“Well, there wasn’t anything in particular that I wanted just then except to get out ofBuffalo quick. But I did stop to gratify my curiosity.
“‘Would you mind telling me, Captain,’ said I, ‘who you took us for?’
“The captain looked queer again, then he said, solemn, ‘We took you for body snatchers.’
“‘Body snatchers!’ I looked at Charlie, and Charlie, who was beginning to recover, looked at me.
“‘You see,’ the captain went on, ‘there’s an old building out there by the yard, and some young surgeons and medical students have been using it nights to cut up people in, and when the boys saw two well-dressed young fellows hanging around there in the middle of the night, they didn’t stop to think twice. I’m very sorry, indeed. I’ll send two of these men over to escort you to your hotel, with your permission.’
“That didn’t please me very much, but I couldn’t decline. So we started out, Charlie and I and the two coppers. But instead of going to the Swift House I steered them intothe Mansion House, and dampened things up a bit. Then I got three boxes of cigars, Havana imported. I gave one to each of the officers, and on the bottom of the third I wrote, in pencil, ‘To the Captain, with the compliments of H. L. Tiffany, of the A. & G. W., Pittsburg, Pa.’ I thought he might have reason to be interested when he got his next morning’s paper in knowing just who we were. The coppers went back, tickled to death, and Charlie and I got out into the street.
“‘Well, Hen,’ said he, very quiet, ‘what are you going to do next?’
“‘You can do what you like, Charlie,’ I said, ‘but I’m going to take the morning three o’clock on the Michigan Central for Toronto.’ And Charlie, he thought maybe he’d go with me.”
Tiffany leaned back in a glow of reminiscence, and chuckled softly. Of the others, some had pushed back their chairs, some were leaning forward on the table. All had been, for half an hour, in the remote state of NewYork with this genial railroading pirate of the old school. Now, outside, a horse whinnied. Through the desert stillness came the clanking and coughing of a distant train. They were back in the gray Southwest, perhaps facing adventures of their own.
Carhart rose, for he had work to do at the headquarters tent. Young Van took the hint, and followed his example. But the long-nosed instrument man, the fire of a pirate soul shining out through his countenance, leaned eagerly forward. “What happened then?” he asked.
“Oh, nothing much,” Tiffany responded. “What could happen? Charlie and I came back from Toronto a few days later by way of Detroit.” Then his eye lighted up again. “But I like to think,” he added, “that next morning when that captain read about the theft of ninety gondola cars right out from under the sheriff’s nose by H. L. Tiffany, of Pittsburg, Pa., he was smoking one of said H. L. Tiffany’s cigars.”
The sun was up, hot and bright. The laborers and the men of the tie squad and the iron squad were straggling back to work. The wagons were backing in alongside the cars. And halfway down the knoll stood Carhart and Flint, both in easy western costume, Flint booted and spurred, stroking the neck of his well-kept pony.
“Well, so long, Paul,” said the bridge-builder.
“Good-by,” said Carhart.
It rested with these two lean men whether an S. & W. train should enter Red Hills before October. They both felt it, standing there at the track-end, their backs to civilization, their faces to the desert.
“All right, sir.” Flint got into his saddle. “Allright, sir.” He turned toward the waiting wagon train. “Start along, boys!” he shouted in his thin voice.
Haddon galloped ahead with the order. The drivers took up their reins, and settled themselves for the long journey. Like Carhart’smen, they were a mixed lot—Mexicans, half-breeds, native Americans of a curiously military stamp, and nondescripts—but good-natured enough; and Flint, believing with Carhart in the value of good cooks, meant to keep them good-natured. One by one the whips cracked; a confusion of English, Spanish, and French cries went up; the mules plunged; the heavy wagons, laden with derricks, timber, tools, camp supplies, and the inevitable pile-driver, groaned forward; and the La Paz Bridge outfit was off.
There was about the scene a sense of enterprise, of buoyant freedom, of deeds to be done. Flint felt it, as he rode at the head of his motley cavalcade; for he was an imaginative man. Young Van, standing by the headquarters tent, felt it, for he was young. Tiffany, still at breakfast, felt it so strongly that he swore most unreasoningly at the cook. Down on the job, the humblest stake man stood motionless until Old Van, who showed no signs of feeling anything, asked him if he hadn’t hadabout enough of a sy-esta. As for Carhart, he was stirred, but his fancy did not roam far afield. From now on those things which would have it in their power to give him the deepest pleasure were the sight of gang after gang lifting cross-ties, carrying them to the grade, and dropping them into place; the sight of that growing line of stubby yellow timbers, and the sound of the rails clanking down upon them and of the rapid-fire sledges driving home the spikes.
Young Van poked his head in through the flaps.
“Well?” said the chief, looking up.
“Won’t you come down, Mr. Carhart? The boys want you to drive the first spike.”
Carhart smiled, then pushed back his chair, and strode out and down the slope to the grade.
“Stand back there, boys!” cried somebody.
Carhart caught up a sledge, swung it easily over his shoulder, and brought it down with a swing.
“There,” he cried, entering into the spirit of the thing, “there, boys! That means Red Hills or bust.”
The cheer that followed was led by the instrument man. Then Carhart, still smiling, walked back to his office. Now the work was begun.
But Old Van, the division engineer, was scowling. He wished the chief would quit stirring up these skylarking notions—onhisdivision, anyway. It took just that much longer to take it out of the men—break them so you could drive them better.
It was a month later, on a Tuesday night, and the engineers were sitting about the table in the office tent. Scribner, the last to arrive, had ridden in after dusk from mile fourteen.
