Kitabı oku: «The Road Builders», sayfa 3
CHAPTER IV
JACK FLAGG SEES STARS
It was a month later, on a Tuesday night, and the engineers were sitting about the table in the office tent. Scribner, the last to arrive, had ridden in after dusk from mile fourteen.
For two weeks the work had dragged. Peet, back at Sherman, had been more liberal of excuses than of materials. It was always the mills back in Pennsylvania, or slow business on connecting lines, or the car famine. And it was not unnatural that the name of the superintendent should have come to stand at the front for certain very unpopular qualities. Carhart had faith in Tiffany, but the railroad’s chief engineer was one man in a discordant organization. Railroad systems are not made in a day, and the S. & W. was new, showing square corners where all should be polished round; developing friction between departments, and bad blood between overworked men. Thus it had been finally brought home to Paul Carhart that in order to carry his work through he must fight, not only time and the elements, but also the company in whose interest he was working.
Lately the office had received a few unmistakably vigorous messages from Carhart. Tiffany, too, had taken a hand, and had opened his mind to the Vice-president. The Vice-president had in turn talked with Peet, who explained that the materials were always sent forward as rapidly as possible, and added that certain delays had arisen from the extremely dangerous condition of Carhart’s road-bed. Meantime, not only rails and ties, but also food and water, were running short out there at the end of the track.
“What does he say now, Paul?” asked Old Van, after a long silence, during which these bronzed, dusty men sat looking at the flickering lamp or at the heaps of papers, books, and maps which covered the table.
Carhart drew a crumpled slip of paper from his pocket and tossed it across the table. Old Van spread it out, and read as follows: —
MR. PAUL CARHART: Small delay due to shortage of equipment. Supply train started this morning, however. Regret inconvenience, as by order of Vice-president every effort is being made to supply you regularly.
L. W. PEET,Division Superintendent.
“Interesting, isn’t it!” said Carhart. “You notice he doesn’t say how long the train has been on the way. It may not get here for thirty-six hours yet.”
“Suppose it doesn’t,” put in Scribner, “what are we going to do with the men?”
“Keep them all grading,” said Carhart.
“But – ”
“Well, what is it? This is a council of war – speak out.”
“Just this. Scraping and digging is thirsty work in this sun, and we haven’t water enough for another half day.”
“Young Van is due with water.”
“Yes, he is due, Mr. Carhart, but you told him not to come back without it, and he won’t.”
“Listen!” Outside, in the night, voices sounded, and the creaking of wagons.
“Here he is now,” said Carhart.
Into the dim light before the open tent stepped a gray figure. His face was thin and drawn; his hair, of the same dust color as his clothing, straggled down over his forehead below his broad hat. He nodded at the waiting group, threw off his hat, unslung his army canteen, and sank down exhausted on the first cot.
Old Van, himself seasoned timber and unable to recognize the limitations of the human frame, spoke impatiently, “Well, Gus, how much did you get?”
“Fourteen barrels.”
“Fourteen barrels!” The other men exchanged glances.
“Why – why – ” sputtered the elder brother, “that’s not enough for the engines!”
“It’s all we can get.”
“Why didn’t you look farther?”
“You’d better look at the mules,” Young Van replied simply enough. “I had to drive them” – he fumbled at his watch – “an even eighteen hours to get back to-night.” And he added in a whimsical manner that was strange to him, “I paid two dollars a barrel, too.”
Carhart was watching him closely. “Did you have any trouble with your men, Gus?” he asked.
Young Van nodded. “A little.”
After a moment, during which his eyes were closed and his muscles relaxed, he gathered his faculties, lighted a cigarette, and rose.
“Hold on, Gus,” said Carhart. “What are you going to do?”
“Bring the barrels up by our tent here. It isn’t safe to leave them on the wagons. The men – some of them – aren’t standing it well. Some are ‘most crazy.” He interrupted himself with a short laugh. “Hanged if I blame them!”
“You’d better go to bed, Gus,” said the chief. “I’ll look after the water.”
But Young Van broke away from the restraining hand and went out.
