As aforesaid, it was the unexpected that opposed Carter with a visage of stony calm when he came from Winnipeg out to the "Ragged Lands" a week or so later. For whereas he had left the camp convulsed in throes of constructive labor, the whistle of his engine raised piercing echoes; no other sounds disturbed the sleeping forest. In the cut south of the camp he passed the big digger, at rest from the roar, rattle, and clank of chains, hiss of escaping steam. The pile-driver loomed idly on a distant trestle. When engine and caboose stopped opposite the cook-house, he saw that the camp – which ought to have been empty – teemed with men.

He shrugged when Hart, who was with him, exclaimed in wonder: "Can't prove it by me. But we'll soon know. There's Bender – coming from the office."

"Strike," the giant replied to their questioning. "Teamsters, graders, bridge and track men, all went out at noon. What for? God knows; but I allow that Buckle could tell. He wasn't hanging round the Winnipeg camp for nothing. I'm sorry now – " His bunched fists, big as mauls, fully explained his regret, and indicating a group which was arranging its progress so as to make the office door with Carter, he finished: "But if you're hankering for reasons, consult them gentlemen. It's a depytation – by its scowl. An' it's loaded to the muzzle with statistics to fire at you."

Following his finger, Carter noted that Michigan Red was of the deputation, but when it ranged up at the tent door in sheepish yet defiant array, that worthy hung modestly in the rear, permitting a big teamster from the Silver Creek settlements to act as spokesman. Blunt, honest, tenacious as a bull-dog in holding to an idea, the man was an ideal tool for unscrupulous hands; but though he instantly divined the reasons behind his leadership, Carter listened quietly to his tale – the old tale – overwork, poor food, underpay.

His answer was equally quiet. "You are certainly to be pitied, Bill; breaks me all up just to think of your wrongs. I've always admired your thrift, and I sympathize with your desire to raise the mortgage off your farm. Took you five years to put it on, didn't it, Bill? And you are calculating to pay it off in the next two months. Well, perhaps – but you'll have to screw it out of some one else than me."

Shuffling uneasily, the teamster glanced at his backers, who, equally nonplussed, gazed at one another. For where an angry, or even a plain answer would have merely incited them to dogged opposition, this quiet ridicule sapped conceit in their cause, besides conveying an alarming suggestion of strength in reserve.

"Then you don't allow to fall in with our notions?" The spokesman returned after a whispered conference.

"Meaning – an hour less and a dollar more? You're sure a psychic, Bill; plumb wasted on railroading. Open an office in town and go to fortune-telling and you'd pull that plaster off your homestead inside a month."

Assured that there was no hurry, that he could take a week to consider the matter, he gravely added: "Obliged to you, Bill; but I don't allow to require it. The world, you'll remember, was made in six days, and this isn't near such a big job. No time like the present, and here's my answer – same hours, same grub, same pay. It's fortune-telling or present rates for yours, Bill."

Through all he entirely ignored the delegation, and now he leaned in the door, idly watching as it made its way across the camp and was swallowed in the crowd of strikers about the bunk-house. But his face fell as he stepped inside beyond eye and ear shot. "Serious?" he repeated Hart's question. "Couldn't be worse. Not one of those fellows could make a quarter of the wages or live half as well on the farm, but they'd hog it all if I died in the ditch. But there's more behind this than their spite and greed. You see, we have just about pulled old Murray in for funds to make a clean finish, and if he gets wind of this he'll crawfish like a one-legged crow. I must go back at once. And you, Bender – you, also, Hart – see to it that not even a dog crawls out of this camp until I return."

"To keep these chaps guessing," he added, after a moment's dark reflection, "I'd better slip out after dusk. You go over, Hart, and whisper the engineer to back out and wait for me at the other side of the cut. Mystery is good as aces up in any old game, and we can't fog them too much."

Pulling out at dark, he made the run back to town – fifty miles – in an hour and a quarter, reckless running on unballasted road. Murray must be fully committed before the news leaked out. We must get him, must get him, must, must, must! The wheels clicked it, the steam hissed it, the fire roared it, the wind shrieked the imperative refrain. But though Bender lived in the strict letter of his instructions so that a mosquito could scarce have escaped from the camp; though a man could not have made the distance in two days on foot, or a wild goose have passed the throbbing engine as it bounded along that raw track, newsboys were yet crying the strike as he came out on Main Street.