For two weeks the work had dragged. Peet, back at Sherman, had been more liberal of excuses than of materials. It was always the mills back in Pennsylvania, or slow business on connecting lines, or the car famine. And it was not unnatural that the name of the superintendent should have come to stand at the front for certain very unpopular qualities. Carhart had faith in Tiffany, but the railroad’s chief engineer was one man in a discordant organization. Railroad systems are not made in a day, and the S. & W. was new, showingsquare corners where all should be polished round; developing friction between departments, and bad blood between overworked men. Thus it had been finally brought home to Paul Carhart that in order to carry his work through he must fight, not only time and the elements, but also the company in whose interest he was working.
Lately the office had received a few unmistakably vigorous messages from Carhart. Tiffany, too, had taken a hand, and had opened his mind to the Vice-president. The Vice-president had in turn talked with Peet, who explained that the materials were always sent forward as rapidly as possible, and added that certain delays had arisen from the extremely dangerous condition of Carhart’s road-bed. Meantime, not only rails and ties, but also food and water, were running short out there at the end of the track.
“What does he say now, Paul?” asked Old Van, after a long silence, during which these bronzed, dusty men sat looking at theflickering lamp or at the heaps of papers, books, and maps which covered the table.
Carhart drew a crumpled slip of paper from his pocket and tossed it across the table. Old Van spread it out, and read as follows:—
Mr. Paul Carhart: Small delay due to shortage of equipment. Supply train started this morning, however. Regret inconvenience, as by order of Vice-president every effort is being made to supply you regularly.L. W. Peet,Division Superintendent.
Mr. Paul Carhart: Small delay due to shortage of equipment. Supply train started this morning, however. Regret inconvenience, as by order of Vice-president every effort is being made to supply you regularly.
L. W. Peet,
Division Superintendent.
“Interesting, isn’t it!” said Carhart. “You notice he doesn’t say how long the train has been on the way. It may not get here for thirty-six hours yet.”
“Suppose it doesn’t,” put in Scribner, “what are we going to do with the men?”
“Keep them all grading,” said Carhart.
“But—”
“Well, what is it? This is a council of war—speak out.”
“Just this. Scraping and digging is thirstywork in this sun, and we haven’t water enough for another half day.”
“Young Van is due with water.”
“Yes, he is due, Mr. Carhart, but you told him not to come back without it, and he won’t.”
“Listen!” Outside, in the night, voices sounded, and the creaking of wagons.
“Here he is now,” said Carhart.
Into the dim light before the open tent stepped a gray figure. His face was thin and drawn; his hair, of the same dust color as his clothing, straggled down over his forehead below his broad hat. He nodded at the waiting group, threw off his hat, unslung his army canteen, and sank down exhausted on the first cot.
Old Van, himself seasoned timber and unable to recognize the limitations of the human frame, spoke impatiently, “Well, Gus, how much did you get?”
“Fourteen barrels.”
“Fourteen barrels!” The other men exchanged glances.
“Why—why—” sputtered the elder brother, “that’s not enough for the engines!”
“It’s all we can get.”
“Why didn’t you look farther?”
“You’d better look at the mules,” Young Van replied simply enough. “I had to drive them”—he fumbled at his watch—“an even eighteen hours to get back to-night.” And he added in a whimsical manner that was strange to him, “I paid two dollars a barrel, too.”
Carhart was watching him closely. “Did you have any trouble with your men, Gus?” he asked.
Young Van nodded. “A little.”
After a moment, during which his eyes were closed and his muscles relaxed, he gathered his faculties, lighted a cigarette, and rose.
“Hold on, Gus,” said Carhart. “What are you going to do?”
“Bring the barrels up by our tent here. It isn’t safe to leave them on the wagons. The men—some of them—aren’t standing it well.Some are ‘most crazy.” He interrupted himself with a short laugh. “Hanged if I blame them!”
“You’d better go to bed, Gus,” said the chief. “I’ll look after the water.”
But Young Van broke away from the restraining hand and went out.
Half a hundred laborers were grouped around the water wagons in oppressive silence. Vandervelt hardly gave them a glance.
“Dimond,” he called, “where are you?”
A man came sullenly out of the shadows.
“Take a hand here—roll these barrels in by Mr. Carhart’s tent.” A murmur spread through the group. More men were crowding up behind. But the engineer gave his orders incisively, in a voice that offered no encouragement to insubordination. “You two, there, go over to the train and fetch some skids. I want a dozen men to help Dimond—you—you—” Rapidly he told them off. “The rest of you get away from here—quick.”
“What you goin’ to do with that water?” The voice rose from the thick of the crowd. It drew neither explanation nor reproof from Young Van; but his manner, as he turned his back and, pausing only to light another cigarette, went rapidly to work, discouraged the laborers, and in groups of two and three they drifted off to their quarters.
The men worked rapidly, for Mr. Carhart’s assistant had a way of taking hold himself, lending a hand here or a shoulder there, and giving low, sharp orders which the stupidest men understood. As they rolled the barrels along the sides of the tent and stood them on end between the guy ropes Paul Carhart stood by, a rolled-up map in his hand, and watched his assistant. He took it all in—the cowed, angry silence of the men, the unfailing authority of the young engineer. No one felt the situation more keenly than Carhart, but he had set his worries aside for the moment to observe the methods of the younger man. Once he caught himself nodding with approval.And then, when he was about to turn away and resume his study at the table beneath the lantern, an odd scene took place. The work was done. Vandervelt stood wiping his forehead with a handkerchief which had darkened from white to rich gray. The laborers had gone; but Dimond remained.
