His view was the inverse of his master's.To Thorpe it had suddenly become a very little thing in contrast to the great, sweet elemental truth that the dream girl had enunciated.To Collins the affair was miles vaster than the widest scope of his own narrow life.
The firm could not take up its notes when they came due; it could not pay the interest on the mortgages, which would now be foreclosed;it could not even pay in full the men who had worked for it--that would come under a court's adjudication.
He had therefore watched Thorpe's desperate sally to mend the weakened chain, in all the suspense of a man whose entire universe is in the keeping of the chance moment.It must be remembered that at bottom, below the outer consciousness, Thorpe's final decision had already grown to maturity.On the other hand, no other thought than that of accomplishment had even entered the little bookkeeper's head.
The rescue and all that it had meant had hit him like a stroke of apoplexy, and his thin emotions had curdled to hysteria.Full of the idea he appeared before the men.
With rapid, almost incoherent speech he poured it out to them.
Professional caution and secrecy were forgotten.Wallace Carpenter attempted to push through the ring for the purpose of stopping him.
A gigantic riverman kindly but firmly held him back.
"I guess it's just as well we hears this," said the latter.
It all came out--the loan to Carpenter, with a hint at the motive:
the machinations of the rival firm on the Board of Trade; the notes, the mortgages, the necessity of a big season's cut; the reasons the rival firm had for wishing to prevent that cut from arriving at the market; the desperate and varied means they had employed.The men listened silent.Hamilton, his eyes glowing like coals, drank in every word.Here was the master motive he had sought; here was the story great to his hand!
"That's what we ought to get," cried Collins, almost weeping, "and now we've gone and bust, just because that infernal river-hog had to fall off a boom.By God, it's a shame! Those scalawags have done us after all!"Out from the shadows of the woods stole Injin Charley.The whole bearing and aspect of the man had changed.His eye gleamed with a distant farseeing fire of its own, which took no account of anything but some remote vision.He stole along almost furtively, but with a proud upright carriage of his neck, a backward tilt of his fine head, a distention of his nostrils that lent to his appearance a panther-like pride and stealthiness.No one saw him.Suddenly he broke through the group and mounted the steps beside Collins.
"The enemy of my brother is gone," said he simply in his native tongue, and with a sudden gesture held out before them--a scalp.
The medieval barbarity of the thing appalled them for a moment.The days of scalping were long since past, had been closed away between the pages of forgotten histories, and yet here again before them was the thing in all its living horror.Then a growl arose.The human animal had tasted blood.
All at once like wine their wrongs mounted to their heads.They remembered their dead comrades.They remembered the heart-breaking days and nights of toil they had endured on account of this man and his associates.They remembered the words of Collins, the little bookkeeper.They hated.They shook their fists across the skies.
They turned and with one accord struck back for the railroad right-of-way which led to Shingleville, the town controlled by Morrison & Daly.
The railroad lay for a mile straight through a thick tamarack swamp, then over a nearly treeless cranberry plain.The tamarack was a screen between the two towns.When half-way through the swamp, Red Jacket stopped, removed his coat, ripped the lining from it, and began to fashion a rude mask.
"Just as well they don't recognize us," said he.
"Somebody in town will give us away," suggested Shorty, the chore-boy.
"No, they won't; they're all here," assured Kerlie.
It was true.Except for the women and children, who were not yet about, the entire village had assembled.Even old Vanderhoof, the fire-watcher of the yard, hobbled along breathlessly on his rheumatic legs.In a moment the masks were fitted.In a moment more the little band had emerged from the shelter of the swamp, and so came into full view of its objective point.
Shingleville consisted of a big mill; the yards, now nearly empty of lumber; the large frame boarding-house; the office; the stable;a store; two saloons; and a dozen dwellings.The party at once fixed its eyes on this collection of buildings, and trudged on down the right-of-way with unhastening grimness.
Their approach was not unobserved.Daly saw them; and Baker, his foreman, saw them.The two at once went forth to organize opposition.
When the attacking party reached the mill-yard, it found the boss and the foreman standing alone on the saw-dust, revolvers drawn.
Daly traced a line with his toe.
"The first man that crosses that line gets it," said he.
They knew he meant what he said.An instant's pause ensued, while the big man and the little faced a mob.Daly's rivermen were still on drive.He knew the mill men too well to depend on them.Truth to tell, the possibility of such a raid as this had not occurred to him; for the simple reason that he did not anticipate the discovery of his complicity with the forces of nature.Skillfully carried out, the plan was a good one.No one need know of the weakened link, and it was the most natural thing in the world that Sadler & Smith's drive should go out with the increase of water.
The men grouped swiftly and silently on the other side of the sawdust line.The pause did not mean that Daly's defense was good.
I have known of a crew of striking mill men being so bluffed down, but not such men as these.
