Luke Allan

“ And so Torrance, waving a boisterous hand from the low seat of his speeder to the young pair standing on the steps of the shack, threw open the gas and throbbed down the track to the end-of-steel village to add to his audience two Policemen and a train crew who were already crowing in anticipation of the end.
Adrian Conrad and Tressa saw him go without a worry in the world but that he would return too soon. Where only the three of them lived it was almost impossible for the two lovers to creep away by themselves. Even a sympathetic daddy becomes a burden in the springtime of youth. ”

“ Stamford cast a furtive eye back on the sixty miles and shuddered. Almost at daylight—and that meant about two-thirty a.m.—they had pulled out of Medicine Hat, for he was determined to run no risk of a night in the open. One he had had already, and was content. That sixty miles of prairie hung behind him like a pall, too oppressive to be relieved by its varied monotony. Here a line of unaccountable sand-buttes, there a landscape of rolling sweeps like the billows of a petrified sea, and sometimes a stretch of dullness that melted into the horizon uncountable miles away ”

“ Werner alone did not follow him. When five hundred fists thrust as many weapons into the air and cried for action, Werner felt the urge of action of his own. Slowly he slunk to the outskirts of the mob.
"This," he said to himself, "is where Hugo Werner takes to the tall timbers. I don't hypnotise worth a cent. All Koppy's eagle eye does to me is warn me I'm not bullet-proof. Me for the safe spots; they can get as maudlin as they like. I got a hunch this is no place for Hugo Werner." ”

“ He felt that she was laughing in the silence that followed.
"There are more reasonable hours for a moonlight promenade than ten minutes to one in the morning—even in such moonlight."
"Any hour of the moonlight will suit me," he said,—"if I'm not alone. What wakened you?"
"When two men stand outside one's window quarrelling, a light sleeper is apt to waken."
"Didn't you hear the rifle-shot?"
"Sh-sh!" she whispered. "I think I hear Amos. If he wakens he'll not sleep for the rest of the night. And he must have his eight hours. Good-night, Mr. Stamford!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ A lumbering Pole, his club knocked away by an unexpected blow from Torrance, leaped furiously on the contractor. The latter turned his back to receive the shock, at the same time ducking forward. The Pole's legs shot into the air before Conrad's eyes—a shriek—and a sudden stain of blood on the pant leg. Yet no one had touched the place where the blood gushed.
The scene was changing curiously. A score of men still fought to reach their prey, blind and deaf to everything but their own passions; but the great crowd that had made the threat of disaster so ominous had disappeared. ”

“ Isabel had refused to leave to her any of the care of their rooms, but Mary Aikens, as hostess, never omitted that morning visit to see that nothing was lacking for their comfort—perhaps, too, to dream a little over the wonderful thing that had happened that summer to the H-Lazy Z, the lonely ranch where never before in her time had another woman set foot. In Isabel's kindly eyes and sympathetic silences she read what one woman can tell another without the perils of speech. ”

“ The maddest fury of the fight seemed to have waned, yet Conrad knew that the danger to him and Torrance had increased. Italian and Hungarian, Pole and Swede, had forgotten their race feud in the greater hatred of their bosses. The noise, so hideous and snarling when they arrived, was stilled in unity of purpose.
Many had retired, some to nurse their wounds, others not yet blind enough to custom to ignore authority. Those who remained knew what they were doing. Murder was in their eyes. ”

“ The sound galvanised more startling life into the group of cowboys. Those at the fire dropped their branding irons and rushed for their horses, and the two at the corrals were in their saddles as the howl ceased.
Stamford tumbled down the slope and raced for Hobbles. As he clambered into the saddle he realised with a gasp how hopeless flight was. Even with such a short start he had confidence that Hobbles could hold her own in the dark—but he couldn't at such a speed. Fifty yards convinced him of it—fifty yards of giving Hobbles her head and concentrating on the horn in front. ”