“That’s all, Dimond,” said Vandervelt.
But the man lingered.
“Well, what do you want?”
“It’s about this water. The boys want to know if they ain’t to have a drink.”
“No; no more to-night,” replied Young Van.
“But—but—” Dimond hesitated.
“Wait a minute,” said Van abruptly. He entered the tent, found his canteen where he had dropped it, brought it out, and handed it to Dimond.
“This is my canteen. It’s all I have a right to give anybody. Now, shut up and get out.”
Dimond hesitated, then swung the canteen over his shoulder and disappeared without a word.
“Gus,” said Paul Carhart, quietly.
“Oh! I didn’t see you there.”
“Wasn’t that something of a gallery play?”
“No, I don’t think it was. It will show them that we are dealing squarely with them. I had a deuce of a time on the ride, and Dimond really tried, I think, to keep the men within bounds. They are children, you know,—children with whiskey throats added,—and they can’t stand it as we can.”
“Gus,” said the chief, taking the boy’s arm and drawing him toward the tent, “it’s time you got to sleep. I shall need you to-morrow.”
The other engineers were still sitting about the table, talking in low tones. Carhart rejoined them. Young Van dropped on a cot in the rear and fell asleep with his boots on.
“Old Van is telling how the pay-slips came in to-day,” said Scribner.
Carhart nodded. “Go ahead.” He had found the laborers, headed by the Mexicans, so impossibly deliberate in their work that he had planned out a system of paying by the piece. When the locomotive whistle blew at night, each man was handed a slip stating the amount due him. At the end of the week the slips were to be cashed, and to-day the first payment had been made. “Go ahead,” he repeated. “How much did it cost us?”
“‘It’s all I have a right to give anybody.’”
“‘It’s all I have a right to give anybody.’”
“About seventy-five dollars more than last week,” replied Old Van. “So that, on the whole, we got a little more work out of them. But here’s what happened. When the whistle blew and I got out my satchel, nobody came. I called to a couple of them to hurry up if they wanted their pay, but they shook their heads. Finally, just two men came up and handed in all the slips.”
“Two men!” exclaimed Carhart.
“Yes. One was the cook, Jack Flagg. He had fully two-thirds of the slips. The other was his assistant, the one they call Charlie. He had the rest. I called some of thelaborers up and asked what it meant, but they said it was all right that way.”
“So you gave them the whole pay-roll?”
“Every cent.”
Carhart frowned. “That won’t do,” he said. “A man who can clean out the camp in less than a week will breed more trouble than a water famine.”
There was little more to be said, and soon the council came to a close. Scribner went promptly to sleep. Young Van awoke, and with a mumbled “good night” staggered across after Scribner, to his sleeping tent. And then, for an hour, Paul Carhart sat alone, his elbows on the table, a profile of the line spread out before him. Outside, in the night, something stirred. He extinguished his lamp and listened. Cautious steps were approaching behind the cluster of tents. A moment more and he heard a man stumble over a peg and swear aloud.
Carhart stepped out at the rear of the tent and stood waiting. Four or five shadowyfigures slipped into view, caught sight of him, and paused. While they stood huddled together he made out a pair of broad shoulders towering above the group. There was only one such pair in the camp, and they belonged to the cook, Jack Flagg.
The silence lasted only a moment. Then, without speaking, the men broke and ran back into the darkness.
Carhart waited until the camp was silent, then he too, went in and to sleep.
But Young Van, dozing lightly and restlessly, was awakened by the noise behind the tents. For a few moments he lay still, then he got up and looked out. Down the knoll he could see a dim light, and after a little he made it out as coming from the mess tent of the laborers. Now and then a low murmur of voices floated up through the desert stillness.
Young Van folded up the legs of his cot, carried it out, laid it across two of the water barrels, and went to sleep there in the open air.
An hour later the mess tent was still lighted. Within, seated on blocks of timber around a cracker-box, four men were playing poker; and pressing about them was a score of laborers—all, in fact, who could crowd into the tent. The air was foul with cheap tobacco and with the hundred odors that cling to working clothes. The eyes of the twenty or more men were fixed feverishly on the greasy cards, and on the heaps of the day’s pay-slips. By a simple process of elimination the ownership of these slips had been narrowed down to the present players—Jack Flagg, his assistant Charlie, Dimond, and a Mexican. The silence carried a sense of strain. The occasional coarse jokes and boisterous laughter died down with strange suddenness.
“It’s no use,” said Flagg, finally, tossing the cards on the box; “they’re against us.”
The Mexican rose at this, and sullenly left the tent. Dimond, with a conscious laugh, gathered in two-thirds of the slips and pocketed them. It was an achievement to clean outJack Flagg. The remaining third went to Charlie.
Flagg leaned back, clasped his great knotted hands about one knee, and looked across at Dimond. Six feet and a third tall in his socks, hard as steel rails, he could have lifted any two of the laborers about him clear of the ground, one in each hand. The lower part of his face was half covered with his long, ill-kept mustache and the tuft of hair beneath his under lip. The blue shirt he wore had unmistakably come from a military source, but not a man there, not even Charlie—himself nearly a match for his chief in height and breadth—would have dared ask when he had been in the army, nor why or how he had come to leave it.
“Dimond,” said Flagg, “let me have one of those slips a minute.”
The nervous light left Dimond’s eyes. He threw a suspicious glance across the box; then, after a moment, he complied.
Flagg held the slip near the lantern and examined it.