Feeling certain that the office would be closed at that hour, he intended to go straight to Greer's house, but seeing a light in the partners' room as he came opposite the building, he went in and found Smythe there, alone. With lean legs thrust out before him, hands deep in his pockets, shoulders hunched to his ears, his attitude incarnated deep dejection; gloom resided in his nod.

"Greer?" he said. "At home – sick. You see, we were to have closed the deal with Murray this very evening, and the disappointment just knocked the old man out. He's been running altogether on his nerve lately; something had to give. Why couldn't this have happened a day later?"

Answering Carter's question, he went on: "We heard it at noon. Papers got out an extra. Presses must have been running it off before you left."

"Noon?" Carter whistled. "Why the men didn't quit till two!" Then as the significance flashed upon him, he exclaimed: "Brass Bowels for a million! It was all cut, dried, and laid away for us, and they served it hot to the minute. Don't – it – beat – hell!"

His comical disgust caused Smythe a wintry grin, but, sobering, he said: "I wouldn't mind so much for myself. I'm young enough to do it again. But the old gentleman – with that nice family! You know he was just about ready to retire; only took up this business from a strong sense of public duty. And now, in his extremity, every rat financier in this city runs to his hole in fear of the cat. The poor old man!"

Carter nodded his sympathy. On the occasions that he visited their house, Greer's wife, a silver-haired old lady, had vied with her two daughters in pleasant attentions. But it did not require that thought to stir him to action.

"Oh, here!" he laughed. "We are not dead yet. To-morrow I'll go the round of the employment offices and – "

Smythe threw up his hands, a gesture eloquent of despair. "Went round myself – this afternoon. Harvest is on and men scarcer than diamonds. Besides, Brass Bowels has left an order with every agency in town to ship every man they can get west to the mountains."

"Um-m!" Carter thought a while. "Then we'll have to play the last card."

"The last card?" Smythe raised his eyebrows.

"Yes, biggest trump in the pack. How long before – "

"Oh, they can't touch us for two months."

"Good! Now listen." Glancing around as though distrustful of the very walls, he whispered in Smythe's ear for a minute that saw the latter's dejection dissolve in new-born hope. "You must go with me," he finished, aloud. "While you pack your grip, I'll drop round and see Greer. He must be here to-morrow to carry out the bluff. And hurry – for we must make it down and back before we are missed."

XXIX
THE BLUFF

It was the fifth day of the strike, and still no sound of labor disturbed the sleeping forest. Quiet and calm, like that of the Sabbath, brooded over the camp, but not its peace, for, being well rested, the strikers chafed under inaction, moving restlessly among the buildings. Michigan Red, to be sure, was dealing interminable poker on a blanket under a tree, while the younger men skylarked or tried one another out in games, but neither forms of amusement appealed to the older and more thrifty Canadians. Secret disquiet, moreover, underlay even the nonchalance of the gamblers, for Bender's mysterious looks and Carter's continued absence were rapidly disintegrating the strikers' confidence.

"He ain't here," the giant had answered, when the committee had called for another conference, and to further questioning he had returned an irritating grin. "When will he be back? That's for us to know an' you to find out." And so, shorn of its functions, the committee had languished like a moulting peacock. In addition, the cook's ominous visage at meal-times bade the strikers beware that the curse of labor still clung to the fruits of the earth; and the fact that almost a month's back pay rested in Carter's hands, served as a text and lent force to the unpreached sermon. What if he never came back? The history of Western construction abounded with cases of absconding contractors, and the hostility of the monopoly lent substance to the doubt. Most of them would have hailed Carter's advent, just then, with real if secret pleasure, and the general uneasiness manifested itself in a grumbling remark made as Michigan Red raked a fat "jack-pot" into his winnings.

"You're the only one that's making anything these days."

"That's right," another grumbler added. "An' what's more, if we're out another five days the raise won't pull us even by freeze-up. Ten days lost at three-fifty is thirty-five dollars. Take the extra dollar seven weeks to make it up – if the frost holds off that long."

Apparently indifferent, Michigan went on with his deal. "You're hell at figures, Chalky. Where'd you learn? Figuring interest on your mortgage? How many cards, Bill?"

But Bill, spokesman of the committee, laid down his hand. "Look here, Red! Chalky's right. If we hadn't struck we'd have had a pay-day yesterday, an' if we're standing to lose that much we can't call it off too soon for me."

