In the face of things there was nothing about the place to suggest that
it deserved the title of Hell Camp. The Cameron Dam Camp, as Toppy saw
it now, consisted of seven neat log buildings. Of these the first six
were located on the road which led into the camp, three on each side.
These buildings were twice as large as the ordinary log buildings which
Toppy had seen in the woods; but they were thoroughly dwarfed and
overshadowed by the seventh, which lay beyond them, and into the
enormous doorway of which the road seemed to disappear. This building
was larger than the other six combined--was built of huge logs,
apparently fifteen feet high; and its wall, which stretched across the
road, seemed to have no windows or openings of any kind save a great
double door.
Toppy had no time for a careful scrutiny of the place, as the hunchback
swiftly pulled up before the first building of the camp, a well-built
double-log affair with large front windows and a small sign, "Office and
Store." Directly across the road from this building was one bearing the
sign, "Blacksmith Shop," and Toppy gazed with keen curiosity at a short
man with white hair and broad shoulders who, with a blacksmith's hammer
in his hand, came to the door of the shop as they drove up. Probably
this was the man for whom he was to work.
"Hey, Jerry," greeted the blacksmith with a burr in his speech that
labelled him unmistakably as a Scot.
"Hey, Scotty," replied the hunchback.
"Did ye bring me a helper?"
"Yes," grunted Jerry.
"Good!" said the blacksmith, and returned to his anvil.
The hunchback turned to the girl as soon as the team had come to a
standstill.
"This is where you go," he said, indicating the office with a nod.
"You," he grunted to Toppy, "sit right where you are till we go see the
boss."
An Indian squaw, nearly as broad as she was tall, came waddling out of
the store as Miss Pearson stepped stiffly from the sleigh. Toppy wished
for courage to get out and carry the girl's suitcase, but he feared that
his action would be misinterpreted; so he sat still, eagerly watching
out of the corner of his eyes.
"I carry um," said the squaw as the girl dragged forth her baggage. "You
go in."
Then the sleigh drove abruptly ahead toward the great building at the
end of the road, and Toppy's final view of the scene was Miss Pearson
stumping stiffly into the office-building with the squaw, the suitcase
held in her arms, waddling behind. Miss Pearson did not look in his
direction.
And now Toppy had his first shock. For he saw that the building toward
which they were hurrying was not a building at all, but merely a
stockade-wall, which seemed to surround all of the camp except the six
buildings which were outside. What he had thought a huge doorway was in
reality a great gate.
This gate swung open at their approach, and Toppy's second shock came
when he saw that the two hard-faced men who opened it carried in the
crooks of their arms wicked-looking, short-barrelled repeating shotguns.
One of the men caught the horses by the head as soon as they were
through the gate, and brought them to a dead stop, while the other
closed the gate behind them.
"Can't you see the boss is busy?" snapped the man who had stopped the
team. "You wait right here till he's through."
Toppy now saw that they had driven into a quadrangle, three sides of
which were composed of long, low, log buildings with doors and windows
cut at frequent intervals, the fourth side being formed by the
stockade-wall through which they had just passed. The open space which
thus lay between four walls of solid logs was perhaps fifty yards long
by twenty-five yards wide. In his first swift sight of the place Toppy
saw that, with the stockade-gate closed and two men with riot-guns on
guard, the place was nothing more nor less than an effective prison.
Then his attention was riveted spellbound by what was taking place in
the yard.
On the sunny side of the yard a group of probably a dozen men were
huddled against the log wall. Two things struck Toppy as he looked at
them--their similarity to the group of Slavs he had seen back in Rail
Head, and the complete terror in their faces as they cringed tightly
against the log wall. Perhaps ten feet in front of them, and facing
them, stood a man alone. And Toppy, as he beheld the terror with which
the dozen shrank back from the one, and as he looked at the man, knew
that he was looking upon Hell-Camp Reivers, the man who was called The
Snow-Burner.
Toppy Treplin was not an impressionable young man. He had lived much and
swiftly and among many kinds of men, and it took something remarkable in
the man-line to surprise him. But the sight of Reivers brought from him
a start, and he sat staring, completely fascinated by the Manager's
presence.
It was not the size of Reivers that held him, for Toppy at first glance
judged correctly that Reivers and himself might have come from the same
mold so far as height and weight were concerned. Neither was it the
terrible physical power which fairly reeked from the man; for though
Reivers' rough clothing seemed merely light draperies on the huge
muscles that lay beneath, Toppy had played with strong men,
professionals and amateurs, enough to be blasé in the face of a physical
Colossus. It was the calm, ghastly brutality of the man, the complete
brutality of an animal, dominated by a human intelligence, that held
Toppy spellbound.
Reivers, as he stood there alone, glowering at the poor wretches who
cowered from him like pygmies, was like a tiger preparing to spring and
carefully calculating where his claws and fangs might sink in with most
damage to his victims. He stood with his feet close together, his thumbs
hooked carelessly in his trousers pockets, his head thrust far forward.
Toppy had a glimpse of a long, thin nose, thin lips parted in a sneer,
heavily browed eyes, and, beneath the back-thrust cap, a mass of curly
light hair--hair as light as the girl's! Then Reivers spoke.
"Rosky!" he said in a voice that was half snarl, half bellow.
There was a troubled movement among the dozen men huddled against the
wall, but there came no answer.
"Rosky! Step out!" commanded Reivers in a tone whose studied ferocity
made Toppy shudder.