“Eighty cents,” he muttered, “eighty cents—and for how much work?”
“Half a day,” a laborer replied.
“Half a day’s work, and the poor devil gets eighty cents for it!”
“He gets eighty cents! He gets nothing, you’d better say. Dimond, there, is the man that gets it.”
“That’s no matter. He lost it in fair play. But look at it—look at it!” The giant cook contemptuously turned the slip over in his hand. “That devil hounds you like niggers for five hours in the hot sun—he drives you near crazy with thirst—and then he hands you out this pretty piece of paper with ‘eighty cents’ wrote on it.”
“That’s a dollar-sixty a day. We was only getting one-fifty the old way—on time.”
“You was only getting one-fifty, was you?” There was infinite scorn in Flagg’s voice; his masterly eye swept the group. “You was getting one-fifty, and now you’re thankful to get ten cents more. Do you know what you are? You’re a pack of fools—that’s what you are!”
“‘Eighty cents,’ he muttered, ‘and for how much work?’”
“‘Eighty cents,’ he muttered, ‘and for how much work?’”
“But look here, Jack, what can we do?”
“What can you do?” Flagg paused, glanced at his vis-à-vis. From the expression of dawning intelligence on Dimond’s face it was plain that he was waking to the suggestion. The slips that he had won to-night were worth four hundred dollars to Dimond. Why should not these same bits of paper fetch five hundred or six hundred?
“What can you do?” Flagg repeated. “Oh, but you boys make me weary. It ain’t any of my business. I ain’t a laborer, and what I do gets well paid for. But when I look around at you poor fools, I can’t sit still here and let you go on like this. You ask me what you can do? Well, now, suppose we think it over a little. Here you are, four hundred of you. This man Carhart offers you one-fifty a day to come out here into the desert and dig your own graves. Why did he set that price on your lives? Because he knew you for the fools you are. Doyou think for a minute he could get laborers up there in Chicago, where he comes from, for one-fifty? Not a bit of it! Do you think he could get men in Pennsylvania, in New York State, for one-fifty? Not a bit of it! If he was building this line in New York State, he’d be paying you two dollars, two-fifty, maybe three. And he’d be glad to get you at the price. And he’d meet your representative like a gentleman, and step around lively and walk Spanish for you, if you so much as winked.”
Dimond’s eyes were flashing with excitement, though he kept them lowered to the cards. His face was flushed. Flagg saw that the seed he had planted was growing, and he swept on, working up the situation with considerable art.
“Think it over, boys, think it over. This man Carhart finds he can’t drive you fast enough at one-fifty, so what does he do? He gets up his pay-slip scheme so’s you will kill yourselves for the chance of making ten centsmore. And you stand around and let him do it—never a peep from you! Now, what’s the situation? Here’s this man, five hundred miles from nowhere; he’s got to rush the job. We know that, don’t we?”
“Yes,” muttered Dimond, with a quick breath, “we know that, all right.”
“Well, now, what about it?” Flagg looked deliberately about the eager group. “What about it? There’s the situation. Here he is, and here you are. He’s in a hurry. If he was to find out, all of a sudden, that he couldn’t drive you poor devils any farther; if he was to find out that you had just laid down and said you wouldn’t do another stroke of work on these terms, what about it? What could he do?” Flagg paused again, to let the suggestion find its mark.
“But he ain’t worrying any. He knows you for the low-spirited lot you are. So what does he do? He sends out a bunch of you and makes you ride three days to get water, and then he stacks the barrels around his tent,where he and his gang can get all they want, and tells you to go off and suck your thumbs. Much he cares about you.”
Dimond raised his eyes. “Talk plain, Jack,” he said in a low voice. “What is it? What’s the game?”
Flagg gave him a pitying glance. “You’re still asking what’s the game,” he replied, and went on half absently, “Let’s see. How much is he paying the iron squad—how much was that, now?”
“Two dollars,” cried a voice.
“Two dollars—yes, that was it; that was it. He is paying them two dollars a day, and he has set them to digging and grading along with you boys that only gets one-sixty. I happened to notice that to-day, when I was a-walking up that way. Those iron-squad boys was out with picks and shovels, a-doing the same work as the rest of you, only they was doing it for forty cents more. They ain’t common laborers, you see. There’s a difference. You couldn’t expect them to swing a pick for one-sixty a day. It would be beneath ’em. They’re sort o’ swells, you see—”
He paused. There was a long silence.
“Boys,”—it was Dimond speaking,—“boys, Jack Flagg is right. If it costs Carhart two per for the iron squad, it’s got to cost him the same for us!”
Carhart was turning the delay to some account by shutting himself up with his maps and plans and reports and figures. At ten o’clock on the following morning he heard a step without the tent, and, looking up, saw Young Vandervelt before him.
“There’s trouble up ahead, Mr. Carhart.”
“What is it?”
“The laborers have quit. They demand an increase of ten per cent in their pay.”
“All right, let them have it.”
“I’ll tell my brother. He said no, we shouldn’t give in an inch.”
“You tell him I say to let them have what they ask.”
Young Van hurried back with the order. Carhart quietly resumed the problems before him.
Old Van, when he received the chief’s message, swore roundly.
“What’s Paul thinking of!” he growled. “He ought to know that this is only the tip of the wedge. They’ll come up another ten per cent before the week’s out.”
But Old Van failed to do justice to the promptness of Jack Flagg. At three in the afternoon the demand came; and for the second time that day the scrapers lay idle, and the mules wagged their ears in lazy comfort.