“ Koppy had explained it to Tressa in fiery words; the Independent Workers of the World had found tilled soil in the breasts of these unthinking men. By feeding their smouldering bitterness against conditions due largely to themselves it had won their unreasoning fidelity; like dogs they crept to heel. Here at last was a medium in which to express their wrath. That it could profit them nothing mattered not. All they read was that, under-dogs as they were doomed to be, they might make their masters suffer.
Werner, more sensitive to the silences, grumbled at his leader's back. ”

“ When they dashed through the narrow exit to Toronto Street the fun was on.
Dakota struck straight for the Provincial opposite—a brilliant idea that staggered them all.
Now, the front door of the Provincial was attainable only by climbing fourteen steep steps and crossing a deep verandah. The height enabled loungers to expectorate in comfort over the railing to the sidewalk without inconveniencing themselves, and to some extent discouraged the visits of the too heavily loaded, who naturally gravitated to the more accessible bar door, situated lower down the street and on the street level. ”

“ A few of the men were on their feet now, mumbling, waving their soiled fists. Certain mysterious movements were significant to Conrad. Like a flash he had Koppy round the waist and was pressing a small automatic into his stomach.
"I want them to sit down, Koppy," ordered the foreman, "every one of them. You have till I count five. If I see a knife in the meantime, time's up. One—two—"
The Pole swallowed—shouted something in a foreign tongue, and every hand fell into the open, weaponless, every man sat down.
"You're a wise guy sometimes, Koppy," smiled Conrad. ”

“ He always knew beforehand when he would not sleep. Even as a youngster the aftermath of indigestible luxuries, nightmare, was heralded before he closed his eyes by a feeling of oppression. To-night he longed for Imp's watchful ears at the foot of his bed. Outside, the world was dominated by the hideous yelping of the coyotes. To Stamford they were a symbol of Red Deer mysteries: though hundreds of them by day lurked within the horizon, they were seldom visible; at night, when only their eyes could see, they filled the darkness with raucous clamour. ”

“ Rasping voices lifted themselves in song. No laughter, no shouting—only the sounds of men whose memories are more sensitive than their feelings, who live in the past or the future, never in the present. Evening was fluttering gently down, mellowing line and tone.
Even to Big Jim Torrance at such an hour came the appeal of dimly reverent things. Here on the fringe of prairie and forest, in the vast spaces of Northern Canada where wolf met coyote, Torrance was waging a big fight. Last year he had brought the grade, a simple task, east of the mountains. ”

“ Out in the stable Pink Eye was as weary as his master.
Mary Aikens went into the streets, and in the post office heard the latest gossip—a new case of cattle-thieving off toward Irvine. For hours she walked up and down the streets with a terrible ache at her heart.
That night her husband sent her to a show in the "opera house," while he broke loose up in the Toronto Street den and lined the pockets of the usual sharpers on the look-out for reckless fools. Through a wretched performance she sat without grasping even its general idea, miserable, lonely, trembling with indecision. ”

“ A volley of curses from Torrance directed Mahon's eyes to the trestle. The bohunks had attacked at last! The contractor was struggling madly with two of them! Mahon searched anxiously for the Indian, but he was far up the grade now, shooting among the trees. Torrance was fighting it out alone on that dizzy height.
As the light broke, Ignace Koppowski, too, took stock. He knew he had only to maintain the siege long enough to win; but he also realised that his followers had little stomach for a long struggle. The rising sun, too, was against every precedent as a time to attack authority. ”

“ Two women scurried in a panic for a locked door, screamed, and turned blanched faces to the terror. Dakota raised his arm, shouted, and on the instant every mouth closed, every finger was held. With doffed Stetsons, guns pointing to the sky, a band of dare-devil cow-punchers trotted meekly past the terrified women, bowing as they went, and twenty yards beyond broke loose with redoubled vigour.
At the corner of Main Street every eye flicked across the tracks to the barracks, but things seemed lifeless there. ”

