at four o’clock that afternoon, since it was saturday, the men were paid off for the week. no pay day will ever be satisfactory to the recipients until that happy state of affairs is reached when each man himself decides on the amount which is due him. even then there will be some who will leave the pay-window with the discontented feeling that they have cheated themselves.
the bookkeeper, from his grated window, gave out the pay checks to the line of mexican laborers who, displaying their brass number tags, passed before him. he kept up a running fire of argument. over and over he was obliged to explain the amounts of the checks.
“the mess bill comes out of you.”
“you had twenty dollars’ worth of coupons at the store.”
“no, you only worked five days this week.”
“hospital fee is twenty-five cents.”
these were fair samples of the innumerable[240] arguments which he was compelled to go through with every week. and in spite of all explanations, the poor miners would walk away from the window, looking with dejected, unbelieving eyes at the small figures of their checks. men of this class can never realize that if out of wages of ninety dollars a month they spend seventy-five for food and store coupons, the balance due to them is not ninety dollars, but fifteen.
as usual on pay day afternoon, in the road before the office, little groups of men were arguing excitedly among themselves, discussing the manner in which they were “cheated.” the dejected droop of their shoulders was accentuated by the quick, jerky movements of their arms as they gesticulated.
knowlton, the deputy sheriff, who was assigned to kay, sat on the steps before the office door. he was rolling a cigarette, seemingly unconscious of the noisy crowd. but pay day was always likely to cause trouble, and he was prepared for it.
“no one quite dared to lead an attack upon knowlton, who stood his ground beside the body.” page 241
the group of excited men augmented fast, as little knots of miners were paid off, and found awaiting them a willing audience of their[241] grievances. a word will fire a crowd of this kind as quickly as a fuse will set off a charge of giant powder.
knowlton watched them closely, out of the corner of his eye. he saw one of the leaders in the discussion stoop down and pick up a large rock.
“hey, rigas! drop that, quick!” he shouted.
for answer the rock crashed through the glass of the office window.
knowlton waded into the midst of the crowd, and seized rigas by the collar, almost hurling him off his feet. his rough tactics generally overawed his prisoners, but rigas had been drinking, and fought. the crowd began to close in.
knowlton dropped his hand to the point where the suspenders joined his belt and whipped out his “automatic.” raising it in the air, he swung it down with all his strength upon rigas’s head. there was a stunning report, and the miner lay upon the ground, with a hole two inches wide through his forehead. the crowd, muttering angry curses, drew back. no one quite dared to lead[242] an attack upon knowlton, who stood his ground beside the body, his still smoking gun in his hand. the camp doctor came up on the run, having heard the sound of the report. kneeling beside the body, he gave short and incisive directions.
“valrigo, peres, gonzales, and escallerra; you four carry him over to the hospital!”
the four men whom he had designated bent over and clumsily raised the inanimate body.
“no, no,” said the doctor, “don’t let his head hang back. here, valencella! come and hold up his head. that is right. now slowly with him, boys; easy, don’t jolt him!”
the doctor walked beside the bearers, his hand on rigas’s heart, which for a wonder was still beating. behind them fell in a sullen, straggling, pushing procession of the other men, watching the blood drip from rigas’s head.
then knowlton turned, and walked slowly into the office. as he entered, the volume of curses changed from a mutter to a roar. he found loring on his knees, locking the combination of the safe.
“well, mr. loring, i’ve done it now. i’ve killed rigas. these damned automatics! you[243] can beat a man over the head for a week with a colt without its going off.”
“too bad!” said stephen calmly, rising from his knees. “but the character of rigas was not such that he will be a great loss to the world. he was always causing some sort of mischief.”
“it ain’t rigas that i am worrying about,” said the deputy. “it’s the rest of them.”
“how long can you hold them in check?” asked stephen.
“if they were sober, i could hold them until hell froze, but they have just been paid off, and by night they will all be drunk. then there will be trouble. it has been brewin’ for a week. some agitator chap has been talking it up to them about the way the company was stealing from them. i don’t jest know what we had better do,” he concluded, while he fingered his gun nervously, and looked to loring for guidance.
“rigas is dead, you said?” asked stephen.
“well, not exactly. he might as well be, though. a forty-five calibre hole through your head ain’t healthy. if he ain’t dead now, he won’t live more than a few hours. and when he does die—!” knowlton broke off gloomily.