“Well!” cried Old Van, sharply. “Well! It’s what I told you, isn’t it! Now, I suppose you still believe in running to Paul with the story.”
“Yes,” replied the younger brother, firmly, “of course. He’s the boss.”
“All right, sir! All right, sir!” The veteran engineer turned away in disgust as his brother started rapidly back to the camp.The laborers, meanwhile, covered with sweat and dust, tantalized by the infrequent sips of water doled out to them, lay panting in a long, irregular line on the newly turned earth.
“Well, Gus,” said Carhart, with a wry smile, at sight of the dusty figure before the tent, “are they at it again?”
“They certainly are.”
“They don’t mean to lose any time, do they? How much is it now?”
“Ten per cent more. What shall we do?”
“Give it to them.”
“All right.”
“Wait a minute, Gus. Who’s their spokesman?
“Dimond.”
“Dimond?” Carhart frowned. “Nobody else?”
“No; but the cook has been hanging around a good deal and talking with him.”
“Oh—I see. Well, that’s all. Go ahead; give them what they ask.”
Again the mules were driven at the work.Again—and throughout the day—the sullen men toiled on under the keen eye of Old Vandervelt. If he had been a driver before, he was a czar now. If he could not control the rate of pay, he could at least control the rate of work. To himself, to the younger engineers, to the men, to the mules, he was merciless. And foot by foot, rod by rod, the embankment that was to bear the track crept on into the desert. The sun beat down; the wind, when there was a wind, was scorching hot; but Old Van gave no heed. Now and again he glanced back to where the material train lay silent and useless, hoping against hope that far in the distance he might see the smoke of that other train from Sherman. Peet had said, yesterday, that it was on the way; and Old Van muttered, over and over, “D—n Peet!”
Night came finally, but not the train. Aching in body, ugly in spirit, the laborers crept under their blankets. Morning came, but no train. Carhart spent an hour on thegrade, and saw with some satisfaction that the time was not wholly lost; then he went back to the operator’s tent and opened communications with Sherman. Sherman expressed surprise that the train had not arrived; it had been long on the way, said the despatcher.
At this message, repeated to him by the operator, word for word, Carhart stood thoughtful. Then, “Shut off the despatcher. Wait—tell him Mr. Carhart is much obliged. Shut him off. Now call Paradise. Say to him—can’t you get him?”
“Yes—all right now.”
“Say—‘When did the supply train pass you on Tuesday?’—got that?”
“Yes—one minute. ‘When—did supply—train pass—you—Tuesday?’”
“Now what does he say?”
“‘Supply—train’—he says—‘passed—here Wednesday—two—P.M.—west-bound.’ There, you see, it didn’t leave on Tuesday at all. It’s only a few hours to Paradise from Sherman.”
Carhart had Peet’s message still crumpled in his pocket. He straightened it out and read it again. “All right,” he said to the operator, “that will do.” And as he walked slowly and thoughtfully out into the blazing sunlight he added to himself: “So, Mr. Peet, that’s the sort you are, is it? I think we begin to understand each other.”
“Paul!” It was the gruff voice of Old Vandervelt, low and charged with anger.
“Yes—what?”
“What is it you mean to do with these laborers?”
“Build the line.”
“Well, I’ve done what I could. They’ve walked out again.”
“Another ten per cent?”
“Another ten per cent.”
“Let’s see—we’ve raised them twenty per cent since yesterday morning, haven’t we?”
“You have—yes.”
“And that ought to be about enough, don’t you think?”
“If you want my opinion,—yes.”
“Now look here, Van. You go back and bring them all up here by the train. Tell them Mr. Carhart wants to talk to them.”
Vandervelt stared at his chief in downright bewilderment. Then he turned to obey the order; and as he walked away Carhart caught the muttered words, “Organize a debating society, eh? Well, that’s the one fool thing left to do!”
But the men did not take it in just this way; in fact, they did not know how to take it. They hesitated, and looked about for counsel. Even Dimond was disturbed. The boss had a quiet, highly effective way of saying and doing precisely what he meant to say and do. Dimond was not certain of his own ability to stand directly between the men and Paul Carhart. There was something about the cool way in which they were ordered before him that was—well, businesslike. He turned and glanced at Flagg. The cook scowled and motioned him forward, and sothe dirty, thirsty regiment moved uncertainly back toward the train, and formed a wide semicircle before the boss.
Carhart had taken his position by a pile of odds and ends of lumber that lay beside the track. He awaited them quietly, the only man among the hundreds there who appeared unconscious of the excitement in the air. The elder Vandervelt stood apart, scowling at the performance. The younger scented danger, and, climbing up on the train, walked back over the empty flat-cars to a position directly behind his chief. There he sat down, his legs swinging over the side of the car.
Carhart reached up for his spectacles, deliberately breathed on them, wiped them, and replaced them. Then he gave the regiment a slow, inquiring look.
“Have you men authorized somebody to speak for you?” he said in a voice which, though it was not loud, was heard distinctly by every man there.
There was a moment’s hesitation; thenthe laborers, or those who were not studying the ground, looked at Dimond.
The telegraph operator stepped out of his little tent, and stood looking at the scene with startled eyes. Up ahead, the iron squad, uncertain whether to continue their work, had paused, and now they were gazing back. As the seconds slipped away their exclamations of astonishment died out. All eyes were fixed on the group in the centre of the semicircle.
For at this critical moment, there was, it seemed, a hitch. Dimond’s broad hat was pulled down until it half concealed his eyes. He stood motionless. At his elbow was Jack Flagg, muttering orders that the nominal leader did not seem to hear.
