Part 23

Perhaps they were, for standards of beauty, morality, of any old thing, are merely relative and depend so much on local color. To Hart, who reviewed the "beauties" in Bender's camp, they seemed the most unmitigated ruffians in his railroad experience; but as they strut on this small section of the world-stage for "Positively one appearance only," let them be judged by their record in the rough work of that night; by the way in which they bore themselves in the roar, surge, and tumble of a losing fight, the echoes of which alarmed the dark city and came with the soup to the general manager's dinner; and let him deliver their valedictory to his guests at table.

Throwing a telegram--which a waiter brought in just after Helen went up-stairs--across to Carter, the magnate remarked: "That big foreman of yours has been at it again. He has put two of our heaviest engines into the ditch and ten men into hospital. Not bad, but--he didn't lay the diamond."

"Oh, well," Carter shrugged, "better luck next time."

"Ah, yes--the next time?" Repeating the phrase with dubious inflection, he went on with his dinner, and for an hour thereafter no one heard the rattle of the skeleton behind the feast. He acted the perfect host, easily courteous, pleasant, anxious for the preference of his guests. As he ran on, drawing from the sources of a wide and unusual experience for his dinner chat, it was curious to note the shadings in his manner. Addressing the partners, he seemed to exhale rather than evidence a superiority which, on their part, they countenanced by an equally subtle homage. Integrity and deprecation of his policy and methods were dominated by the orthodox business sense which forced subconscious recognition of his title as king of their business world. With Carter, however, he was frankly free, as though they two had been section-men eating their bite together on a pile of ties, and doubtless the difference in his manner sprang from some such feeling. For whereas the partners were born to their station, he recognized Carter as a product--unfinished, but still a product--of the forces which had produced himself and a dozen other kings and great contractors of the constructive railroad era. Without invidious distinction or neglect of the others, he yet made him the focus of attention.

"We heard all about your sawdust grades," he complimented, with real cordiality. "A mighty clever idea, sir; pity you couldn't patent it--though we are glad you cannot, for we intend to apply it on all our Rainy River muskegs."

Approaching business at the close of the meal, he was equally suave. "You are to be complimented upon your achievement, gentlemen," he said, addressing the partners. "We feel that while supplying a real need of the province, you have convicted us of remissness. But now that we do see our duty, it would be equally criminal for us to leave you the burden of this heavy responsibility. We know how it has taxed your resources"--his gray eye stabbed the senior partner--"and we are fully prepared to relieve you." Pausing, he lit a cigar, puffed a moment, and finished, "We will take the enterprise off your hands, bag and baggage, on terms that will yield you a handsome profit."

A pause followed. No man turns from an easy road to a rocky climb without lingering backward glances, and the partners looked at one another while the general manager leaned back and smoked with the air of one who had faithfully performed a magnanimous duty. Greer spoke first.

"Very kind offer, I am sure."

"Most handsome," Smythe, the laconic, added. "But--" He glanced at Carter, who finished, "We are not on the market."

The manager raised his brows. Expecting a first refusal, he was slightly staggered and irritated by its bluntness, yet masked both emotions. "Not on your own terms?"

"On no terms," Greer emphatically answered; then, flushing, he added: "Our chief motive in going into this enterprise, sir, was to bring sorely needed railroad competition into this province. It would not be subserved by our selling to you."

The manager flicked the ash from his cigar. Then, while smoking, he regarded the old gentleman from under bulging lids very much as a curious collector might note the wriggles of an impaled beetle. "Very laudable intention; does you credit, sir. But you must pardon me if I doubt that you will carry it to the length of financial hari-kari. You have heard of that Japanese custom? A man commits suicide, empties himself upon a cold and unsympathetic world for the benefit of his enemy, who is compelled by custom to go and do likewise. In your case the sacrifice would be foolish because we shouldn't follow suit. Now when I spoke of your resources"--during an ugly pause his glance flickered between the partners--"I did not state our exact knowledge of their extent. You are--practically--broke. In addition, we have bought up all of your paper that we could find floating on the market, and three months from now--we shall be in a position to demand a receiver in bankruptcy. Stop!" Frowning down Greer's attempted interruption, he dropped his suave mask and stood out, the financial king, brutal, imperious, predatory. "I know what you would say. Three months is a long time. But no one will make you a better offer--any offer--till you can cross our line. You can force a crossing? Yes, but we'll law you, badger you, carry the case from court to court up to the privy council--two years won't make an end. In the meantime--" He had thrown himself at them, bearing down upon them with all the force of his powerful will, of the furiously strong personality that had crushed financial opposition to plans and projects beside which their enterprise was as a grain of sand to the ocean. Now, in a flash, he became again the polished host. "Take your time, gentlemen. _We_ are in no hurry. Several days, if you choose. But--be advised."

