THE SABCAT CAMP
To Mary Warren's ears, had she struggled in her captor's arms less
violently, the sound of the wheels might have changed from the loam of
the lane to the gravel of the highway as they passed. But she heard
nothing, noted nothing, did not understand why, after a time, the
driver pulled up, and with much profanity for his team, descended from
his seat. Apparently he fastened the horses near the road. He came
back. "Git down, and hurry," said he. "Here's where we change cars."
She heard the grind of a motor's starting crank, the chug of an engine.
As its strident whirring continued her captor came again to her side,
and with rudeness aided her to the seat of what she took to be a small
car. She felt the leap of the car under his rude driving as he turned
the gas on full, felt it sway as it set to its pace. She now knew that
they were on some highway.
"Now we go better," laughed Big Aleck, his face at her ear. "They
can't catch us now. These Johns 'll find what's what, heh? Look
yonder--five fires in sight, besides plenty stock bumped off. They'll
learn how the free brothers work. If you can't see, you can't tell.
All the better!"
She shrank back into the seat, undertaking no reply to his maudlin
boastings. She was passing away from the only place in all the world
that meant shelter for her now, and already it felt like home, this
place that she was leaving.
The car shifted and slowed down, apparently on a less used
thoroughfare. "Where are you going?" she cried. "You've left the
road!"
Big Aleck laughed uproariously after his fashion. "I should say we
have," said he. "But any road's good enough just so it gets us up to
our jungle. You don't know what iss a jungle? Well, it's where the
sabcat brothers meets all by theirselves on the Reserve."
"Reserve?" asked Mary Warren. "What do you mean?"
"Where the timber is that them army scum is cutting for the Government.
Pine, some spruce. This road was made to get timber out. I ought to
know about it--I was foreman of the road gang! I know every tree
that's marked for the Government. My old bunch of bundle stiffs and
before-the-war wobblies is in there now. What chance has them
Government cockroaches got against my bullies? Wait till the wheat
clocks[1] get started and the clothes[2] begins. We ain't forgot what
we knew when they tried to draft us. We're free men now, same as in
Russia and Germany."
He laughed again and again at the vast humor of this situation as it
lay before him, exulting in the mystification his thieves' jargon would
create. His liquor made him reckless.
"It's a rough road, up Tepee Creek," said he, "but nobody comes. This
is a Government car--the Cossacks would think I'm going up to work.
They got to mark some trees. I'll mark 'em--so they can tell, when
they come to saw 'em, heh?"
He said little more, but one hand cast over her shoulder was his answer
to her panting silence, every time she edged over in the impulse to
fling herself out of the car. He was a man of enormous strength.
Continually the jolting of the car grew worse and worse. She began to
hear the rush of water. Twice she felt the logs of a rude bridge under
the wheels as they crossed some stream. They were winding their way up
the valley of a stream, into a higher country? Yes. As they climbed
now, she could catch the scent of the forest as the wind changed from
time to time. The profanity of her captor grew as the difficulty of
the trail increased. They were climbing at a gradient as steep as the
laboring car could negotiate.
At last, after interminable time, they seemed to strike a sandier soil,
more level country--indeed, the trail was following the contour of a
high sandy ridge among the pines.
On ahead she heard a shout. "Halt! Stop there! Who are you?"
"Don't shoot, John," replied the driver of the car, laughing. "It's
Aleck."
"Well, I'll be damned!" was the reply. "Time you was back, Aleck.
Who's that with you?"
"That's a friend of mine I brought along! She's come up to see how us
wobblies lives!"
Again his coarse laugh, which made her shudder. Then more broken
laughs, whispered words. She was obliged to take the arm of her rough
captor to descend from the car.
"She don't see very well," said Aleck in explanation. "Maybe just as
well she don't, heh?"
She stood looking about her vaguely, helpless. She could hear the high
moaning of the wind above her, in the tops of pine trees. Some one led
her to the front of a tent--she could hear the flapping of the fly in
the wind. She sank down by chance upon a blanket roll. Her captor
threw down the front flap of the tent. She heard voices of other men.
They paid not too much attention to her at first. Big Aleck, their
leader, went on with hurried orders.
"We got to get out of here in not more'n an hour or so," said he. "The
Johns'll come. I fixed a couple dozen stacks of hay for them."
"See anybody down below, Aleck?" asked a voice which Mary Warren
recognized as different from the others she had heard. And then some
low question was asked, to which Big Aleck replied.
"Well, I'll take her along with me, when I go out, far as that's
concerned," said he. "She says she's Sim Gage's housekeeper! Huh!"