“Flagg, step out here!”
It was Carhart speaking, in the same quiet, distinct manner. The sound of his voice broke the tension. The men all looked up, even the nerveless Dimond. To Young Van they were oddly like a room full of schoolboys as they stood silently waiting for Flagg to obey.The giant cook himself was very like a schoolboy, as he glanced uneasily around, caught no sign of fight in the obedient eyes about him, sought counsel in the ground, the sky, the engines standing on the track, then finally slouched forward.
Young Van caught himself on the verge of laughing out. He saw Flagg advance a way and pause. Carhart waited. Flagg took a few more steps, then paused again, with the look of a man who feels that he has been bullied into a false position, yet cannot hit upon the way out.
“Well,” he said, glowering down on the figure of the engineer in charge—and very thin and short Carhart looked before him—“well, what do you want of me?”
For reply Carhart coolly looked him over. Then he snatched up a piece of scantling, whirled it once around his head, and caught Jack Flagg squarely on his deep, well-muscled chest. The cook staggered back, swung his arms wildly to recover his balance, failed,and fell flat, striking on the back of his head.
But he was up in an instant, and he started forward, swearing copiously and reaching for his hip pocket.
Young Van saw the motion. He knew that Paul Carhart seldom carried a weapon, and he felt that the safety of them all lay with himself. Accordingly he leaped to the ground, ran to the side of his chief, whipped out a revolver, and levelled it at Jack Flagg.
“Hands up!” he cried. “Hands up!”
“Gus,” cried Carhart, in a disgusted voice, “put that thing up!”
Young Van, crestfallen, hesitated; then dropped his arm.
“Now, Flagg,” said the chief, tossing the scantling to one side, “you clear out. You’d better do it fast, or the men’ll finish where I left off.”
The cook glanced behind him, and his eyes flitted about the semicircle from face to face. He was keen enough to take in the situation,and in a moment he had ducked under the couplers between two cars and disappeared.
“Well,” exclaimed Young Van, pocketing his revolver, “it didn’t take you long to wind that up, Mr. Carhart.”
“To wind it up?” Carhart repeated, turning with a queer expression toward his young assistant. “To begin it, you’d better say.” Then he composed his features and faced the laborers. “Get back to your work,” he said.
Half an hour later Scribner, who was frequently back on the first division during these dragging days, was informed that Mr. Carhart wished to see him at once. Walking back to the engineers’ tent he found the chief at his table.
“You wanted me, Mr. Carhart?”
“Oh,”—the chief looked up—“Yes, Harry, we’ve got to get away from this absolute dependence on that man Peet. I want you to ride up ahead and bore for water. You can probably start inside of an hour. I’m putting it in your hands. Take what men, tools, and wagons you need—but find water.”
With a brief “All right, Mr. Carhart,” Scribner left the tent and set about the necessary arrangements. Carhart, this matter disposed of, called a passing laborer, and asked him to tell Charlie that he was wanted at headquarters.
The assistant cook—huge, raw-boned, with a good-natured and not unintelligent face—lounged before the tent for some moments before he was observed. Then, in the crisp way he had with the men, Carhart told him to step in.
“Well,” began the boss, looking him over, “what kind of a cook are you?”
A slow blush spread over the broad features.
“Speak up. What were you doing when I sent for you?”
“I—I—you see, sir, Jack Flagg was gone, and there wasn’t anything being done about dinner, and I—”
“And you took charge of things, eh?”
“Well—sort of, sir. You see—”
“That’s the way to do business. Go back and stick at it. Wait a minute, though. Has Flagg been hanging around any?”
“‘Well,’ began the boss, looking him over, ‘what kind of a cook are you?’”
“‘Well,’ began the boss, looking him over, ‘what kind of a cook are you?’”
“I guess he has. All his things was took off, and some of mine.”
“Take any money?”
“All I had.”
“I’m not surprised. Money was what he was here for. He would have cleaned you out, anyway, before long.”
“I’m not so sure of that, sir. We cleaned him out last time.”
“And you weren’t smart enough to see into that?”
“Well—no, I—”
“Take my advice and quit gambling. It isn’t what you were built for. What did you say your name was?”
“Charlie.”
“Well, Charlie, you go back and get up your dinner. See that it is a good one.”
Charlie backed out of the tent and returned to his kettles and pans and his boy assistants. He was won, completely.
Late on Thursday evening that mythical train really rolled in, and half the night was spentin preparations for the next day. Friday morning tracklaying began again. In the afternoon a second train arrived, and the air of movement and accomplishment became as keen as on the first day of the work. Paul Carhart, in a flannel shirt, which, whatever color it may once have been, was now as near green as anything, a wide straw hat, airy yellow linen trousers, and laced boots, appeared and reappeared on both divisions—alert, good-natured, radiating health and energy. The sun blazed endlessly down, but what laborer could complain with the example of the boss before him! The mules toiled and plunged, and balked and sulked, and toiled again, as mules will. The drivers—boys, for the most part—carried pails of water on their wagons, and from time to time wet the sponges which many of the men wore in their hats. And over the grunts and heaves of the tie squad, over the rattling and groaning of the wagon, over the exhausts of the locomotives, sounded the ringing clangof steel, as the rails were shifted from flat-car to truck, from truck to ties. It was music to Carhart,—deep, significant, nineteenth-century music. The line was creeping on again—on, on through the desert.
“What do you think of this!” had been Young Van’s exclamation when the second train appeared.
“It’s too good to be true,” was the reply of his grizzled brother.