Half a hundred laborers were grouped around the water wagons in oppressive silence. Vandervelt hardly gave them a glance.
“Dimond,” he called, “where are you?”
A man came sullenly out of the shadows.
“Take a hand here – roll these barrels in by Mr. Carhart’s tent.” A murmur spread through the group. More men were crowding up behind. But the engineer gave his orders incisively, in a voice that offered no encouragement to insubordination. “You two, there, go over to the train and fetch some skids. I want a dozen men to help Dimond – you – you – ” Rapidly he told them off. “The rest of you get away from here – quick.”
“What you goin’ to do with that water?” The voice rose from the thick of the crowd. It drew neither explanation nor reproof from Young Van; but his manner, as he turned his back and, pausing only to light another cigarette, went rapidly to work, discouraged the laborers, and in groups of two and three they drifted off to their quarters.
The men worked rapidly, for Mr. Carhart’s assistant had a way of taking hold himself, lending a hand here or a shoulder there, and giving low, sharp orders which the stupidest men understood. As they rolled the barrels along the sides of the tent and stood them on end between the guy ropes Paul Carhart stood by, a rolled-up map in his hand, and watched his assistant. He took it all in – the cowed, angry silence of the men, the unfailing authority of the young engineer. No one felt the situation more keenly than Carhart, but he had set his worries aside for the moment to observe the methods of the younger man. Once he caught himself nodding with approval. And then, when he was about to turn away and resume his study at the table beneath the lantern, an odd scene took place. The work was done. Vandervelt stood wiping his forehead with a handkerchief which had darkened from white to rich gray. The laborers had gone; but Dimond remained.
“That’s all, Dimond,” said Vandervelt.
But the man lingered.
“Well, what do you want?”
“It’s about this water. The boys want to know if they ain’t to have a drink.”
“No; no more to-night,” replied Young Van.
“But – but – ” Dimond hesitated.
“Wait a minute,” said Van abruptly. He entered the tent, found his canteen where he had dropped it, brought it out, and handed it to Dimond.
“This is my canteen. It’s all I have a right to give anybody. Now, shut up and get out.”
Dimond hesitated, then swung the canteen over his shoulder and disappeared without a word.
“Gus,” said Paul Carhart, quietly.
“Oh! I didn’t see you there.”
“Wasn’t that something of a gallery play?”
“No, I don’t think it was. It will show them that we are dealing squarely with them. I had a deuce of a time on the ride, and Dimond really tried, I think, to keep the men within bounds. They are children, you know, – children with whiskey throats added, – and they can’t stand it as we can.”
“Gus,” said the chief, taking the boy’s arm and drawing him toward the tent, “it’s time you got to sleep. I shall need you to-morrow.”
The other engineers were still sitting about the table, talking in low tones. Carhart rejoined them. Young Van dropped on a cot in the rear and fell asleep with his boots on.
“Old Van is telling how the pay-slips came in to-day,” said Scribner.
Carhart nodded. “Go ahead.” He had found the laborers, headed by the Mexicans, so impossibly deliberate in their work that he had planned out a system of paying by the piece. When the locomotive whistle blew at night, each man was handed a slip stating the amount due him. At the end of the week the slips were to be cashed, and to-day the first payment had been made. “Go ahead,” he repeated. “How much did it cost us?”
“About seventy-five dollars more than last week,” replied Old Van. “So that, on the whole, we got a little more work out of them. But here’s what happened. When the whistle blew and I got out my satchel, nobody came. I called to a couple of them to hurry up if they wanted their pay, but they shook their heads. Finally, just two men came up and handed in all the slips.”
“Two men!” exclaimed Carhart.
“Yes. One was the cook, Jack Flagg. He had fully two-thirds of the slips. The other was his assistant, the one they call Charlie. He had the rest. I called some of the[Pg 75][Pg 76] laborers up and asked what it meant, but they said it was all right that way.”
“So you gave them the whole pay-roll?”
“Every cent.”
Carhart frowned. “That won’t do,” he said. “A man who can clean out the camp in less than a week will breed more trouble than a water famine.”