"But suppose she gets away and squeals on us?" spoke a voice.
"She can't get away. Let's go eat."
She was close enough to where they sat eating and drinking to hear all
that was said, and they spoke with utter disregard of her presence.
She never had heard such language in her life, nor known that such men
lived. Never yet had she so fully taken home to herself the actual
presence of a Government, of a country, never before known what threats
against that country actually might mean. An enemy? Why, here was the
enemy still, entrenched inside the lines of victorious and
peace-abiding America--trusting, foolish, blind America, which had
accepted anything a human riff-raff sneeringly and cynically had
offered her in return for her own rich generosity! Mary Warren began
to see, suddenly, the tremendous burden of duty laid on every man and
every woman of America--the lasting and enduring and continuous duty of
a post-bellum patriotism, that new and terrible thing; that sweet and
splendid thing which alone could safeguard the country that had fought
for liberty so splendidly, so unselfishly.
"If they ever run across us in here with the goods on us--good-night!"
hesitated a voice. "I don't like to carry this here cyanide--we got
enough for all the sheep and cattle in Montana."
"Our lawyers'll take care of us if we get arrested," said Big Aleck
indifferently.
"Yes, but we mightn't get arrested--these here ranch Johns is handy
with rope and lead."
"Ach, no danger," argued Aleck. "It's safer than to blow up a armory
or a powder mill, or even a public building--and we done all that,
while the war was on. We'll give 'em Force! This Republic be
damned--there is no republic but the republic of Man!"
These familiar doctrines seemed to excite the applause usual among
hearers of this sort. There was a chorus of approval, so that their
orator went on, much inspired.
"People in Gallatin offered a thousand dollars for one man catched
putting matches in a threshing machine. Other ranchers was willing to
give a thousand if they found out what made their hay get a-fire! Hah!
They don't know how we set a bomb so the sun'll start it! They don't
think that the very fellers running the threshing machine is the ones
that drops the matches in! They don't think that the man running the
mowing machine is the one that fixes the sickle bar! They don't think
that the man in charge of this here road gang is the one that's
a-doctoring trees!
"They're still eating all sorts of things for bread now," he resumed.
"Folks in the cities pays more and more. Wheat'll go to four dollars
before we're through. We're the farmer's friends, huh? Hay'll be
worth fifty dollars a ton in this valley before we're through--but
there won't be no horses left to haul it to town! There's thousands of
right boes all across the country now. If fourteen thousand iron and
steel people was out at one time in Cleveland, what couldn't we do, if
we once got a good strike started all across the country, now the war
is done? We've made 'em raise wages time and again, haven't we? I
tell you, freedom's coming to its own."
Cleveland! Mary Warren pricked up her ears. She had reason; for now
the voice went on, mentioning a name which Annie Squires had made
familiar--Dorenwald, Charlie Dorenwald, the foreman in the rolling
rooms!
"Charlie Dorenwald's the head of that bunch. He's a good man. You
know what he pulled in Youngstown."
"Well, I don't know," said one voice, "they lynched a man in Illinois.
America's getting lawless! Think about lynching people! It ain't
right!"
"There's nothing they won't do," said Big Aleck's voice, virtuously.
"They ask us we shall have respect for a Government that lets people
lynch folks!"
"You didn't see any one when you was down in the road, Aleck?" asked
some one again, uneasily.
"I told you, no. Well, we got to get to work."
Mary Warren heard them rising from their places. Footfalls passed here
and there, shuffling. The woman could not repress her shuddering.
This was Force--unrestrained, ignorant, unleashed, brute Force, that
same aftermath Force which was rending apart the world back of the
new-dried battlefields of Europe! Order and law, comfort, love,
affection, trust--all these things were gone!
What then was her footing here--a woman? Was God indeed asleep? She
heard her own soul begging for alleviating death.
Then came silence, except for the airs high up in the sobbing trees.
They were gone on their errand. After that,--what?
After a time she heard a sound of dread--the sliddering of a footfall
in the sand. She recognized the heavy, dragging stride of the man who
had brought her here. He had come back--alone.
Terror seized her, keen and clarifying terror. She screamed, again and
again, called aloud the only name that came to her mind.
"_Sim_!" she cried aloud again and again--"_Sim_! _Sim_!"
[1] Wheat clocks: Phosphorus bombs left in wheat or haystacks and fired
by the sun.
[2] Clothes: Argot terms for phosphorus, cyanide and other chemicals
used in destruction of property or life.