly swift measures for self-protection, and Torrance was momentarily baffled. Morani glided behind the table, and Heppel, roused to unheard-of activity, kicked a chair before the impending peril.
Torrance stumbled over the chair and crashed into the table, smashing it flat, fortunately carrying Morani down with it. He was on his feet before Heppel's slow wits realised the opportunity. Always the contractor had handled these men with his big fists; other weapons only dignified their resistance. These two fists of his, these great muscles—they were made for a game like this.
From her room Tressa heard the entrance of the delegation but not their message. At the first blow she ran to the door and peeped through. Was it vengeance for the devastation her father had wrought in the big camp riot? But she had faith in him almost equal to his own, and she knew she would only be in the way out there. But as the fight progressed, Torrance's bull voice rising with the fury of the fray, she lifted a small automatic from a drawer and hastily examined it.
As she turned, her window was raised from the outside and some one leaped through. Instantly the pistol was covering the intruder.
"No shoot! Indian come to help."
"Father don't require it," she returned stiffly. And she did not lower the gun.
"I come by window," explained the Indian. "Camp watching. White girl stay here. Indian help—maybe kill."
A loud crash from the sitting room drove the blood from the girl's face.
"Go then—go!"
In the room beyond, Torrance was enjoying himself, though not without painful reminders that it was a real fight. Heppel had secured a table leg and was wielding it as never sledge or axe. Werner, having recovered his senses, had joined Morani and was circling the room for a chance to strike at the boss's back, in the meantime throwing chairs, books, loose parts of the stove, anything that came to his hand. A flower pot on the elbow brought a howl from Torrance, and for a moment he pulled himself together.
Bringing himself up short in the centre of the room he started out relentlessly to corner Werner, ignoring the others. The threatened man fled shrieking before him.
"Knife him, Morani! For God's sake, give it to him on the head,
Heppel!"
A bright line slid down the Italian's hand and flashed like a gleam of lightning. Torrance drew up with a shooting pain in his left arm. Heppel leaped in behind and swung the table leg with all his cruel strength.
Morani and Heppel saw a figure launch itself through the bedroom door. It swept them crashing together and shot them through the outer door before they could use their weapons. Werner leaped after them.
Torrance started to give chase, mouthing great curses. But a pair of arms encircled and held him as if he were a child. Shifting bloodshot eyes to the new foe, he looked into the face of the Indian.
"You damned redskin! You're at the bottom of this, eh?"
The Indian tightened his grip. "White man a fool. Indian save him. You chase—whole camp come. Two no fight five hundred—almost killed once trying it. The girl in there."
The last four words brought Torrance to his senses. He ceased to struggle. The Indian's hands fell away. Tressa lifted her father's left arm; blood was dripping from it.
"Sit still, daddy. Hold your arm like that till I get the water and bandages—there's still hot water, I think. It's only a scratch. Grip your arm there."
Torrance, suddenly weak at the sight of his own blood, sank into a chair, staring at the stained sleeve.
"Say, Big Chief, you're a good sport. I guess you came in time—Say!
Where's he gone?"
The window in Tressa's room rattled.
"By hickory! If that fellow don't owe me something I don't know about, he's running up a big bill against me."
CHAPTER XV
KOPPY MAKES A THREAT
Though he had emerged from a perilous situation with little damage, Torrance was nursing a keen sense of injury when Conrad returned from his visit to the Police and saw a light still burning in the shack. The foreman listened to the story with more concern than anger. The danger lay not in what the bohunks demanded—they could resist that—but in the insolent confidence that put the demand into words. Therein, was displayed a disturbing sense of power, a reckless daring to strike the boss in his most sensitive convictions. It could only mean that they were prepared to bring matters to a head without loss of time.
And the trestle was just ready for the final touches!
That the incident increased the difficulties of his own position did not enter Conrad's head. Thoughtful eyes moving from father to daughter, his first words betrayed his main anxiety.
"Tressa can leave right away for the East."
Surprise and indignation were added to the cloud of fury that twisted Torrance's face; he was speechless. Tressa herself settled the question:
"I'm not going."
"Send her out of the country for a few filthy bohunks!" sputtered her father. He spat into the sawdust box and crammed a charge of tobacco into his pipe with his uninjured hand, though the pain of holding the pipe in his left hand made him wince. "I won't recognise them by so much as a wink. They have my answer, and I imagine it was a bit convincing—"
"The Indian can't always be on hand," said Conrad stubbornly.
Torrance screwed up his eyes.
"He's getting the habit of popping up unexpectedly. I wonder what's the game. I thought I was strong, but that chap could whistle 'God Save the King' and truss me up like a partridge at the same time. His arms felt like them two trees that fell on me down Thunder Bay way. I'd hate to have him on the other side in a fight."
The practical Conrad brought him back to the point.
"And now what?"
Torrance considered a moment.
"First we'll tell the Police. I was going to fire them off the bat, but I'm too mad for that. I want to see them get a couple of years in jail. I want the law to take a hand now; I've taught them my law."
"What can the law do to them?"
The contractor eyed his foreman belligerently.
"What can it do? Don't you think coming up here and trying to rough-house me is worth a year or two? Say, you don't think it was a slapping match, or a pink tea sociable! Take a look about the room." The sarcasm of it was pleasing to his jangling nerves. "If you don't guess right the first time, take another. If you're off the track then, I'll get a doctor for you—or show you this arm of mine."
"Who started it?"
Torrance leaned forward and searched Conrad's face as if he considered him demented.