[244]
“what are you going to do about it, mr. loring?”
“we can only wait,” answered loring. “we must not let them see that we are anxious.”
“ain’t you going to do nothing?” knowlton looked at loring in perfect amazement.
stephen smiled, and shook his head. “no, i am going to supper. i would advise you to eat at the mess to-night, instead of at your shack. i am afraid that at present you are not exactly popular.”
he walked off towards the eating-house, while knowlton stood looking after him blankly.
“he don’t realize that in about three hours after those men get to drinking, the kay mine won’t exist. if we had a real man in charge here, we might do something about it. he thinks, i suppose, that because the men like him there won’t be trouble. hell! and i used to think he had sense!” knowlton almost snorted in his rage.
at supper every man was keyed to a high pitch of excitement. there were only about twenty white men in camp, and though they were well armed, the mexicans outnumbered them more than fifteen to one. stephen alone[245] refrained from joining in the flurry of question and conjecture which whirled about the table. although he seemed unmoved, a close observer would have noticed that he gripped his knife and fork almost as if they had been weapons. wah slid his plate of soup before him, at the same time patting him on the shoulder with affectionate interest.
“me bludder like one owl,” he said.
“hey, wah, this soup is rotten!” called a young fellow from the end of the table.
“oh, lubbly, lubbly soup!” chanted wah. “lubbly, me bludder, lubbly.”
“i’m not your bludder, wah,” answered the man politely. “i would rather have an ape for a brother than you.”
“you me bludder, allee samee, allee samee.” saying which, wah disappeared into the kitchen, only to stick his head a moment later through the connecting window, and call: “oh, you pig-faced swede, oh, you pig-faced swede! la, la, boom, boom!”
but even wah was unable to break the tension that surrounded the supper. as the men were lighting their pipes at the close of the meal, from the gulch behind the camp where were[246] the saloons, came the sound of a fusillade of shots and a burst of shrill yelling.
“the game is on,” thought loring.
as the noise outside became louder, stephen said to the men: “i want all you fellows to get your guns and go over into the office to guard the safe. go as quietly as you can so as not to stir things up. keep quiet in there and don’t shoot unless you are compelled to. we have just issued some new stock, and if there is news of any fighting here the value will go all to pieces. we must just wait, and keep quiet. remember a fight means almost ruin, and we have got to avoid it.”
knowlton looked quickly over to mckay, and nodded. both were experienced men, and they knew that now was no time to think of stock values, but of actually saving the mine, and the lives of the white men there. they knew that serious trouble was intended, as since the shooting, every outlet of the camp had been guarded by mexicans. they knew that the only chance, not for avoiding a fight, but for avoiding a massacre, lay in an immediate attack on the mexicans, before they were completely out of hand. and loring was thinking[247] of stock values! still, they remembered that he was inexperienced, and they set down to indecision what seemed like criminal folly. as for mckay, he had known loring to fall once before, and he was not hopeful for the outcome.
“knowlton,” continued loring, “you had better stay here with me. it won’t do for the miners to think that you are hidden.”
“well, i won’t be,” exclaimed knowlton decisively. “there is only one thing in this world that i am afraid of, and that is a fool!”
the men hurried to their tents to procure their firearms. from the window of the mess stephen watched them, as one by one they returned and slipped into the darkened office. then he stepped out on the porch, and seated himself beneath the full glare of the hanging electric light. knowlton, with a dogged expression on his face, seated himself on the steps. another man came and joined them. it was mckay.
“let me stay here with you, steve,” he said gruffly.
“thank you!” replied stephen. then he relapsed into silence.
[248]
sitting with his watch beside him on the arm of the chair, and smoking furiously, his eye traveled to knowlton, and dwelt on the brown oiled butt of the latter’s “automatic,” an odd-shaped lump against the white of his shirt.
“that was the first time i ever killed a man by accident,” murmured knowlton, half to himself. “the doc said after supper that rigas might possibly live another hour.”
“an hour, did you say?” asked loring. then again he sat in silence, staring intently at his watch.