Old Vandervelt was right: it was too good to be true. Soon the days were getting away from them again; provisions and water were running short, and Peet was sending on the most skilful lot of excuses he had yet offered. For the second time the tracklaying had to stop; and Carhart, slipping a revolver into his holster, rode forward alone to find Scribner.
He found him in a patch of sage-brush not far from a hill. The heat was blistering, the ground baked to a powder. There had been no rain for five months. Scribner,stripped to undershirt and trousers, was standing over his men.
“Glad to see you, Mr. Carhart!” he cried. “You are just in time. I think I’ve struck it.”
“That’s good news,” the chief replied, dismounting.
They stepped aside while Scribner gave an account of himself. “I first drove a small bore down about three hundred feet, and got this.” He produced a tin pail from his tent, which contained a dark, odorous liquid. Carhart sniffed, and said:—
“Sulphur water, eh!”
“Yes, and very bad. It wouldn’t do at all. But before moving on, I thought I’d better look around a little. That hill over there is sandstone, and a superficial examination led me to think that the sandstone dips under this spot.”
“That might mean a very fair quality of water.”
“That’s what I think. So I inserted alarger casing, to shut out this sulphur water, and went on down.”
“How far?”
“A thousand feet. I’m expecting to strike it any moment now.”
“Your men seem to think they have struck something. They’re calling you.”
The engineers returned to the well in time to see the water gushing to the surface.
“There’s enough of it,” muttered Scribner.
The chief bent over it and shook his head. “Smell it, Harry,” he said.
Scribner threw himself on the ground and drank up a mouthful from the stream. But he promptly spit it out.
“It’s worse than the other!” he cried.
They were silent a moment. Then Carhart said, “Well—keep at it, Harry. I may look you up again after a little.”
He walked over to his horse, mounted, nodded a good-by, and cantered back toward the camp. Scribner watched him ride off, then soberly turned and prepared to pack upand move on westward. He was thinking, as he gave the necessary orders, how much this little visit meant. The chief would have come only with matters at a bad pass.
Over a range of low waste hills, through a village of prairie-dogs,—and he fired humorously at them with his revolver as they sat on their mounds, and chuckled when they popped down out of sight,—across a plain studded from horizon to horizon with the bleached bones and skulls of thousands of buffaloes, past the camp and the grade where the men of the first division were at work, Paul Carhart rode, until, finally, the main camp and the trains and wagons came into view.
It was supper-time. The red, spent sun hung low in the west; the parched earth was awaiting the night breeze. Cantering easily on, Carhart soon reached the grade, and turned in toward the tents. The endless quiet of the desert gave place to an odd, tense quiet in the camp. The groups of laborers,standing or lying motionless, ceasing their low, excited talk as he passed; the lowered eyes, the circle of Mexicans standing about the mules, the want of the relaxation and animal good-nature that should follow the night whistle: these signs were plain as print to his eyes and his senses.
He dismounted, walked rapidly to the headquarters tent, and found the two Vandervelts in anxious conversation. He had never observed so sharply the contrast between the brothers. The younger was smooth shaven, slender, with brown hair, and frank blue eyes that were dreamy at times; he would have looked the poet were it not for a square forehead, a straight, incisive mouth, and a chin as uncompromising as the forehead. There was in his face the promise of great capacity for work, dominated by a sympathetic imagination. The face of his brother was another story; some of the stronger qualities were there, but they were not tempered with the gentler. His stocky frame, his strong neck, the deeplines about his mouth, even the set of his cropped gray mustache, spoke of dogged, unimaginative persistence.
Evidently they were not in agreement. Both started at the sight of their chief—the younger brother with a frank expression of relief.
Carhart threw off his hat and gauntlet gloves, took his seat at the table, and looked from one to the other.
The elder brother nodded curtly. “Go ahead, Gus,” he said. “Give Paul your view of it.”
Thus granted the floor, Young Van briefly laid out the situation. “We put your orders into effect this morning, Mr. Carhart, and shortened the allowance of drinking water. In an hour the men began to get surly—just as they did the other time. But we kept them under until an hour or so ago. Then the sheriff of Clark County—a man named Lane, Bow-legged Bill Lane,”—Young Van smiled slightly as he pronounced the name,—“rode in with a large posse. It seems he is onthe trail of a gang of thieves, greasers, army deserters, and renegades generally. He had one brush with them some miles below here,—I think I had better tell you about this before I go on,—but they broke up into small parties and got away from him. He had some reason to think that they would work up this way, and try to stampede our horses and mules some night. He advises arming our men, and keeping up more of a guard at night. Another thing; he says that a good many Apaches are hanging around us,—he has seen signs of them over there in the hills,—and while they would never bother such a large party as this of ours, Bow-legged Bill”—he smiled again—“thinks it would be best to arm any small parties we may send out. If the Indians thought Harry Scribner, for instance, had anything worth stealing they might give him some trouble.”
“Send half-a-dozen wagons forward to him to-morrow, under Dimond,” said Carhart, briefly. “See that they carry rifles and cartridgesenough for Scribner’s whole party. And wire Tiffany to send on three hundred more rifles.”