But big, strong, and masterful as the manager was, every Goliath has his David, and the first stone in the forehead came from the sling of Smythe--Smythe, who had hardly opened his mouth through the meal save for the admittance of food or drink. Banging the table so that the glass rang and a champagne bowl flew from its thin stem, he sprang up, his dark face flushed and defiant. "We'll take neither your advice nor your time! God knows that we are hard shoved, but damn a man who sells his country! And since you have been so outspoken, let me tell you that we'll run trains across your line, and that inside--"

"This hour." In its quiet assurance, Carter's interpolation came with all the force of an accomplished fact. The manager started, and the division superintendent upset his wine. As their backs were to the door, neither saw a waiter take a telegram from a messenger-boy, and sign for its delivery after a glance at the clock, which indicated half-past nine. Nor could either fact have the significance for them that their combination had for Carter.

The manager recovered his poise even as the waiter handed the telegram to his colleague, and, though puzzled, hid the feeling behind a show of confident contempt. "I hardly gather your meaning, but presume you mean--war?"

Missing the superintendent's sudden consternation, he was going on. "Very well. I _had_ hoped--" when the former pulled his sleeve. "What's this?"

He stared blankly at the words: "Construction-train, with men and Gatling-guns, across our tracks at Prairie. Number ten, Western Mail, held up with three hundred passengers."

During an astonished silence, the partners watched the manager, who looked at Carter, who lightly drummed on the table. "Your train?" he went on, slowly, with words that evidenced his flashing insight into the situation. "Hum! Sawdust, eh? Came down the spur you laid to the Portage Mills at Prairie; grabbed our operator; then extended the mill-switch across our tracks. Know how to kill two birds with one stone, don't you?"

During a second silence he fenced glances, nervously fingering the telegram, then suddenly asked: "What's the use? You can't hold it?"

"With two Gatlings and five hundred men--five thousand, if I need them?"

"The law's against you."

"As it is against you at the crossing. Possession is said to be nine of its points, anyway, so we have you just nine-tenths to the bad." Slightly smiling, he quoted: "'We'll law you, badger you, carry the case from court to court up to the privy council--two years won't make an end.'"

The manager raised heavy lids. "In three months we'll break you."

Carter shrugged. "Who knows? In the mean time--your traffic will be suspended?"

Through all the superintendent had fidgeted nervously; now he broke in: "Pish, man! We'll build round your old train in six hours."

"Will you?" Without even a glance in his direction, Carter ran on, addressing the manager: "You see, land is that cheap since the boom that we took options on a right of way from Prairie clean up to the north pole and down to the American border. No, you won't go around us, but we shall go round you and come into this burg south of your tracks."

"But you're out of law," the superintendent angrily persisted. "You haven't the shadow of a right--"

"Oh, shut up, Sparks," the manager impatiently interrupted. "What has right to do with it? He's got us in the door and it's no use squealing. Now"--the glance he turned on Carter was evenly compounded of hostility and admiration--"terms? You'll release our train--"

"When you cede our legal crossing, and call off your dogs. We'll hold Prairie till every man Jack of your guards is shipped out of the city."

"Could you have the papers drawn--" He had intended "to-night," but he paused as Greer drew them from an inner pocket and his iron calm dissolved in comical disgust. "Hum! You're not timid about grabbing time by the forelock. But, let me see!"

Once more the arc lights could be heard sputtering. In that tense moment their own fortunes swung in the balance with the welfare of a province, and while the manager read they waited in silence. Trimming the end of a cigar with careful precision, Carter masked all feeling, but the partners could not hide their nervousness--Smythe fidgeted, Greer locked and unlocked clasped fingers. Both held their breath till the manager's pen made a rough scratch on the silence.

A good loser, he said, as Greer rose after buttoning his coat over the precious document: "Don't go, gentlemen--at least till we have drunk the occasion. I see another bottle there in the ice."

And his toast, "To our next merry meeting," formed the premise of the deduction which Carter returned to Greer's relieved exclamation when they stood, at last, alone in the street.

"Thank God! It is over!"

"On the contrary, it is just begun."

Passing under a street lamp, its white light revealed the pale disturbance which banished the senior partner's flushed content. Stopping dead, he agitatedly seized Carter's arm.

"You don't suppose he will go back on his--"

"Signature? No, he won't repeat. He's done with the crossing."

"Then we can weather through," Greer said, and Smythe echoed his sigh of relief.

"But--" Carter quoted the bucolic proverb which recites the many ways in which a pig may be killed other than by a surfeit of butter.

"But what _can_ he do?" Greer persisted.

"Don't know," Carter slowly answered. "Only a man don't have to look at that bull-dog jaw of his a second time to know that he'll do it, and do it quick."

"I'd give a good deal to know," Smythe frowned, then smoothed his knotted brow as he laughed at Carter's rejoinder.