There was little more to be said, and soon the council came to a close. Scribner went promptly to sleep. Young Van awoke, and with a mumbled “good night” staggered across after Scribner, to his sleeping tent. And then, for an hour, Paul Carhart sat alone, his elbows on the table, a profile of the line spread out before him. Outside, in the night, something stirred. He extinguished his lamp and listened. Cautious steps were approaching behind the cluster of tents. A moment more and he heard a man stumble over a peg and swear aloud.
Carhart stepped out at the rear of the tent and stood waiting. Four or five shadowy figures slipped into view, caught sight of him, and paused. While they stood huddled together he made out a pair of broad shoulders towering above the group. There was only one such pair in the camp, and they belonged to the cook, Jack Flagg.
The silence lasted only a moment. Then, without speaking, the men broke and ran back into the darkness.
Carhart waited until the camp was silent, then he too, went in and to sleep.
But Young Van, dozing lightly and restlessly, was awakened by the noise behind the tents. For a few moments he lay still, then he got up and looked out. Down the knoll he could see a dim light, and after a little he made it out as coming from the mess tent of the laborers. Now and then a low murmur of voices floated up through the desert stillness.
Young Van folded up the legs of his cot, carried it out, laid it across two of the water barrels, and went to sleep there in the open air.
An hour later the mess tent was still lighted. Within, seated on blocks of timber around a cracker-box, four men were playing poker; and pressing about them was a score of laborers – all, in fact, who could crowd into the tent. The air was foul with cheap tobacco and with the hundred odors that cling to working clothes. The eyes of the twenty or more men were fixed feverishly on the greasy cards, and on the heaps of the day’s pay-slips. By a simple process of elimination the ownership of these slips had been narrowed down to the present players – Jack Flagg, his assistant Charlie, Dimond, and a Mexican. The silence carried a sense of strain. The occasional coarse jokes and boisterous laughter died down with strange suddenness.
“It’s no use,” said Flagg, finally, tossing the cards on the box; “they’re against us.”
The Mexican rose at this, and sullenly left the tent. Dimond, with a conscious laugh, gathered in two-thirds of the slips and pocketed them. It was an achievement to clean out Jack Flagg. The remaining third went to Charlie.
Flagg leaned back, clasped his great knotted hands about one knee, and looked across at Dimond. Six feet and a third tall in his socks, hard as steel rails, he could have lifted any two of the laborers about him clear of the ground, one in each hand. The lower part of his face was half covered with his long, ill-kept mustache and the tuft of hair beneath his under lip. The blue shirt he wore had unmistakably come from a military source, but not a man there, not even Charlie – himself nearly a match for his chief in height and breadth – would have dared ask when he had been in the army, nor why or how he had come to leave it.
“Dimond,” said Flagg, “let me have one of those slips a minute.”
The nervous light left Dimond’s eyes. He threw a suspicious glance across the box; then, after a moment, he complied.
Flagg held the slip near the lantern and examined it.
“Eighty cents,” he muttered, “eighty cents – and for how much work?”
“Half a day,” a laborer replied.
“Half a day’s work, and the poor devil gets eighty cents for it!”
“He gets eighty cents! He gets nothing, you’d better say. Dimond, there, is the man that gets it.”
“That’s no matter. He lost it in fair play. But look at it – look at it!” The giant cook contemptuously turned the slip over in his hand. “That devil hounds you like niggers for five hours in the hot sun – he drives you near crazy with thirst – and then he hands you out this pretty piece of paper with ‘eighty cents’ wrote on it.”
“That’s a dollar-sixty a day. We was only getting one-fifty the old way – on time.”
“You was only getting one-fifty, was you?” There was infinite scorn in Flagg’s voice; his masterly eye swept the group. “You was getting one-fifty, and now you’re thankful to get ten cents more. Do you know what you are? You’re a pack of fools – that’s what you are!”
“But look here, Jack, what can we do?”
“What can you do?” Flagg paused, glanced at his vis-à-vis. From the expression of dawning intelligence on Dimond’s face it was plain that he was waking to the suggestion. The slips that he had won to-night were worth four hundred dollars to Dimond. Why should not these same bits of paper fetch five hundred or six hundred?
