_ CHAPTER VII. CONRAD FLASHES A GUN
A whistle sounded down the line, a short nervous blast twice repeated. An instant shrieking of handbrakes, and the rumbling train of loaded flat-cars slowed down toward the trestle.
Torrance lumbered up from the supper table to watch. He was hoping that by some slip of the levers up in Murphy's cab the rock-laden cars would glide out over the trestle and give it a real test. The trains that crossed carrying supplies to construction further west were comparatively light, because of just such tender spots on the line; and they never stopped until they reached the other side. And always they sent back the taunting whistle of engineers breathing again after the perils of the "softest" place on the line.
Murphy, the engineer of his ballast train, persistently refused to expose one little car to "the crazy conthraption ye have the nerve to call a threstle. Sure I'd as lave tie down me gauge and sit on the biler as put a foot on that skinny doodle." And Murphy never made a mistake with his levers.
As Torrance watched, the end car slowly glided back toward the trestle and, to the sharply extended arms of an overalled brakesman, came to a standstill with a few inches of the truck overhanging the gossamer structure.
Far up the track the engine puffed and panted. Presently a bewhiskered little old Irishman climbed from it and came ploughing down beside the grade.
"Late to-night, Murphy," said Torrance severely. "What's the row?"
"Row, d'ye ask? Listen to that now," he demanded of the grinning brakesman. "Huh!" He bent to examine his sand-filled boots. "I'll be later still some o' these nights, that I will, ye big bully, if ye don't take the throuble to lay a footpath down that gr-rade for dacent citizens to use. Me legs are only that long, and I wasn't born on the seashore. Some day I'll stay up with me cab, I will, and then who'll brighten up yeer dull and unintheresting lives? How'd ye kape in touch with civilisation then, I'd ask ye?"
As the extent of Murphy's connection with civilisation was never more than fifteen miles down the line, Torrance and Tressa could laugh without offending his choleric feelings.
Murphy became aware of the few inches of flatcar that overhung the trestle.
"Ye mooney-face!" he roared at the brakesman who, his day's work done, was lolling on the grass. "Don't ye know that straw-pile's apt to blow over if ye disturb the air about it. Ye just saved yeer skin by about four inches. If ye'd let me run out on that toy I'd have t'rown ye over it, that I would."
The brakesman continued to grin.
"Ye can slit yeer face all up and think ye're laughing, ye can, but be the time ye'd struck a few t'ousand o' these bean-poles and clothes-line props that Torrance here calls a threstle, ye'd be looking like a pin-cushion dress-making day. It's dangerous, I call it, to lave splinters like thim with their ends up. Some day a thoughtless brakesman like yeerself will take a careless breath in the vicinity--and there ain't an undertaker this side o' Saskatoon."
Torrance, half nettled, laughed carelessly.
"If you'd sharpen up your wits more, Murphy, hustling along here in reasonable hours, instead of insulting a work you're not big enough to understand, you'd get away sooner to a softer job."
"Softer, is it? Sure I nade something softer soon or I'll get as tough as a railway contractor. I suppose ye'd call it a soft job running a train where a herd of--no, ye didn't hear what I called them, Miss Tressa--where a filthy, low-down gang of craters dressed up like men and walking on their hind legs, is running loose. Lifted about four miles of rail, they did. This locomotive engineer's been doing railway building for half a day; and if ye could do my job as well as I can do yours, Torrance, there'd be no nade o' the two of us. If I had a rowdy, dyed-in-the-wool mob like them under me I'd shoot the lot and have a better stand in with St. Peter than I'm going to have as an engineer. I'd die happy if I could catch one of thim in the act and he wasn't too big for the fire-door."
Torrance looked grave. "Another? That's the second this week. If this--"
"Indade, it was another. Ye didn't think it was the same rail I've been putting down every day for six years or so. When I fix a rail it stays, it does."
"Leave the train there till morning," urged Torrance; "we'll unload it first thing."
"Lave thim, is it?" shouted Murphy. "Lave thim on the main line! Not likely! When I lave this man-trap, they go too."
"Murphy, you're a bad-tempered little stickler to rules that don't mean a cuss. There isn't another train within a hundred miles or so, except west; there won't be one this way for days."
