_ 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. _