“What can you do?” Flagg repeated. “Oh, but you boys make me weary. It ain’t any of my business. I ain’t a laborer, and what I do gets well paid for. But when I look around at you poor fools, I can’t sit still here and let you go on like this. You ask me what you can do? Well, now, suppose we think it over a little. Here you are, four hundred of you. This man Carhart offers you one-fifty a day to come out here into the desert and dig your own graves. Why did he set that price on your lives? Because he knew you for the fools you are. Do[Pg 81][Pg 82] you think for a minute he could get laborers up there in Chicago, where he comes from, for one-fifty? Not a bit of it! Do you think he could get men in Pennsylvania, in New York State, for one-fifty? Not a bit of it! If he was building this line in New York State, he’d be paying you two dollars, two-fifty, maybe three. And he’d be glad to get you at the price. And he’d meet your representative like a gentleman, and step around lively and walk Spanish for you, if you so much as winked.”
Dimond’s eyes were flashing with excitement, though he kept them lowered to the cards. His face was flushed. Flagg saw that the seed he had planted was growing, and he swept on, working up the situation with considerable art.
“Think it over, boys, think it over. This man Carhart finds he can’t drive you fast enough at one-fifty, so what does he do? He gets up his pay-slip scheme so’s you will kill yourselves for the chance of making ten cents more. And you stand around and let him do it – never a peep from you! Now, what’s the situation? Here’s this man, five hundred miles from nowhere; he’s got to rush the job. We know that, don’t we?”
“Yes,” muttered Dimond, with a quick breath, “we know that, all right.”
“Well, now, what about it?” Flagg looked deliberately about the eager group. “What about it? There’s the situation. Here he is, and here you are. He’s in a hurry. If he was to find out, all of a sudden, that he couldn’t drive you poor devils any farther; if he was to find out that you had just laid down and said you wouldn’t do another stroke of work on these terms, what about it? What could he do?” Flagg paused again, to let the suggestion find its mark.
“But he ain’t worrying any. He knows you for the low-spirited lot you are. So what does he do? He sends out a bunch of you and makes you ride three days to get water, and then he stacks the barrels around his tent, where he and his gang can get all they want, and tells you to go off and suck your thumbs. Much he cares about you.”
Dimond raised his eyes. “Talk plain, Jack,” he said in a low voice. “What is it? What’s the game?”
Flagg gave him a pitying glance. “You’re still asking what’s the game,” he replied, and went on half absently, “Let’s see. How much is he paying the iron squad – how much was that, now?”
“Two dollars,” cried a voice.
“Two dollars – yes, that was it; that was it. He is paying them two dollars a day, and he has set them to digging and grading along with you boys that only gets one-sixty. I happened to notice that to-day, when I was a-walking up that way. Those iron-squad boys was out with picks and shovels, a-doing the same work as the rest of you, only they was doing it for forty cents more. They ain’t common laborers, you see. There’s a difference. You couldn’t expect them to swing a pick for one-sixty a day. It would be beneath ’em. They’re sort o’ swells, you see – ”
He paused. There was a long silence.
“Boys,” – it was Dimond speaking, – “boys, Jack Flagg is right. If it costs Carhart two per for the iron squad, it’s got to cost him the same for us!”
Carhart was turning the delay to some account by shutting himself up with his maps and plans and reports and figures. At ten o’clock on the following morning he heard a step without the tent, and, looking up, saw Young Vandervelt before him.
“There’s trouble up ahead, Mr. Carhart.”
“What is it?”
“The laborers have quit. They demand an increase of ten per cent in their pay.”
“All right, let them have it.”
“I’ll tell my brother. He said no, we shouldn’t give in an inch.”
“You tell him I say to let them have what they ask.”
Young Van hurried back with the order. Carhart quietly resumed the problems before him.
Old Van, when he received the chief’s message, swore roundly.
“What’s Paul thinking of!” he growled. “He ought to know that this is only the tip of the wedge. They’ll come up another ten per cent before the week’s out.”