"I didn't know ye'd done so well as a bridge builder they'd made ye train-despatcher too," sneered Murphy. "Build a siding and I'll take a chance, though it ain't fair to Molly. Ye'll nade one anyway. Trains ought to have a chance to pull up where it's safe and say their prayers before tempting Providence on those straws. Why don't ye set up a saloon where the passengers can get drunk first--"
"Look here, man, the whole camp's at supper. They wouldn't work an extra hour for the devil."
"Why don't ye let somebody else ask thim thin? Of course if they've got ye scared--"
Torrance knew the danger of demanding overtime even when necessitated by their own devilish destruction. He knew the added risk since the recent camp fight. But the suggestion of danger threw precaution to the winds. Taking a nickel whistle from his pocket he stepped on the trestle and blew a long blast.
The camp lay quiet and clear in the late afternoon sun, a long line of sluggish smoke marking the cook-houses. A few minutes more and the lazy evening life would filter out over the river bottom. At the moment five hundred mouths were working as if their lives depended on it, five hundred pairs of eyes were looking for the next plate to devour.
First to appear in answer to the summons was Adrian Conrad, the one to whom it was directed. He took in the situation at a glance, even without Torrance's pointing arm, and made straightway for the cook-houses. From the open door of one of them Koppy's head appeared, and disappeared as quickly. He, too, understood.
As Conrad approached the nearest cook-house, Koppy emerged hastily on his way to the next. Conrad changed his intentions and strolled on after the underforeman. The two men met face to face as Koppy was coming out. The foreman, inches shorter, laid a hand on the Pole's shoulder. "I want you back here, Koppy." Without excitement, without apparent annoyance, he thrust the Pole ahead into the building.
A hundred and fifty evil countenances glared at them from about the long tables, some openly defiant, some only uncomfortable; all sullen and prepared to resist under the influence of what Koppy had just hurled at them in impassioned words.
"I'm afraid you've made it hard for yourself, Koppy," said the foreman. "How long will it take them to finish?"
"Supper is
their time," returned the underforeman stiffly. He was temporising; he scarcely knew how far it was wise to resist. "After supper?" He shrugged his shoulders in simulated indifference.
Conrad ran undisturbed eye over the tables, noting the pie before each diner.
"After supper is
my time to-night," he corrected quietly. "In ten minutes they're wanted on the grade. There's a train to unload."
A rumble of protest cut him short. Koppy, the firm lines of the foreman's face close to his shoulder, hesitated.
"Why for train not here in time?" he demanded. "We work ten hours. Train don't come. Why?"
Conrad lifted his shoulders and let them drop. "Ask the boss that--after. Now--the train has to be unloaded!"
The underforeman still hesitated. He had a curious respect for this quiet little fellow who never argued, never swore, never retreated from a stand once taken; and he was not quite certain how far he could trust his men in open conflict with authority. But they were waiting for his lead; his future with them was at stake.
"Perhaps they not work. Perhaps they say they work enough to-day." He caught the hardening gleam in Conrad's eye. "Can I make them?"
"If you can't," said Conrad, "I can. Only there'll be sore heads, and an empty bunk or two before I'm through. And yours will be one of them. I've given the orders; are you going to make them obey or am I--in your absence?"
A few of the men were on their feet now, mumbling, waving their soiled fists. Certain mysterious movements were significant to Conrad. Like a flash he had Koppy round the waist and was pressing a small automatic into his stomach.
"I want them to sit down, Koppy," ordered the foreman, "every one of them. You have till I count five. If I see a knife in the meantime, time's up. One--two--"
The Pole swallowed--shouted something in a foreign tongue, and every hand fell into the open, weaponless, every man sat down.
"You're a wise guy sometimes, Koppy," smiled Conrad. "Now you and I remain here for five minutes, then fifty of them come with us--I won't need more. Tell them that in the lingo. I'm already holding the watch. . . . And, Koppy, hereafter you'll save yourself embarrassment by remembering I'm foreman; these men take orders from me--through you. I don't make a habit of showing a gun, but I prefer it to argument with you. . . . All ready, march. You and I'll go last, Koppy."
But outside, Adrian Conrad passed carelessly along the line of sullen men and led up the bank and through the woods to the standing train. And not a knife showed.
Torrance and Murphy and the train crew watched the line file from the cook-house and up the path.
"'Blimey!' as me friend, 'Uggins, o' Whitechapel, would say," exclaimed Murphy. "And then some!"
Torrance only rubbed his hands.
"Did I bring enough?" enquired Conrad.
"They'll do."
