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.