“ And within that circle were only a handful he could call friends, and a camp of bohunks. He hated the shadows of the forest, where life was scarcer than in the Hills, where even keen wits were wasted.
Here the guns of his former enemies were supplanted by knives and knuckle-dusters and clubs; and the men who wielded them were cowardly, slinking foreigners whose very appearance was repugnant. Sneaky, underground, despicable crime it was, running the gamut from petty annoyance to senseless murder. None of the open-handed, bold and reasoned intelligence of the prairie criminal. ”

“ The dull thud of hoofs and the rattle of wheels drew them both to the door. A buckboard was coming drunkenly down the eastern trail, its horses, under the direction of an inexpert—or drunken—driver, uncertain of what was expected of them. The smallest deviation from the beaten track meant that one horse was mounting the ridge and the other the prairie at the side, the wheels following them in jerks from the deep ruts in the black loam worn by the unanimous track of every previous vehicle and horse. ”

“ Had he not, at unguarded moments, been held down by momentary flashes of the old dreads he would have jumped on his little speeder and chugged away to the west to sing his satisfaction to the hundred and one contractors who were looking for him to open the way to their longest and heaviest trains of supplies, growing longer and heavier as grade crept into the mountains. He wanted to cry to them: "Run your trains—fifty cars at a time, if the rest of the line will bear 'em. As for the Tepee trestle, it's as steady as the mountains—and a blame sight bigger job." ”

“ Almost instantly the gates at the bottom of the gangways opened and two lines of steers from the crowded, white-fenced pens rushed up the slope to the open doors of the cars.
The lounging cowboys sprang to life. Throwing themselves in excited abandon on their bronchos behind the station, they tore across the tracks and disappeared in the folds of the prairie, shouting, cracking their quirts, laughing taunts at each other, to reappear a few minutes later, little less noisy, behind a small herd of galloping cattle headed for the emptying outer stockades. ”

“ CHAPTER VIII A TRAGEDY OF CONSTRUCTION Stretched on the dry grass beside the trestle, hanging perilously over the edge of the dizzy drop to the river bottom, Tressa watched the unceasing struggle with the hungry quicksands.
A hive of industry was below her—men and horses, huge tree trunks and masses of rock, network trestle and piled poles. Men swarmed everywhere, appearing from her height mere dots of movement, ridiculously unfit to cope with the force that was making her father so irritable these days. ”

“ A herd of cattle was browsing in the succulent grass. To the east the cliff sloped away behind the obtruding crags. There undoubtedly was the entrance. And with his field-glasses Stamford picked out on the lower ledge a rude shack that, to the bare eye, merged in the general greyness of the background.
Nothing else of life could he find, though the valley was only a few hundred yards from him. Then where were the dogs? And where were dogs must be humans. ”

“ She heard the familiar whistle break out far down the sloping path beyond the grade. Higher and higher it mounted, and with hand held she listened with smiling eyes. She would keep on with her mending as if she had not heard; and the whistle would grow more impatient as it approached, calling her to reply.
Now he was half way up the slope—now only a few yards beyond the grade. She grabbed her mending and began to work industriously. Now he was on the grade—he would see her sitting there working as if she had forgotten there was an Adrian Conrad. ”

“ He lifted himself to the top of a rock and stood looking across the valley at the cattle, ignoring the canine protest. Then, as if startled, he leaped out of sight and did not reappear. The barks rumbled away to grunts and growls, and presently the dogs returned to the lower level.
Stamford was still watching with fascination their slinking muscular movements, when one of them raised his head to the top of the cliff and growled, and in a moment both were filling the valley with their disturbing din. ”

“ Koppy shrugged his shoulders; everything was in the lap of the gods; inspiration was one of his holds on his followers.
"'Cause every damn one of them will do what you say," Werner assured him, "from waiting to say grace before tackling the soup, to blowing that trestle to perdition. That is, if they can do it in the dark."
"In dark—it is our way," returned the leader crisply. "Laws? Bah! For the bosses they are, like everything else. We work down here." ”