"Nor me."

"Nor me." The voices, pitched in altercation, had brought the idlers crowding, and the support came in from all around.

Michigan's teeth gleamed white through his red beard while his bleak eyes took stock of the crowding faces as though calculating just how far envy and avarice would take them. "You don't stand to lose a cent, Bill. They've got to finish the contrac' before freeze-up to reach the tie an' lumber-camps. Otherwise the road 'll be idle all winter, an' what's a few days' pay alongside the freight on a hundred million feet of lumber. He's got to finish it. If he kain't" – pausing, he distributed a significant nod around the circle – "there's others as kin an' will."

"But what if he don't come back?"

To the question which expressed the most pregnant doubt, he returned a second meaning nod. "Same folks 'll make good."

"Back pay?" Bill pressed.

"Back pay."

"On whose say so?"

"Ain't mine good enough?" Ruffling, he turned a stream of fierce profanity upon Carrots Smith, his questioner. "Want Bible and oath for yours, eh? There's some things that kain't be told to idiots – "

"Yes, yes, Red!" Bill soothed. "We know – that's all right, Red. Don't mind him, he's only a suckling kid."

"Sure, Red! You know what you're talking about. Go on!" others chorused, and having gained his point by the show of anger, real or false, the teamster allowed himself to be placated.

"If 'twas necessary," he continued, "we could tie up the road with a laborer's lien. But 'twon't be – I have somebody's word for it. If Carter goes under, we jes' go right on."

"With the raise?"

"With the raise."

"But if he comes back?" Chalky raised another doubt. "What about lost time? Freeze-up is freeze-up, an' we kain't make it up if we're docked for the lay-off."

"That's easy. Who's to blame for it?" He threw it at the circle.

"Him! He wouldn't give the raise."

"Then let him pay for his fun. We've got him coming or going, an' we draw time, at the new rates, for every idle day before we touch a tool. Ain't that right?"

It was not, yet his crooked logic exactly matched their envious cupidity. Confidence once more returned; the younger men returned to their sports; Bill picked up his hand, and the game proceeded until interrupted, a half-hour later, by a sudden shout and shrill neighing from the horse lines.

"The stallion's loose!"

Shouting, the roustabout tore across the clearing and just escaped the rush of the vicious brute by nimbly climbing the projecting logs at the cook-house corners. At his cry, a youth dropped the shot he had poised for a throw, the gamblers their cards, and, balking in the take-off for a broad jump, Carrots Smith led the rush for cover. A minute saw them all on top of cook or bunk houses, and thus defrauded of his preference, the stallion ran amuck among the horses which were tied at long hay-racks, kicking, rearing, biting. Though built massively of logs, the racks gave way with splintering crashes under the combined pull of a hundred frightened beasts; and bunching, the string tore round the clearing, squealing their fear.

To give the beast ease with his oats, Michigan had removed the iron muzzle according to his custom, and now, a free, wild thing, he bounded along in hot pursuit, curveting, caracoling, satanic in his jet-black beauty. Tossing his wild mane, he would call the mares with stridulous cachinnations, yet for all his exultant passion left them to chase a belated teamster, nose lowered, ears wickedly pricked, thrice around the cook-house. Balked again, he reared, kicked, and was plunging once more after the string when a whistle outshrilled his neigh, and an engine with caboose attached rolled out of the cut south of the camp.

But for the pounding hoofs, the collective whisper, "It's the boss!" would have carried to Carter, who, with Smythe, stood looking out at the door of the caboose; and his first remark, "Regular circus, isn't it?" was eminently applicable to the situation. Upholding the sky's blue roof, black spruce cones formed bulky pillars for the natural amphitheatre in which the horses circled and recircled, a kicking, squealing stream, before the audience on the roofs.

"Where are you going?" Smythe exclaimed, as Carter leaped to the ground.

"To rope that beast before he runs a season's flesh off the teams. There's a riata in the office."

"Better shoot him," Smythe counselled. "Here! come back!" But he was already half-way across the clearing.

Choosing his time, he passed from the smithy to the bunk-house, thence to the cook-house, and so working from building to building under the eyes of his men, he gained the office at last and shot in, barely escaping the mad cavalcade. As he emerged, coiling the riata, Smythe's gaze drew to a second actor in this woodland drama.