“quarter past eight. he has lived more than an hour since supper.”
from the valley, seven miles away, came softly the whistle of the evening train. the noise in camp was continually increasing in volume. groups of miners went by the mess shouting, singing, and whooping derisively. every now and then the babel of voices was punctuated by shots fired in rapid succession as some one emptied his gun in the air.
by the hospital a silent group was waiting, waiting for rigas to die.
the men on the porch watched that sinister mass with apprehension. the effect was far[249] more suggestive than that of the noisier portion of the camp.
suddenly the mass of men by the hospital stirred, heaved, and moved. from a hundred throats came a dull roar.
“rigas is dead,” said loring, shutting his watch with a snap.
the crowd of men by the hospital began to roll towards the mess. as a huge swell rolls in from the sea, so the black mass, swaying, rising, falling, swept on. as it drew nearer, the white of the men’s faces stood out in the glare of the electric lights even as the foam upon that wave.
“put out the porch lights!” yelled knowlton.
“i am manager here, and they stay lit,” shouted loring back to him.
even as the surf curls before breaking and sweeping up the beach, so the wave of men seemed to rise and draw itself together, before surging up the steps.
stephen had stepped forward to the edge of the steps in front of knowlton. he raised his fist for silence, and such was the compelling force in his eyes that for a moment he was obeyed. but as he started to speak, a great[250] hiss arose from the crowd, like the sound of escaping steam from some giant locomotive. loring gripped the railing of the porch hard, and again shouted something.
“god, he’s crazy!” yelled knowlton to mckay. “he is going to try and argue.” knowlton’s hand lay tightly on the gun in his belt.
“steve has lost his head again,” thought mckay bitterly. “i might have known that he didn’t have the stuff in him.”
a bottle whizzed by loring’s ear, breaking with a crash against the wall behind him. for an instant the sound of breaking glass caught the attention of the crowd.
“you want the money in the safe?” shouted loring.
“sí, sí, yes, sí, yes, sí!” roared the crowd, in a mixture of two languages.
the sound lulled for a second. stephen waved his keys in the air. “you shall have it.”
the shouting was wilder than before, and echoed from end to end of the camp.
“coward!” moaned mckay, sickened by such an exhibition. some one in the crowd fired at loring, luckily with drunken aim.[251] the bullet kicked up the dust at the foot of the steps. knowlton jumped to his feet, and leveled his gun at the crowd.
“sit down!” roared stephen. not knowing why he did so, knowlton lowered his gun and sank again into his chair.
“do you want knowlton?” shouted loring, pointing to the deputy beside him. as he spoke, he glanced at his watch, which lay in his hand. his face was reeking with sweat.
“do you want knowlton?” he shouted again.
the howl that went up from the mob was as if from the throats of blood-hungry beasts.
knowlton’s face was white; but his eyes showed their scorn of loring. he looked at him in contempt, and looking, to his surprise, saw the tense lines of his face light with the gleam of victory.
“you want knowlton?” he shouted for the last time. “then come and take him!”
as the mob surged up the steps, a body of horsemen charged them fiercely from behind. right and left galloped the riders, beating the mob over the heads with their winchesters, or cutting them with their quirts, riding down[252] men beneath the weight of their horses. the mob scattered and fled in every direction. the leader of the horsemen swung out of the saddle in front of the steps, and winchester in hand, walked up to loring.
“are you mr. loring?” he asked.
“yes,” answered stephen.
“well, it seems as if we were just in time—not much too early, are we? we just got your telegram in dominion in time to raise a big posse, and pack them onto the evening train. it was about the liveliest job that i ever did, and i reckon it is one of the best,” said the sheriff, surveying the scene with satisfaction. “how did the trouble start anyhow?” he asked.
stephen explained rapidly. at the conclusion, the sheriff turned to knowlton: “killed him by accident, eh? too bad you didn’t have the pleasure of meaning to. now i guess we’d better clean up the camp a bit, hadn’t we, mr. loring?”
stephen agreed, and the sheriff sent his deputies in groups of twos and threes, to raid the tents of the mexicans, and gather in their arms.
[253]
knowlton approached loring in a stupefied manner.
“when could you have telegraphed?” he asked. “they have been guarding the roads ever since the shooting.”
stephen smiled. “when you jumped into that crowd, knowlton, i sent reade out through the back window of the office to send a telegram for help, and to get horses for them ready at the station camp.”
a light broke over mckay’s face. walking up to loring, he laid his hand on his shoulder.
“by god, steve, i am proud of you!” he said. then turning to the arc light which hung from the ceiling of the porch, he addressed it softly: “and that’s the man we fired!”
