the rifle fire, disturbing to torrance, created a panic in the camp below. men who used weapons on each other with the worst intent were the first to appreciate their menace. true, they seldom resorted to firearms, for the pole, and the russian, and the hungarian, and the italian and their kind on construction consider the knife more suited to their particular case, as being safer and more satisfying. but for a gun they have a proper respect.
some of the groups of gamblers on the river bottom saw the raft while yet torrance was wrapped in the evening picture, watching at first with the stupidity of their class, then with equally characteristic suspicion. from group to group the strange spectacle passed without spoken word; and some whose spotted lives had carried them through varied scenes realised the threat of the rapids. here and there one, more sensitive to the struggle, rose to his feet in unconscious sympathy. the stable foreman, recognising the horses, stumbled away to where his charges were housed for the night. but for the most part these slow-witted men without a quiver saw death creeping on the raft. until the horses leaped ashore each knew to a cent his position in the interrupted games.
but the rifle shot whipping out from the boss's shack up beside the grade electrified them. as if worked by a common spring, they rushed for the camp, heavy footed and panicky, drawing hidden weapons from shirt or trousers or bootleg to repel the danger they did not understand.
by the time the stranger across the river had replied twice only one face was visible about the camp.
from a shack part way up the bank toward the trestle a small man had bounded at the first report. in his right hand was a hairbrush, and a pair of mauve suspenders hung from his hips. anxious but angry, he searched the camp with those firm eyes.
adrian conrad, torrance's foreman, tressa's lover--the latter first in sequence of time as in everything else--knew these men and hated them with an intensity born of enforced association. their unorthodox but definitive methods of settling the smallest dispute were familiar to him by experience. indeed, on his small wiry frame were sundry scars of knives, whose customarily decisive operations he had thus far escaped by an arrogance of manner and a promptness of action that disconcerted a bohunk's aim and riddled his nerve.
about the camp he saw only the panic of getting to cover. as he wondered, he caught the movement of the lifting rifle across the river. ahead of the bullet his eye reached the shack beside the trestle, and torrance's quick turn pointed out its course. conrad, who kept no rifle at his shack, had to be satisfied with watching, mechanically completing his toilet where he stood. mauve suspenders jerked to his shoulders--brush slashing across his hair--one hand to test the poise of his tie--conrad was preparing for eventualities.
he marvelled at his own lack of concern. he could see tressa's struggle with her father, and he suspected its cause. also he had sufficient faith in her to feel that she was right. the stranger puzzled him. in the way he handled a rifle was the carelessness of complete confidence. even before the third bullet directed torrance's amazed eyes upward, conrad knew that tressa and her father were in no danger.
it was a fleeting glimpse of the horses disappearing among the trees that galvanised him into action. running back into the shack, he satisfied himself with a hasty glance in the mirror, stuck a jaunty stiff hat askew on his head, and sped away up the path his feet had worn through the months straight to tressa's door.
torrance was still examining the bullet marks when conrad dropped over the grade.
"there!" he placed a big finger tip importantly over one hole. "and there--and there!" he turned to conrad with such a look of awe that the latter laughed.
"all you need care," conrad said, digging a finger into torrance's chest, "is that he didn't wish to put it there."
the contractor scratched his head.
"that fellow sure can shoot . . . but it ain't half as queer as the way he didn't want to."
tressa, hearing conrad's voice, tripped to the door, her eyes aglow with a shy eagerness.
"evening, tressa!" the foreman swept off his hat. "fine evening for rifle practice."
"i know it don't matter about me," grunted torrance, "but two feet at a range of twelve hundred yards is cutting it fine for tressa."
but conrad only smiled his unconcern.
"at least you might be interested in the horses," torrance grumbled. "another bunch gone. that's your business."
"so that's the cuss who's been robbing us."
"such a clever lad, he is!" sneered torrance. "you could see through a pail with the bottom kicked out of it. he'll keep on robbing us, for all you're doing to stop him. right before our eyes he gets away with it. what do you think i pay you a hundred a month for?"
"because you can't get any one else to do half the work half as well at twice the price," grinned the foreman.
torrance growled into his moustache. "four more gone, that is. and i bet you stopped to brush your hat."
"i didn't hurry. why should i? that chap knew he was safe. he's miles away now, and by the time we could get across the river after him he'd be in the next province. he knows the prairie better than we do grade. we'd have about as much chance of getting him as you had of hitting him. besides, we're track builders, not track finders. your measly hundred a month don't half pay for my real job. get the police if you want to keep the excitement up."
"a hundred a month--and every evening in my shack," grumbled torrance. "i know lots of better men would think it good pay."
"it's every evening in your shack," gibed conrad, "or you'd have to come and live with tressa and me."
"oh?" questioned tressa.
"sure!" confidently.
"if you two are going to quarrel over me, i'll go back east."
"dad-in-law," pleaded conrad, "don't you think we could stage a good rough-and-tumble here and now? i've been two years trying to get her back east for good."
"i'm staying," declared tressa, tossing her head.
"so'm i--in spite of your father."
"what gets me," marvelled torrance, "is why he bothered to shoot when he didn't want to hit. a regular splash of them, too. i might have fired back."
conrad's eyes were twinkling. "so you might. what a blessing is self-control! i suppose he's killed so many in his day it's sort of lost its glamour. see the admiring public he left behind by only frightening you to death."
"but the woman in the case!"
"what woman?" the foreman looked from one to the other.
"you didn't see her?"