“All right; I will attend to it. I told the sheriff we came down here as peaceful railroad builders, not as border fighters; but he said what we came for hasn’t much to do with it,—I couldn’t repeat his language if I tried,—it’s how we’re going back that counts; whether it’s to be on a ‘red plush seat, or up in the baggage car on ice.’ But so much for that. It seems that his men, mixing in with ours, found out that we are short of water. They promptly said that there is a first-rate pool, with all the water we could use, only about thirty-five miles southwest of here.” He was coming now, having purposely brought up the minor matters first, to the real business. Carhart heard him out. “It didn’t take long to see that something was the matter with the men. Before the posse rode off the sheriff spoke to me about it, and offered to let us have a man to guide us to the pool if we wantedhim. I am in favor of accepting. The men are trembling on the edge of an outbreak. If there was a Jack Flagg here to organize them, they would have taken the mules and started before you got back; and if they once got started, I’m not sure that even shooting would stop them. They are beyond all reason. It’s nothing but luck that has kept them quiet up to now,—nobody has happened to say the word that would set them off. I think we ought to reassure them,—tell the sheriff we’ll take the guide, and let the men know that a wagon train will start the first thing in the morning.”
“That’s it! That’s it!” Old Van broke out angrily. “Always give in to those d—n rascals! There’s just one thing to do, I tell you. Order them to their quarters and stand a guard over them from the iron squad.”
“But you forget,” Young Van replied hotly, “that they are not to blame.”
“Not to blame! What the—!”
“Wait a minute!—They are actually sufferingnow. We are not dealing with malicious men—they are not even on strike for more pay. We’re on the edge of a panic, that’s what’s the matter. And the question is, What is the best way to control that panic?”
“Wait, boys,” said Carhart. “Gus is right. This trouble has its roots away down in human nature. If water is to be had, those men have a right to it. If we should put them under guard, and they should go crazy and make a break for it, what then? What if they call our bluff? We must either let them go—or shoot.”
“Then I say shoot,” cried Old Vandervelt.
“No, Van,” Carhart replied, “you’re wrong. As Gus says, we are uncomfortably close to a panic. Well, let them have their panic. Put them on the wagons and let them run off their heat. Organize this panic with ourselves at the head of it.” His voice took on a crisper quality. “Van, you stay here in charge of the camp. Pick out a dozen of the iron squad, give them rifles, and keep three at a time on extra watch all night.”
“Hold on,” said the veteran, bewildered, “when are you going to start on this—?”
“Now.”
“Now? To-night?”
“To-night. Gus, you find your sheriff. He can’t be far off.”
“No; half a mile down the line.”
“You find him, explain the situation, and tell him we want that man in half an hour.”
The conference broke up sharply. Gus Vandervelt hurried out, saddled his horse, and rode off into the thickening dusk. Old Van went to select his guards. Carhart saw them go; then, pausing to note with satisfaction the prospect of only moderate darkness, he set about organizing his force. All the empty casks and barrels were loaded on wagons. Mules were hitched four and six in hand. Water, beyond a canteen for each man, could not be spared; but Charlie packed provisions enough—so he thought—for twenty-four hours.
The tremulous, brilliant afterglow fadedaway. The stars peeped out, one by one, and twinkled faintly. The dead plain—alive only with scorpions, horned frogs, tarantulas, striped lizards, centipedes, and the stunted sage-brush—stretched silently away to the dim mountains on the horizon. The bleaching bones—ghostly white out there in the sand—began to slip off into the distance and the dark. All about was rest, patience, eternity. Here in camp were feverish laborers with shattered nerves; men who started at the swish of a mule’s tail—and swore, no matter what their native tongue, in English, that famous vehicle for profane thoughts. The mules, full of life after their enforced rest, took advantage of the dark and confusion to tangle their harness wofully. Leaders swung around and mingled fraternally with wheelers, whereupon boy drivers swore horrible oaths in voices that wavered between treble and bass. Lanterns waved and bobbed about. Men shouted aimlessly.
Suddenly the babel quieted—the laborerswere bolting a belated supper. Then, after a moment of confusion, three men rode out of the circle of lanterns, put their horses at the grade, stood out for a vivid moment in the path of light thrown by the nearest engine,—Paul Carhart, Young Vandervelt, and the easy-riding guide,—plunged down the farther side of the grade, and blended into the night. One after another the long line of wagons followed after, whips cracking, mules balking and breaking, men tugging at the spokes of the wheels. Then, at last, they were all over; the shouts had softened into silence. And Old Van stood alone on the grade and looked after them with eyes that were dogged and gloomy.
Paul Carhart had organized the panic; now he was resolved to “work it out of them,” as he explained aside to Young Van. He estimated that they should reach the pool before eight o’clock in the morning. That would mean continuous driving, but the enduranceof mules is a wonderfully elastic thing; and as for the men, the sooner they were tired, the less danger would there be of a panic. Accordingly, the three leaders set off at a canter. The drivers caught the pace, lashing out with their whips and shouting in a frenzied waste of strength. The mules galloped angrily; the wagons rattled and bumped and leaped the mounds, for there was not the semblance of road or trail. Now and again a barrel was jolted off, and it lay there unheeded by the madmen who came swaying and cursing by. Here and there one calmer than his fellows climbed back from a seat by his driver and kept the kegs and barrels in place.
Wonderfully they held the pace, over mile after mile of rough plain. Then, after a time, came the hills,—low at first, but rising steadily higher.
In the faint light the sage-brush slipped by like the ghosts of dead vegetation. The rocks and the heaps of bones gave the wheels many a wrench. The steady climb was telling on the mules. They hung back, slowed to a walk all along the line, and under the whip merely plunged or kicked. Up and up they climbed, winding through the low range by a pass known only to the guide. One mule, a leader in a team of six, stumbled among the rocks, fell to his knees, and was dragged and pushed along in a tangle of harness before his fellows came to a stop. In a moment a score of men were crowding around. Up ahead the wagons were winding on out of sight; behind, the line was blocked.