CHAPTER II
AT SMOKY CREEK
KARG, Sinclair’s crew foreman, came running over to him from a pile of merchandise that had been set off the right of way on the wagon-road for loot. “That’s the superintendent’s car coming, ain’t it, Murray?” he cried, looking across the creek at the approaching train.
“What of it?” returned Sinclair.
“Why, we’re just loading the team.”
The incoming train, an engine with a way car, two flats, and the Bear Dance derrick, slowed up at one end of the wreck while Sinclair and his foreman talked. Three men could be seen getting out of the way car—McCloud and Reed Young, the Scotch roadmaster, and Bill Dancing. A gang of trackmen filed slowly out after them.
The leaders of the party made their way down the curve, and Sinclair, with Karg, met them at the point. McCloud asked questions about the wreck and the chances of getting the track clear, and while they talked Sinclair sent Karg to get the new derrick into action. Sinclair then asked McCloud to walk with him up the track to see where the cars had left the rail. The two men showed in contrast as they stepped along the ties. McCloud was not alone younger and below Sinclair’s height: his broad Stetson hat flattened him somewhat. His movement was deliberate beside Sinclair’s litheness, and his face, though burned by sun and wind, was boyish, while Sinclair’s was strongly lined.
“Just a moment,” suggested McCloud mildly, as Sinclair hastened past the goods piled in the wagon-road. “Whose team is that, Sinclair?” The road followed the right of way where they stood, and a four-horse team of heavy mules was pulling a loaded ranch-wagon up the grade when McCloud spoke.
Sinclair answered cordially. “That’s my team from over on the Frenchman. I picked them up at Denver. Nice mules, McCloud, ain’t they? Give me mules every time for heavy work. If I had just a hundred more of ’em the company could have my job—what?”
“Yes. What’s that stuff they are hauling?”
“That’s a little stuff mashed up in the merchandise car; there’s some tobacco there and a little wine, I guess. The cases are all smashed.”
“Let’s look at it.”
“Oh, there’s nothing there that’s any good, McCloud.”
“Let’s look at it.”
As Bill Dancing and Young walked behind the two men toward the wagon, Dancing made extraordinary efforts to wink at the roadmaster. “That’s a good story about the mules coming from Denver, ain’t it?” he muttered. Young, unwilling to commit himself, stopped to light his pipe. When he and Dancing joined Sinclair and McCloud the talk between the superintendent and the wrecking boss had become animated.
“I always do something for my men out of a wreck when I can; that’s the way I get the work out of them,” Sinclair was saying. “A little stuff like this,” he added, nodding toward the wagon, “comes handy for presents, and the company wouldn’t get any salvage out of it, anyway. I get the value a dozen times over in quick work. Look there!” Sinclair pointed to where the naked men heaved and wrenched in the sun. “Where could you get white men to work like that if you didn’t jolly them along once in a while? What? You haven’t been here long, McCloud,” smiled Sinclair, laying a hand with heavy affection on the young man’s shoulder. “Ask any man on the division who gets the work out of his men––who gets the wrecks cleaned up and the track cleared. Ain’t that what you want?”
“Certainly, Sinclair; no man that ever saw you handle a wreck would undertake to do it better.”
“Then what’s all this fuss about?”
“We’ve been over all this matter before, as you know. The claim department won’t stand for this looting; that’s the whole story. Here are ten or twelve cases of champagne on your wagon—soiled a little, but worth a lot of money.”
“That was a mistake loading that up; I admit it; it was Karg’s carelessness.”
“Here is one whole case of cigars and part of another,” continued McCloud, climbing from one wheel to another of the wagon. “There is a thousand dollars in this load! I know you’ve got good men, Sinclair. If they are not getting paid as they should be, give them time and a half or double time, but put it in the pay checks. The freight loss and damage account increased two hundred per cent last year. No railroad company can keep that rate up and last, Sinclair.”
“Hang the company! The claim agents are a pack of thieves,” cried Sinclair. “Look here, McCloud, what’s a pay check to a man that’s sick, compared with a bottle of good wine?”
“When one of your men is sick and needs wine, let me know,” returned McCloud; “I’ll see that he gets it. Your men don’t wear silk dresses, do they?” he asked, pointing to another case of goods under the driver’s seat. “Have that stuff all hauled back and loaded into a box car on track.”
“Not by a damned sight!” exclaimed Sinclair. He turned to his ranch driver, Barney Rebstock. “You haul that stuff where you were told to haul it, Barney.” Then, “you and I may as well have an understanding right here,” he said, as McCloud walked to the head of the mules.