When the poker players broke for cover, Michigan Red had paused long enough to pocket the stakes along with his winnings, then picking up the blanket he walked over to the cook-house, and had watched all from the angle formed by the jutting corner logs. "A bit closer would have suited better," he had grumbled, as Carter's last rush carried him from under the hoofs. Now he commented: "Going to rope him, are you? Not if I know it." Knowledge of his fellows' liability to lapses of hero-worship inhered in his conclusion. "If there's to be gran'stan' plays I'll make 'em myself."

"Fools!" he snarled, as the beat of feet warned him that the strikers on the roof were watching Carter, who had taken position behind the next corner. He heard also the swish of the circling noose, its quickened whir as the horses swooped around on the next lap; then, just as the band passed, he sprang out, uttering a sudden harsh command, directly in the stallion's path.

A desperate play, it drew gambler's luck. A frontier superstition has it that the equine eye magnifies objects, and whether or no the red teamster with his pale-green face loomed in the stallion's sight as some huge and passionate fiend, he reared back on strung haunches, ploughing the sod in a desperate effort to stop; and while he hung in mid-air, Michigan stepped and threw his blanket, matador-fashion, over the ugly head. As the brute settled on all-fours and stood shivering, Michigan turned, grinning, to reap the fruit of his daring.

But his grin quickly faded, for, flashing on to his purpose, Carter had swung and roped the rat-tailed mare, the stallion's mate, as the band flew by. Worse! Michigan choked. Almost every man in camp had a grudge against the mare, some vicious lunge or graze from her snapping teeth, so a dozen strikers had jumped and were helping Carter to choke her down, while the others cheered them on with approving laughter.

Furious, he yelled: "What's the matter with you chaps up there? Taken to roosting like chickens? I'd like a picture of the bunch, it ud pass anywhere for a Methodist convention. An' you fellows quit yanking that mare. 'Tain't tug-o'-war you're playing." But he made small headway against the uproarious tide of yells and laughter, and, remembering his snub, Carrots Smith shouted back, "She's doin' most of the pulling, an' if she wants to hang, why let her."

Worst of all, it was Carter who finally interfered on behalf of the struggling brute, and Michigan chafed at the ready obedience accorded his orders.

"Thought you fellows was on strike?" he growled at Brady, the Irish teamster, as he retied the stallion in the horse lines.

But wrathfully indicating a bloody bruise on his own horse, the Irishman hotly retorted, "Faith, thin, an' that's no sign that we'll be lettin' them murthering brutes av yourn chew the necks av our teams? If they was mine, I'd make wolf-meat av the pair before supper."

Michigan sneered. "Didn't I ketch him myself? An' then you fellows had to go running your legs off to suit him. Keep it up, an' it's you an' your strike that'll be made into hash for his supper."

While Michigan thus tried to scotch incipient sympathy with rough sarcasm, Carter carried with him to the office the comfortable assurance that fortune had turned down to him this accidental trick in a difficult game. Shrugging deprecation of Hart's admiring comments on his skill with the riata, he returned a reminiscence of his cowpunching days to Smythe's chidings, asserting that the stallion was not a circumstance to a long-horn steer on an open prairie. While talking, he helped to arrange the contents of Smythe's grip on the rough table, piling greenbacks by denominations between flanking columns of silver, an imposing array.

"No hurry," he said, when Hart asked if he should call the men, and, lighting a cigar, he drawled a story which at one time explained his reason and illumined his plan. "I remember a kid who won three sizes out of his class by a little judicious waiting. His dad had set him a spading stint in the back lot, and when this other boy brings-to on the sidewalk and begins to heave belligerencies over the fence, he answers, that calm and deliberate that you'd never think he was burying his heart under every spadeful, 'Jes' you wait till I finish my patch.' And he goes on digging so cheerfully that the other kid is a mite staggered. As I say, he was about three sizes to the good, but as you'll remember, Napoleon's Old Guard could put it all over a young lady's seminary for hysteria if it was kept too long waiting. Watching that slow spade, this lad's imagination went to working so hard that he fought that fight thirteen times in as many minutes, and felt that used up he just ran like a March hare when the other kid stuck his spade in the trench. The wise kid?" He twinkled on Hart. "I was that glad, I played hookey from school an' won a licking from the old man five sizes larger than I'd have got from the boy. But it was worth it. I learned that it always pays to give it time to soak in."