"So'll ye, me lad," said Murphy behind his hand to Tressa. "Faith, but ye've a way wid ye. Here I was hoping for a bang-up spree, wid me houlding the watch till me blood got riled; and all that rat of a kid does is to dr-rop a few hundred husky bohunks into his pocket and lug 'em up the bank to overtime on a foine night like this. It's dishear-rtening. A chap can't get up a recent foight out here. I'm going back to civilisation where they still bang each other about a bit in a friendly way, thank God! Where'd yeer father pick him up, Tressa?"
"He didn't 'pick him up'," replied Tressa indignantly.
The merry eyes of the engineer came round to her in a slow circle.
"I'm always making mistakes like that. I never can tell when a couple's married--not unless he's showing the mar-rks of it about the pate, or flir-rting wid another gir-rl. What I meant to ask was how did yeer benevolent paterfamilias contrive to induce him to direct his seductive manners to the uncongenial atmosphere o' construction." He peered more closely into the laughing eyes of the girl. "And good taste he has, too, bad cess to him! If I was younger now-- These whiskers hide me age; they've always been me fatal lure. The girls take to thim like ants to sugar. Me first wife took to thim so liberally I had to cut thim off in self-protection. I used to wear thim par-rted in the middle. Ah, a gay dog was I. That was before I saw 'Lord Dundreary.' Sure I changed thim so quick then the gir-rls didn't know they weren't flirting wid the same fellow. Next to being taken for an Englishman, an Irishman would prefer old Nick himself. So I let thim grow solid, the luxuriant and becoming gr-rowth ye're admiring this very minute. . . . Look at that now!"
He indicated the work of unloading. Each car was being emptied at the edge of the trestle on the other side of the grade, where a long shoot had been scooped from the bank and walled off to direct the falling rocks from the framework of the trestle.
"Ye'd think some o' thim beggars liked wor-rk. Koppy, there, him o' the leering eye and forked tongue--that's Indian, ye know--he thinks he's showing off."
Koppowski was standing on a car, legs far apart, heaving over great rocks with his bare hands. Two bohunks, unsuccessfully tussling with a huge piece, he unceremoniously pushed aside, to grip it with his callous hands. Slowly it tilted, balanced a moment, and bounded away to the valley with great thuds.
"Ye mayn't be aware of it, gir-rl, but ye're expected to clap. Koppy's showing off. I know the symptoms--but I grew whiskers then." He combed long, toil-stained fingers through the beard.
Car after car the train moved back, the empty ones passing out over the trestle, which Murphy pretended to study with anxiety. The engine panted up to the end of its task.
"Well, there's Molly." The firemen thrust tousled head from the engineer's side of the cab to catch the signals. "Billy 'Uggins may be only an Englishman from Whitechapel, or wherever they raise the lowest brand, but he and Molly are getting too friendly. If I weren't frightened o' that crazy conthraption o' yeer father's I wouldn't let him touch a lever; but till that beanpole toy is safe for a cat I'm not going to risk the head end of any train. And here's for supper, and a long sleep!"
He sprang into the cab with a roar at 'Uggins, tossed a kiss to Tressa, pulled the whistle cord, and drew away with increasing speed from the trestle and down the line to the official siding, three miles away, at the deserted end-of-steel village.
The work was completed for the night, yet the men lingered, self-consciously kicking over fragments of rock. Torrance and Conrad, without seeming to notice, were aware that something was in brew; and, wishing to meet it in the open, they did not enter the shack.
Presently Koppy and one of his bosom friends, Carl Heppel, detached themselves from the loitering group and approached the boss.
"What you pay overtime, my men ask?"
"Overtime!" Torrance's roar rolled out over the valley. "What in h-- d'ye mean? When I want men they got to work. I don't care what hour it is--" The depth of his fury choked him. "Get your damned bunch out of my sight, and quick, or I'll kick you to perdition. They tore up the rail that forced the overtime--"
Conrad had come to his side; he spoke quietly now:
"These men may be innocent. They've worked beyond the ten hours. Time-and-a-quarter would be fair."
Torrance gaped; the world seemed to be falling from beneath his feet.
"I would add this proviso," continued the calm voice of the foreman, "that when damage occurs again, the extra work it entails will not be paid for. You may take that as a warning, Koppy. Tell them"--his eyes were flashing, though his voice had not risen--"that extra work caused by damage to the line will always be done overtime--and--they're going--to do it--without pay. Understand? Now clear out." _