“By all means, and I’ll begin by countermanding that order right now. Take your load straight back to that car,” directed McCloud, pointing up the track. Barney, a ranch hand with a cigarette face looked surlily at McCloud.
Sinclair raised a finger at the boy. “You drive straight ahead where I told you to drive. I don’t propose to have my affairs interfered with by you or anybody else, Mr. McCloud. You and I can settle this thing ourselves,” he added, walking straight toward the superintendent.
“Get away from those mules!” yelled Barney at the same moment, cracking his whip.
McCloud’s dull eyes hardly lightened as he looked at the driver. “Don’t swing your whip this way, my boy,” he said, laying hold quietly of the near bridle.
“Drop that bridle!” roared Sinclair.
“I’ll drop your mules in their tracks if they move one foot forward. Dancing, unhook those traces,” said McCloud peremptorily. “Dump the wine out of that wagon-box, Young.” Then he turned to Sinclair and pointed to the wreck. “Get back to your work.”
The sun marked the five men rooted for an instant on the hillside. Dancing jumped at the traces, Reed Young clambered over the wheel, and Sinclair, livid, faced McCloud. With a bitter denunciation of interlopers, claim agents, and “fresh” railroad men generally, Sinclair swore he would not go back to work, and a case of wine crashing to the ground infuriated him. He turned on his heel and started for the wreck. “Call off the men!” he yelled to Karg at the derrick. The foreman passed the word. The derrickmen, dropping their hooks and chains in some surprise, moved out of the wreckage. The axemen and laborers gathered around the foreman and followed him toward Sinclair.
“Boys,” cried Sinclair, “we’ve got a new superintendent, a college guy. You know what they are; the company has tried ’em before. They draw the salaries and we do the work. This one down here now is making his little kick about the few pickings we get out of our jobs. You can go back to your work or you can stand right here with me till we get our rights. What?”
Half a dozen men began talking at once. The derrickman from below, a hatchet-faced wiper, with the visor of a greasy cap cocked over his ear, stuck his head between the uprights and called out shrilly, “What’s er matter, Murray?” and a few men laughed. Barney had deserted the mules. Dancing and Young, with small regard for loss or damage, were emptying the wagon like deckhands, for in a fight such as now appeared imminent, possession of the goods even on the ground seemed vital to prestige. McCloud waited only long enough to assure the emptying of the wagon, and then followed Sinclair to where he had assembled his men. “Sinclair, put your men back to work.”
“Not till we know just how we stand,” Sinclair answered insolently. He continued to speak, but McCloud turned to the men. “Boys, go back to your work. Your boss and I can settle our own differences. I’ll see that you lose nothing by working hard.”
“And you’ll see we make nothing, won’t you?” suggested Karg.
“I’ll see that every man in the crew gets twice what is coming to him––all except you, Karg. I discharge you now. Sinclair, will you go back to work?”
“No!”
“Then take your time. Any men that want to go back to work may step over to the switch,” added McCloud.
Not a man moved. Sinclair and Karg smiled at each other, and with no apparent embarrassment McCloud himself smiled. “I like to see men loyal to their bosses,” he said good-naturedly. “I wouldn’t give much for a man that wouldn’t stick to his boss if he thought him right. But a question has come up here, boys, that must be settled once for all. This wreck-looting on the mountain division is going to stop—right here—at this particular wreck. On that point there is no room for discussion. Now, any man that agrees with me on that matter may step over here and I’ll discuss with him any other grievance. If what I say about looting is a grievance, it can’t be discussed. Is there any man that wants to come over?” No man stirred.
“Sinclair, you’ve got good men,” continued McCloud, unmoved. “You are leading them into pretty deep water. There’s a chance yet for you to get them out of serious trouble if you think as much of them as they do of you. Will you advise them to go back to work—all except Karg?”
Sinclair glared in high humor. “Oh, I couldn’t do that! I’m discharged!” he protested, bowing low.
“I don’t want to be over-hasty,” returned McCloud. “This is a serious business, as you know better than they do, and there will never be as good a time to fix it up as now. There is a chance for you, I say, Sinclair, to take hold if you want to now.”
“Why, I’ll take hold if you’ll take your nose out of my business and agree to keep it out.”