"O' course," he sneered, "you'd go into court and swear I went on the rampage and cornered them. You'd say I caught 'em at their evening devotions and smashed their crucifixes over their heads and tackled 'em with a cutlass in my teeth and two revolvers—"
"You might have a little on Morani for using a knife," Conrad agreed calmly, "but you'd have trouble finding a lawyer to take such a case. They made a request, without violence—"
"Yah, they knelt down on their marrow-bones and begged His Highness to grant them the small boon of letting them put their feet on his neck. They humbly petitioned me to kick over the trestle, pay them ten dollars a day, raise the allowance of pie, and then give them certificates of character. You'd have done it, I suppose. Only that isn't the way I've made a success of railway construction, my lad."
Conrad took it cheerfully. "Then imagine you take it to court. Have you time? It'll mean Battleford for the Police trial. And what would you win? They don't jail men even out here for defending themselves. And what would happen the trestle in the meantime?" He saw hesitation in Torrance's eyes. "Besides, I'd hate to be called to prove the sweetness of your temper and your unprovocative ways."
Torrance took it out on his pipe for three minutes. "Then off you make for the camp," he decided, "and fire them. Don't let 'em even spend the night here. If I set eyes on one of them again there'll be murder; I won't be responsible for myself if that cur Werner's smirking physog gets in front of me; and I'll punch Morani on sight, just for safety-first."
Conrad rose and went to the door, where he stood in silence a long time looking through the darkness to the camp lights.
"I'm thinking of the work," he said gravely.
"Oh!" snapped Torrance. "I'm not, of course!"
"Sometimes I question it. Werner and Morani and Heppel were sent by the bohunks. With Koppy they have the whole bunch in the hollow of their hands. We couldn't face a strike at this time of the year; we'd never get another crew now till next spring—and you couldn't stand that. . . . Don't imagine you've cowed them through their delegation. I'm willing to wager the camp never hears of the fight; it might disillusion them of a fancied power. Koppy knows better than to let them know they're licked."
"I said to fire them." Torrance spoke so calmly that Conrad searched his eyes with unaccustomed concern. Yet the foreman did not falter.
"There are other things to consider—"
The contractor raised himself to his full height and frowned down on the smaller man. "You seem to misunderstand your position, Adrian Conrad. What did I hire you for?"
"For quarter what I'm worth," replied Conrad caustically.
Torrance blinked twice, then, coldly:
"From the first of this month your pay will be four hundred a month.
Now do what you're told—or your pay stops instanter."
"Then I'll have to work for nothing," said Conrad serenely. "I'm not working for you—or you'd have been paying me four hundred for the last two years, and some one else to look after me." He examined the contractor up and down with frank disgust. "I don't know how any daughter of yours keeps me here."
Tressa came to them then and seized a hand of each. They made a pretty picture in the lighted doorway—the big, frowning father in the rear, the smaller foreman with one foot on the step, and between them this sweet girl whose whole horizon was bounded by them, holding a hand of each, now dimpling, now pouting, always pleading and certain of herself.
Down in the camp the peace of night had fallen. Weary and gorged, quieted by the evening's lounge and the music they loved, the crude off-scourings of a dozen nations had retired to their bunks and were sleeping as peacefully as if their consciences were clean. Here and there a light twinkled, but as the three in the doorway looked, they blanked out one by one. The soundless night had closed in.
Torrance moved uncomfortably. He would have yielded to anything but disobedience, and a disobedience that entailed the retention of men who had made a ridiculous demand and then attacked him when he refused it. Would it look as if he feared to discipline, as if the flash of a knife could cow him? Anything rather than knuckle down to such creatures!
"May I speak to the boss?"
A familiar voice came out of the darkness not a. yard from Conrad. They heard it with an inward start; the training of their lives had been never to exhibit alarm—it was one of the muscles whereby they controlled men like these.
"I hear what happen. I come for truth."
Torrance, at the first sound, had slipped the bandage and lowered his shirt sleeve, stained as it was. He brushed the other two aside and filled the doorway. A sudden disgust filled him lest the Pole should enter.
"You know the truth already, you skunk! You knew what would happen before it happened—or you thought you did. I guess I disappointed a few of you."
"I find Lefty with sore head and I ask why. I make them tell. My men tell when I command. He say—"
"I don't care a tinker's cuss what he say. It's what I say counts on this job."
"Did they hurt boss?" Koppy's voice was servilely anxious. "Lefty tell me Morani stab."
Torrance laughed contemptuously. He was stroking his moustache with the injured hand; now he threw both arms out and repeated the sneering laugh.
"Chico's knife is more dangerous to himself than to me." He turned back and picked up the stiletto from the table. "Here"—tossing it on the ground before the Pole—"tell him he dropped his needle in his hurry; and I guess he didn't want to come back for it. It's no use to me. Your five hundred Chicos, with all their knives and knuckle-dusters, can't come up here and give orders."
"I fire them to-night," promised Koppy.
"No, you won't." Torrance's mind was working with unusual celerity. "They got what was coming to them from my fists this time. Next time they'll need a doctor—or an undertaker. Besides, it's not your business to fire. That's all. Good-night."
"Ignace Koppowski hope young missus not frightened," came the voice from the darkness.
"Why should she be? There ain't enough men in the camp to hurt her.
If you doubt it, refer to Werner and Morani."
Koppowski coughed. "Indian strong man. Indian save your life. Godd! But he hurt my men. Indian look out. They never forget. You tell him?"
"Tell him yourself," jerked the contractor. "And I'd like to be around when you're at it. I fancy he can look after himself."
"Indian need to," said Koppy from the darkness.