But Old Van failed to do justice to the promptness of Jack Flagg. At three in the afternoon the demand came; and for the second time that day the scrapers lay idle, and the mules wagged their ears in lazy comfort.
“Well!” cried Old Van, sharply. “Well! It’s what I told you, isn’t it! Now, I suppose you still believe in running to Paul with the story.”
“Yes,” replied the younger brother, firmly, “of course. He’s the boss.”
“All right, sir! All right, sir!” The veteran engineer turned away in disgust as his brother started rapidly back to the camp. The laborers, meanwhile, covered with sweat and dust, tantalized by the infrequent sips of water doled out to them, lay panting in a long, irregular line on the newly turned earth.
“Well, Gus,” said Carhart, with a wry smile, at sight of the dusty figure before the tent, “are they at it again?”
“They certainly are.”
“They don’t mean to lose any time, do they? How much is it now?”
“Ten per cent more. What shall we do?”
“Give it to them.”
“All right.”
“Wait a minute, Gus. Who’s their spokesman?
“Dimond.”
“Dimond?” Carhart frowned. “Nobody else?”
“No; but the cook has been hanging around a good deal and talking with him.”
“Oh – I see. Well, that’s all. Go ahead; give them what they ask.”
Again the mules were driven at the work. Again – and throughout the day – the sullen men toiled on under the keen eye of Old Vandervelt. If he had been a driver before, he was a czar now. If he could not control the rate of pay, he could at least control the rate of work. To himself, to the younger engineers, to the men, to the mules, he was merciless. And foot by foot, rod by rod, the embankment that was to bear the track crept on into the desert. The sun beat down; the wind, when there was a wind, was scorching hot; but Old Van gave no heed. Now and again he glanced back to where the material train lay silent and useless, hoping against hope that far in the distance he might see the smoke of that other train from Sherman. Peet had said, yesterday, that it was on the way; and Old Van muttered, over and over, “D – n Peet!”
Night came finally, but not the train. Aching in body, ugly in spirit, the laborers crept under their blankets. Morning came, but no train. Carhart spent an hour on the grade, and saw with some satisfaction that the time was not wholly lost; then he went back to the operator’s tent and opened communications with Sherman. Sherman expressed surprise that the train had not arrived; it had been long on the way, said the despatcher.
At this message, repeated to him by the operator, word for word, Carhart stood thoughtful. Then, “Shut off the despatcher. Wait – tell him Mr. Carhart is much obliged. Shut him off. Now call Paradise. Say to him – can’t you get him?”
“Yes – all right now.”
“Say – ‘When did the supply train pass you on Tuesday?’ – got that?”
“Yes – one minute. ‘When – did supply – train pass – you – Tuesday?’”
“Now what does he say?”
“‘Supply – train’ – he says – ‘passed – here Wednesday – two – P.M. – west-bound.’ There, you see, it didn’t leave on Tuesday at all. It’s only a few hours to Paradise from Sherman.”
Carhart had Peet’s message still crumpled in his pocket. He straightened it out and read it again. “All right,” he said to the operator, “that will do.” And as he walked slowly and thoughtfully out into the blazing sunlight he added to himself: “So, Mr. Peet, that’s the sort you are, is it? I think we begin to understand each other.”
“Paul!” It was the gruff voice of Old Vandervelt, low and charged with anger.
“Yes – what?”
“What is it you mean to do with these laborers?”
“Build the line.”
“Well, I’ve done what I could. They’ve walked out again.”
“Another ten per cent?”
“Another ten per cent.”
“Let’s see – we’ve raised them twenty per cent since yesterday morning, haven’t we?”
“You have – yes.”
“And that ought to be about enough, don’t you think?”
“If you want my opinion, – yes.”
“Now look here, Van. You go back and bring them all up here by the train. Tell them Mr. Carhart wants to talk to them.”
Vandervelt stared at his chief in downright bewilderment. Then he turned to obey the order; and as he walked away Carhart caught the muttered words, “Organize a debating society, eh? Well, that’s the one fool thing left to do!”