“Is there any man here that wants to go back to work for the company?” continued McCloud evenly. It was one man against thirty; McCloud saw there was not the shadow of a chance to win the strikers over. “This lets all of you out, you understand, boys,” he added; “and you can never work again for the company on this division if you don’t take hold now.”
“Boys,” exclaimed Sinclair, better-humored every moment, “I’ll guarantee you work on this division when all the fresh superintendents are run out of the country, and I’ll lay this matter before Bucks himself, and don’t you forget it!”
“You will have a chilly job of it,” interposed McCloud.
“So will you, my hearty, before you get trains running past here,” retorted the wrecking boss. “Come on, boys.”
The disaffected men drew off. The emptied wagon, its load scattered on the ground, stood deserted on the hillside, and the mules drooped in the heat. Bill Dancing, a giant and a dangerous one, stood lone guard over the loot, and Young had been called over by McCloud. “How many men have you got with you, Reed?”
“Eleven.”
“How long will it take them to clean up this mess with what help we can run in this afternoon?”
Young studied the prospect before replying. “They’re green at this sort of thing, of course; they might be fussing here till to-morrow noon, I’m afraid; perhaps till to-morrow night, Mr. McCloud.”
“That won’t do!” The two men stood for a moment in a study. “The merchandise is all unloaded, isn’t it?” said McCloud reflectively. “Get your men here and bring a water-bucket with you.”
McCloud walked down to the engine of the wrecking train and gave orders to the train and engine crews. The best of the refrigerator cars had been rerailed, and they were pulled to a safe distance from the wreck. Young brought the bucket, and McCloud pointed to the caskful of brandy. “Throw that brandy over the wreckage, Reed.”
The roadmaster started. “Burn the whole thing up, eh?”
“Everything on the track.”
“Bully! It’s a shame to waste the liquor, but it’s Sinclair’s fault. Here, boys, scatter this stuff where it will catch good, and touch her off. Everything goes—the whole pile. Burn up everything; that’s orders. If you can get a few rails here, now, I’ll give you a track by sundown, Mr. McCloud, in spite of Sinclair and the devil.”
The remains of many cars lay in heaps along the curve, and the trackmen like firebugs ran in and out of them. A tongue of flame leaped from the middle of a pile of stock cars. In five minutes the wreck was burning; in ten minutes the flames were crackling fiercely; then in another instant the wreck burst into a conflagration that rose hissing and seething a hundred feet straight up in the air.
From where they stood, Sinclair’s men looked on. They were nonplussed, but their boss had not lost his nerve. He walked back to McCloud. “You’re going to send us back to Medicine Bend with the car, I suppose?”
McCloud spoke amiably. “Not on your life. Take your personal stuff out of the car and tell your men to take theirs; then get off the train and off the right of way.”
“Going to turn us loose on Red Desert, are you?” asked Sinclair steadily.
“You’ve turned yourselves loose.”
“Wouldn’t give a man a tie-pass, would you?”
“Come to my office in Medicine Bend and I’ll talk to you about it,” returned McCloud impassively.
“Well, boys,” roared Sinclair, going back to his followers, “we can’t ride on this road now! But I want to tell you there’s something to eat for every one of you over at my place on the Crawling Stone, and a place to sleep—and something to drink,” he added, cursing McCloud once more.
The superintendent eyed him, but made no response. Sinclair led his men to the wagon, and they piled into it till the box was filled. Barney Rebstock had the reins again, and the mules groaned as the whip cracked. Those that could not climb into the wagon as it moved off straggled along behind, and the air was filled with cheers and curses.
The wreck burned furiously, and the column of black smoke shot straight up. Sinclair, as his cavalcade moved over the hill, followed on foot, grimly. He was the last to cross the divide that shut the scene on the track away from the striking wreckers, and as he reached the crest he paused and looked back, standing for a moment like a statue outlined in the vivid sunshine. For all his bravado, something told him he should never handle another wreck on the mountain division—that he stood a king dethroned. Uninviting enough to many men, this had been his kingdom, and he loved the power it gave him. He had run it like many a reckless potentate, but no one could say he had not been royal in his work as well as in his looting. It was impossible not to admire the man, his tremendous capacity, his extraordinary power as a leader; and no one liked his better traits more than McCloud himself. But Sinclair never loved McCloud. Long afterward he told Whispering Smith that he made his first mistake in a long and desperate game in not killing McCloud when he laid his hand that morning on the bridle of the mules; it would have been easy then. Sinclair might have been thinking of it even as he stood looking back. But he stood only for a moment, then turned and passed over the hill.