In response, a tall, broad-shouldered Slav, the oldest and largest man
in the group, stepped sullenly out and stood a yard in front of his
fellows. He had taken off his cap and held it tightly in his clenched
right hand, and the expression on his flat face as he stood with hanging
head and scowled at Reivers was one half of fear and half of defiance.
"You no can hit me," he muttered doggedly. "I citizen; I got first
papers."
Reivers's manner underwent a change.
"Hit you?" he repeated softly. "Who wants to hit you? I just want to
talk with you. I hear you're thinking of quitting. I hear you've planned
to take these fellows with you when you go. How about it, Rosky?"
"I got papers," said the man sullenly. "I citizen; I quit job when I
want."
"Yes?" said Reivers gently. It was like a tiger playing with a hedgehog,
and Toppy sickened. "But you signed to stay here six months, didn't
you?"
The gentleness of the Manager had deceived the thick-witted Slav and he
grew bold.
"I drunk when I sign," he said loudly. "All these fellow drunk when they
sign. I quit. They quit. You no can keep us here if we no want stay."
"I can't?" Still Reivers saw fit to play with his victim.
"No," said the man. "And you no dare hit us again, no."
"No?" purred Reivers softly. "No, certainly not; I wouldn't hit you.
You're quite right, Rosky. I won't hit you; no."
He was standing at least seven feet from his man, his feet close
together, his thumbs still hooked in his trousers pockets. Suddenly, and
so swiftly that Rosky did not have time to move, Reivers took a step
forward and shot out his right foot. His boot seemed barely to touch the
shin-bone of Rosky's right leg, but Toppy heard the bone snap as the
Slav, with a shriek of pain and terror, fell face downward, prone in the
trampled snow at Reivers' feet.
And Reivers did not look at him. He was standing as before, as if
nothing had happened, as if he had not moved. His eyes were upon the
other men, who, appalled at their leader's fate, huddled more closely
against the log wall.
"Well, how about it?" demanded Reivers icily after a long silence. "Any
more of you fellows think you want to quit?"
Half of the dozen cried out in terror:
"No, no! We no quit. Please, boss; we no quit."
A smile of complete contempt curled Reivers' thin upper lip.
"You poor scum, of course you ain't going to quit," he sneered. "You'll
stay here and slave away until I'm through with you. And don't you even
dare think of quitting. Rosky thought he'd kept his plans mighty
secret--thought I wouldn't know what he was planning. You see what
happened to him.
"I know everything that's going on in this camp. If you don't believe
it, try it out and see. Now pick this thing up--" he stirred the groaning
Rosky contemptuously with his foot--"and carry him into his bunk. I'll be
around and set his leg when I get ready. Then get back to the rock-pile
and make up for the time it's taken to teach you this lesson."
The brutality of the thing had frozen Toppy motionless where he sat in
the sleigh. At the same time he was conscious of a thrill of admiration
for the dominant creature who had so contemptuously crippled a fellow
man. A brute Reivers certainly was, and well he deserved the name of
Hell-Camp Reivers; but a born captain he was, too, though his dominance
was of a primordial sort.
Turning instantly from his victim as from a piece of business that is
finished, Reivers looked around and came toward the sleigh. Some
primitive instinct prompted Toppy to step out and stretch himself
leisurely, his long arms above his head, his big chest inflated to the
limit. At the sight of him a change came over Reivers' face. The
brutality and contempt went out of it like a flash. His eyes lighted up
with pleasure at the sight of Toppy's magnificent proportions, and he
smiled a quick smile of comradeship, such as one smiles when he meets a
fellow and equal, and held out his hand to Toppy.
"University man, I'll wager," he said, in the easy voice of a man of
culture. "Glad to see you; more than glad! These beasts are palling on
me. They're so cursed physical--no mind, no spirit in them. Nothing but
so many pounds of meat and bone. Old Campbell, my blacksmith, is the
only other intelligent being in camp, and he's Scotch and believes in
predestination and original sin, so his conversation's rather trying for
a steady diet."
Toppy shook hands, amazed beyond expression. Except for his shaggy
eyebrows--brows that somehow reminded Toppy of the head of a bear he had
once shot--Reivers now was the sort of man one would expect to meet in
the University Club rather than in a logging-camp. The brute had
vanished, the gentleman had appeared; and Toppy was forced to smile in
answer to Reivers' genial smile of greeting. And yet, somewhere back in
Reivers' blue eyes Toppy saw lurking something which said, "I am your
master--doubt it if you dare."
"I hired out as blacksmith's helper," he explained. "My name's Treplin."
He did not take his eyes from Reivers'. Somehow he had the sensation
that Reivers' will and his own had leaped to a grapple.
Reivers laughed aloud in friendly fashion.
"Blacksmith's helper, eh?" he said. "That's good; that's awfully good!
Well, old man, I don't care what you hired out for, or what your right
name is; you're a developed human being and you'll be somebody to talk
to when these brutes grow too tiresome." He turned to Jerry, the driver.
"Well?" he said curtly.
"She's in the office now," he said.
"All right." Reivers turned and went briskly toward the gate. "Turn Mr.
Treplin over to Campbell. You'll live with Campbell, Treplin," he called
over his shoulder, as he went through the gate. "And you hit the back
trail, Jerry, right away."
As Jerry swung the team around Toppy saw that Reivers was going toward
the office with long, eager strides.