"I'd give three cents myself."

Not feeling sleepy, Carter walked on after he had dropped the partners at their respective doors, aimlessly threading the dark streets that gave back his hollow foot-fall; and so passing, by chance, under Helen's window, he brought a pause in the anxious meditation which had kept her restlessly tossing, and set her to momentary speculations as to the owner of that firm and heavy tread. She listened, listened till it grew fainter and died as he turned the corner. Keeping on in the cool silence, he presently came to the Red River suspension bridge, where he paused and leaned on the parapet at the very spot from which she loved to watch Indians and chattering squaws float beneath in quaint birch canoes. There was, of course, nothing to warn him of the fact any more than she could have guessed him as owner of the solitary foot-fall. He thought of her, to be sure. Always she stood in the background, ready to claim him whenever press of affairs permitted reflection; and now she thrust in between him and the twinkling lights of the sleeping city. Where was she? And doing--what? How much longer before he could go in search of her? After long musing he swept the weary intervening days away with an impatient gesture, and his longing took form in muttered speech:

"How long? My God! how much longer?"

The thought brought him back to his work and the events of the evening. What would be the manager's next move? He gazed down into the dark river intently, as though he expected its hoarse voice to give answer. But though he canvassed, as he thought, every possibility, the reality--which presented itself a week or so after he resumed operations in the Silver Creek forests--was beyond the range of his thought.

*XXVIII*

*THE STRIKE*

As aforesaid, it was the unexpected that opposed Carter with a visage of stony calm when he came from Winnipeg out to the "Ragged Lands" a week or so later. For whereas he had left the camp convulsed in throes of constructive labor, the whistle of his engine raised piercing echoes; no other sounds disturbed the sleeping forest. In the cut south of the camp he passed the big digger, at rest from the roar, rattle, and clank of chains, hiss of escaping steam. The pile-driver loomed idly on a distant trestle. When engine and caboose stopped opposite the cook-house, he saw that the camp--which ought to have been empty--teemed with men.

He shrugged when Hart, who was with him, exclaimed in wonder: "Can't prove it by me. But we'll soon know. There's Bender--coming from the office."

"Strike," the giant replied to their questioning. "Teamsters, graders, bridge and track men, all went out at noon. What for? God knows; but I allow that Buckle could tell. He wasn't hanging round the Winnipeg camp for nothing. I'm sorry now--" His bunched fists, big as mauls, fully explained his regret, and indicating a group which was arranging its progress so as to make the office door with Carter, he finished: "But if you're hankering for reasons, consult them gentlemen. It's a depytation--by its scowl. An' it's loaded to the muzzle with statistics to fire at you."

Following his finger, Carter noted that Michigan Red was of the deputation, but when it ranged up at the tent door in sheepish yet defiant array, that worthy hung modestly in the rear, permitting a big teamster from the Silver Creek settlements to act as spokesman. Blunt, honest, tenacious as a bull-dog in holding to an idea, the man was an ideal tool for unscrupulous hands; but though he instantly divined the reasons behind his leadership, Carter listened quietly to his tale--the old tale--overwork, poor food, underpay.

His answer was equally quiet. "You are certainly to be pitied, Bill; breaks me all up just to think of your wrongs. I've always admired your thrift, and I sympathize with your desire to raise the mortgage off your farm. Took you five years to put it on, didn't it, Bill? And you are calculating to pay it off in the next two months. Well, perhaps--but you'll have to screw it out of some one else than me."

Shuffling uneasily, the teamster glanced at his backers, who, equally nonplussed, gazed at one another. For where an angry, or even a plain answer would have merely incited them to dogged opposition, this quiet ridicule sapped conceit in their cause, besides conveying an alarming suggestion of strength in reserve.

"Then you don't allow to fall in with our notions?" The spokesman returned after a whispered conference.

"Meaning--an hour less and a dollar more? You're sure a psychic, Bill; plumb wasted on railroading. Open an office in town and go to fortune-telling and you'd pull that plaster off your homestead inside a month."

Assured that there was no hurry, that he could take a week to consider the matter, he gravely added: "Obliged to you, Bill; but I don't allow to require it. The world, you'll remember, was made in six days, and this isn't near such a big job. No time like the present, and here's my answer--same hours, same grub, same pay. It's fortune-telling or present rates for yours, Bill."

Through all he entirely ignored the delegation, and now he leaned in the door, idly watching as it made its way across the camp and was swallowed in the crowd of strikers about the bunk-house. But his face fell as he stepped inside beyond eye and ear shot. "Serious?" he repeated Hart's question. "Couldn't be worse. Not one of those fellows could make a quarter of the wages or live half as well on the farm, but they'd hog it all if I died in the ditch. But there's more behind this than their spite and greed. You see, we have just about pulled old Murray in for funds to make a clean finish, and if he gets wind of this he'll crawfish like a one-legged crow. I must go back at once. And you, Bender--you, also, Hart--see to it that not even a dog crawls out of this camp until I return."