But the men did not take it in just this way; in fact, they did not know how to take it. They hesitated, and looked about for counsel. Even Dimond was disturbed. The boss had a quiet, highly effective way of saying and doing precisely what he meant to say and do. Dimond was not certain of his own ability to stand directly between the men and Paul Carhart. There was something about the cool way in which they were ordered before him that was – well, businesslike. He turned and glanced at Flagg. The cook scowled and motioned him forward, and so the dirty, thirsty regiment moved uncertainly back toward the train, and formed a wide semicircle before the boss.
Carhart had taken his position by a pile of odds and ends of lumber that lay beside the track. He awaited them quietly, the only man among the hundreds there who appeared unconscious of the excitement in the air. The elder Vandervelt stood apart, scowling at the performance. The younger scented danger, and, climbing up on the train, walked back over the empty flat-cars to a position directly behind his chief. There he sat down, his legs swinging over the side of the car.
Carhart reached up for his spectacles, deliberately breathed on them, wiped them, and replaced them. Then he gave the regiment a slow, inquiring look.
“Have you men authorized somebody to speak for you?” he said in a voice which, though it was not loud, was heard distinctly by every man there.
There was a moment’s hesitation; then the laborers, or those who were not studying the ground, looked at Dimond.
The telegraph operator stepped out of his little tent, and stood looking at the scene with startled eyes. Up ahead, the iron squad, uncertain whether to continue their work, had paused, and now they were gazing back. As the seconds slipped away their exclamations of astonishment died out. All eyes were fixed on the group in the centre of the semicircle.
For at this critical moment, there was, it seemed, a hitch. Dimond’s broad hat was pulled down until it half concealed his eyes. He stood motionless. At his elbow was Jack Flagg, muttering orders that the nominal leader did not seem to hear.
“Flagg, step out here!”
It was Carhart speaking, in the same quiet, distinct manner. The sound of his voice broke the tension. The men all looked up, even the nerveless Dimond. To Young Van they were oddly like a room full of schoolboys as they stood silently waiting for Flagg to obey. The giant cook himself was very like a schoolboy, as he glanced uneasily around, caught no sign of fight in the obedient eyes about him, sought counsel in the ground, the sky, the engines standing on the track, then finally slouched forward.
Young Van caught himself on the verge of laughing out. He saw Flagg advance a way and pause. Carhart waited. Flagg took a few more steps, then paused again, with the look of a man who feels that he has been bullied into a false position, yet cannot hit upon the way out.
“Well,” he said, glowering down on the figure of the engineer in charge – and very thin and short Carhart looked before him – “well, what do you want of me?”
For reply Carhart coolly looked him over. Then he snatched up a piece of scantling, whirled it once around his head, and caught Jack Flagg squarely on his deep, well-muscled chest. The cook staggered back, swung his arms wildly to recover his balance, failed, and fell flat, striking on the back of his head.
But he was up in an instant, and he started forward, swearing copiously and reaching for his hip pocket.
Young Van saw the motion. He knew that Paul Carhart seldom carried a weapon, and he felt that the safety of them all lay with himself. Accordingly he leaped to the ground, ran to the side of his chief, whipped out a revolver, and levelled it at Jack Flagg.
“Hands up!” he cried. “Hands up!”
“Gus,” cried Carhart, in a disgusted voice, “put that thing up!”
Young Van, crestfallen, hesitated; then dropped his arm.
“Now, Flagg,” said the chief, tossing the scantling to one side, “you clear out. You’d better do it fast, or the men’ll finish where I left off.”
The cook glanced behind him, and his eyes flitted about the semicircle from face to face. He was keen enough to take in the situation, and in a moment he had ducked under the couplers between two cars and disappeared.
“Well,” exclaimed Young Van, pocketing his revolver, “it didn’t take you long to wind that up, Mr. Carhart.”
“To wind it up?” Carhart repeated, turning with a queer expression toward his young assistant. “To begin it, you’d better say.” Then he composed his features and faced the laborers. “Get back to your work,” he said.