"i confess i haven't the eye for skirts you have, but--" he broke off suddenly and darted to the grade. "here!" he snapped, peering into the dark woods beyond. "come out of it."
three men emerged somewhat shame-facedly from the gloom and followed him to the shack. one of them, evidently the leader, was talking volubly, but conrad did not even appear to listen until they stood in the open before the door.
"now, what were you doing there?"
"lefty werner and heppel and me, we hear shots," explained a large, raw-boned foreigner with an ugly scar along the side of his jaw. "we come quick. fear boss and young missus maybe need help."
koppy, the polish under foreman, sent his eyes darting from face to face. in his manner was a curious mingling of bravado and diffidence--a lumbering body, a shrinking way of holding himself, a stammering foreign accent and phrasing. but in spite of it there was ample ground for torrance's persistent suspicions. perhaps it was the darting, all-seeing eyes, perhaps the exaggeration of diffidence, but koppy gave the impression of thinking more than he said.
"when we need help--" torrance began furiously.
conrad cut in more quietly, but he was evidently holding himself in check. "and so you sneak up and listen--hide in the trees?"
"no sneak." something stronger peeped through koppy's veneer.
"we won't argue it. you know i know."
"i hear rifles," said koppy, looking from foreman to boss. "i come quick." he was, in his subtle way, demanding an explanation.
"if you were half as keen over the knives and knuckle-dusters of them fellows of yours!" snapped torrance.
"rifles kill--far away. knives--perhaps not--and only that far." he swung out a dexterous arm.
"except when they throw the beastly things," growled conrad beneath his breath, with twinges of memory.
"my men throw only when they can't reach," replied koppy, as if conrad had spoken aloud.
"or when they're afraid to," added the foreman.
"or when they're afraid to," agreed the underforeman.
the hint of authority beyond his superiors nettled them both.
"i don't know what hold you have over that damned crew," torrance stormed, "but if you'd make them watch the horses you'd be earning your money better than running up here."
"that damned crew steal no horses," koppy objected with dignity. "i hold my men--yes," he went on proudly. "you pay me for that. i make them obey boss. ignace koppowski make them--"
"yes, yes," conrad broke in testily. "we know your full name. drop the heroics."
"no heroics to think of young missus." koppy turned to tressa, forced to be an uncomfortable witness of one of the frequent quarrels that never reached an issue. "if she say no danger, ignace koppowski satisfied." he bent his big frame with surprising grace.
tressa smiled on the pole from the upper step. she never could understand why her father and lover hated the fellow so. "thank you, koppy. not a bit of danger--as it happened. it was good of you to be concerned."
the pole repeated the obeisance. conrad caught his eye as he lifted his head.
"and now," he ordered shortly, "you've learned all you're likely to. get out."
a flash of anger came and went in the underforeman's face. he straightened, looking conrad in the eye.
"up here i take boss's orders. boss want us to go--we go. but boss maybe need us some day. perhaps we find who steal horses."
"i wish to hell you would," grunted torrance. "it's worth fifty bucks in your hand if you do. horses don't grow on spruce trees in this country."
"horses don't. boss lose no more--and ignace koppowski take no more pay."
with the flourish of the surprising promise he was swinging about to leave, when conrad spoke.
"one moment, koppy." his voice was very quiet, but his chin was thrust forward a little. "when miss torrance requires protection, there are those here can give it without your assistance. that's all."
a strange gleam they did not understand shot into the pole's eyes. "perhaps--not," he muttered, and disappeared over the grade, his two silent followers at his heels.
torrance scowled after them. "i'd be willing to lose every horse in the camp, if you'd go with them."
"i'll fire him to-morrow." the words chipped from conrad's lips.
torrance laughed. "two years with them brutes hasn't taught you much, adrian. fire koppy, and there wouldn't be a bohunk in camp the same night. . . . and their successors would be viler still, primed to vengeance by the bunch you'd kicked out. ten years of it has taught me not to gamble with the unknown because i hate the known. never really had so little trouble with a gang--at least, not till these last few weeks. . . . what d'ye think's got into them, adrian? somebody's sure at the bottom of all these things. that last bit of trestle didn't undermine itself, and them spikes didn't loosen just to dump the ballast train. what's the answer?"
"sheer cussedness. what would you expect from such scum?"
as they passed inside, torrance stooped to his foreman's face. "i hire a foreman to stop such things--or cow the brutes."
"i suggested firing koppy to-morrow. that's the best way."
"why koppy?"
conrad's eyes fell away sullenly. "he had the impertinence to imagine--" he stopped. "i could shoot him like a mad dog," he exploded.
torrance chuckled. "that's the spirit, lad. i was going to say that there's only one way to handle the bohunk: beat him down. . . . d'ye realise, adrian, you haven't killed a single one yet? sandy, who went before you, did for five in his last season--"
"and 'went before' me," smiled conrad, "with five knives in his ribs. thanks. i'm still alive--and i'm getting the work out of them. but this is a new one about sandy. you told the police, of course?"
"sh-sh! i couldn't swear to it in a court of law. i'm not sure an unprejudiced jury wouldn't call it accidental death. the accidents happened to be convenient to sandy and me. if a bohunk or two dropped out of the way now, d'ye think i'd try to fix it on you? i think too much of you, adrian, my lad."
tressa came round the table and pressed them into their favourite chairs. in conrad's hand she thrust a lurid-backed novel. "and after all this blood and murder, let's get to the more peaceful pursuits of brigands and treasure-hunters. sandy was a man after daddy's heart, adrian--and at the last a few hundred bohunks were after sandy's heart."
"sandy never was a hero," said conrad. "the hero never dies."