"To keep these chaps guessing," he added, after a moment's dark reflection, "I'd better slip out after dusk. You go over, Hart, and whisper the engineer to back out and wait for me at the other side of the cut. Mystery is good as aces up in any old game, and we can't fog them too much."

Pulling out at dark, he made the run back to town--fifty miles--in an hour and a quarter, reckless running on unballasted road. Murray _must_ be fully committed before the news leaked out. _We must get him, must get him, must, must, must_! The wheels clicked it, the steam hissed it, the fire roared it, the wind shrieked the imperative refrain. But though Bender lived in the strict letter of his instructions so that a mosquito could scarce have escaped from the camp; though a man could not have made the distance in two days on foot, or a wild goose have passed the throbbing engine as it bounded along that raw track, newsboys were yet crying the strike as he came out on Main Street.

Feeling certain that the office would be closed at that hour, he intended to go straight to Greer's house, but seeing a light in the partners' room as he came opposite the building, he went in and found Smythe there, alone. With lean legs thrust out before him, hands deep in his pockets, shoulders hunched to his ears, his attitude incarnated deep dejection; gloom resided in his nod.

"Greer?" he said. "At home--sick. You see, we were to have closed the deal with Murray this very evening, and the disappointment just knocked the old man out. He's been running altogether on his nerve lately; something had to give. Why _couldn't_ this have happened a day later?"

Answering Carter's question, he went on: "We heard it at noon. Papers got out an extra. Presses must have been running it off before you left."

"Noon?" Carter whistled. "Why the men didn't quit till two!" Then as the significance flashed upon him, he exclaimed: "Brass Bowels for a million! It was all cut, dried, and laid away for us, and they served it hot to the minute. Don't--it--beat--hell!"

His comical disgust caused Smythe a wintry grin, but, sobering, he said: "I wouldn't mind so much for myself. I'm young enough to do it again. But the old gentleman--with that nice family! You know he was just about ready to retire; only took up this business from a strong sense of public duty. And now, in his extremity, every rat financier in this city runs to his hole in fear of the cat. The poor old man!"

Carter nodded his sympathy. On the occasions that he visited their house, Greer's wife, a silver-haired old lady, had vied with her two daughters in pleasant attentions. But it did not require that thought to stir him to action.

"Oh, here!" he laughed. "We are not dead yet. To-morrow I'll go the round of the employment offices and--"

Smythe threw up his hands, a gesture eloquent of despair. "Went round myself--this afternoon. Harvest is on and men scarcer than diamonds. Besides, Brass Bowels has left an order with every agency in town to ship every man they can get west to the mountains."

"Um-m!" Carter thought a while. "Then we'll have to play the last card."

"The last card?" Smythe raised his eyebrows.

"Yes, biggest trump in the pack. How long before--"

"Oh, they can't touch us for two months."

"Good! Now listen." Glancing around as though distrustful of the very walls, he whispered in Smythe's ear for a minute that saw the latter's dejection dissolve in new-born hope. "You must go with me," he finished, aloud. "While you pack your grip, I'll drop round and see Greer. He must be here to-morrow to carry out the bluff. And hurry--for we must make it down and back before we are missed."

*XXIX*

*THE BLUFF*

It was the fifth day of the strike, and still no sound of labor disturbed the sleeping forest. Quiet and calm, like that of the Sabbath, brooded over the camp, but not its peace, for, being well rested, the strikers chafed under inaction, moving restlessly among the buildings. Michigan Red, to be sure, was dealing interminable poker on a blanket under a tree, while the younger men skylarked or tried one another out in games, but neither forms of amusement appealed to the older and more thrifty Canadians. Secret disquiet, moreover, underlay even the nonchalance of the gamblers, for Bender's mysterious looks and Carter's continued absence were rapidly disintegrating the strikers' confidence.

"He ain't here," the giant had answered, when the committee had called for another conference, and to further questioning he had returned an irritating grin. "When will he be back? That's for us to know an' you to find out." And so, shorn of its functions, the committee had languished like a moulting peacock. In addition, the cook's ominous visage at meal-times bade the strikers beware that the curse of labor still clung to the fruits of the earth; and the fact that almost a month's back pay rested in Carter's hands, served as a text and lent force to the unpreached sermon. What if he never came back? The history of Western construction abounded with cases of absconding contractors, and the hostility of the monopoly lent substance to the doubt. Most of them would have hailed Carter's advent, just then, with real if secret pleasure, and the general uneasiness manifested itself in a grumbling remark made as Michigan Red raked a fat "jack-pot" into his winnings.

"You're the only one that's making anything these days."