Outside the strikers furnished a vivid illustration of that lesson during the next three hours he kept them waiting. Grouping, they made loud mouths at first, over supposititious wrongs or affected indifference that was belied by uneasy glances officeward. Less loquacious at the end of the first hour, the second left them sullen and silent; the third, eaten by suspense. They started, as at a sudden explosion, when Bender finally came out; stared blankly when he announced that the boss was waiting to pay off the camp.

Affording no time for recovery, Hart called the first name on the pay-roll, and Bender's stentorian bass sent it rolling into the woods. "Anderson! Anderson! Hurry up, Anderson!"

The name chanced to be the property of Bill, the spokesman, but though used as little as his Sunday clothes, there was more than unfamiliarity behind his slowness. More tenacious of idea, as aforesaid, than quick of wit, Bill now found himself without plan, precedent, or time for counsel in these unexpected premises, nor could he draw inspiration from the blank looks of his fellows.

"Hurry up, Anderson!" Bender crossly repeated; and starting as though touched in some secret spring, Bill lurched forward and in, and so found himself facing Carter, Hart, and Smythe behind an awesome financial array.

Never before had Bill seen so much money at once – even in dreams; it totalled more than the hard earnings of his forty-odd years; would have paid his mortgage ten times over. The substance of modern power, its glitter challenged the loud-mouthed assertions of him and his fellows that, given the same luck, they could have done as well as Carter. By the light of its golden glow, Bill saw himself very weak and small and foolish. At home he seldom saw a dollar; had trouble in scraping up currency enough to pay his taxes, and effected his barterings at the store in truck and trade. With his doubts settled as to the solvency of the firm, Bill was suddenly afflicted with a suspicion that he had made the biggest kind of a fool of himself.

Correctly interpreting his glance at the table, Carter gave him a genial smile. "Yes, Bill; but you don't get it by laying off. Here's your bit. Touch the pen and – Five dollars short? Board and feed for five days, Bill. Man earns his bread by the sweat of his brow, you know. Pass on, and don't forget to remember me to your wife when you gain home."

As with Bill, so the others. Filing in, they testified, one by deeper sullenness, others by attempts at a swagger, to the influences which had wrought on him. Few attained the easy insolence of Michigan Red, who demanded an itemized account of his store bill and insisted on signing the roll with his own hand. Touching the pen, railroad fashion, they passed out, while Hart signed for them, to add their doubtings to the general mystification.

What was forward? Had Carter obtained new crews, or would the company close down work? As the line still fell thirty miles short of the northern settlements, the latter thought filled the minds of the Silver Creek men, who saw themselves left marketless by their own act, with sick misery; brought pause to their envious cupidity, despite Michigan's assurances that it was all a bluff.

"'Tain't," Bill Anderson contradicted him. "I was just over to the cook-house for a drink, an' the cook has orders to serve no meals after breakfast to-morrow morning."

"That so?" a dozen voices questioned.

"Ask for yourselves. He's at the door now calling to supper."

And the cook confirmed the report, adding, moreover, his mite to their discomfiture by malignantly animadverting upon the ménages to which they were about to return. "My cooking don't suit, eh?" demanded the offended artist. "It's pertatoes an' sow-belly for yours after this. In a month you won't be able to tell your ribs from a rail corral." And truth so flavored his railings that they saw, in fancy, themselves looking back from their prairie farms upon his rude but plentiful fleshpots – at which ripe moment the door opened to admit Carter, Smythe, and Bender.

Pausing at the end of the centre table, Carter glanced over the rows of faces which turned curiously up to him as on the occasion that marked the beginnings of his fight for mastery in the cook-house at the winter camp. Very fittingly, setting and persona for this last act of a long struggle were almost the same as the first. Hines and the Cougar, to be sure, were gone over the Great Divide. Strangers sat in place of Shinn and the handful that returned to their farms after the log-drive. But here were the tables, a-bristle with tinware; dim lanterns, dependent from the low pole-roof; the faces, peering from Rembrandt shadows, fiercely animal, pregnant with possibilities such as have reddened the snows of many a forest camp. Overlooking them now, at the climax of a year-long play, he could not but thrill to the thought that whereas they had opposed him at every turn, those iron impresarios, the Fates, had left choice of endings with him, author of the drama. It was his to crush or spare – to crush and gain the cringing respect which they accorded to frost, drought, pestilence, stern henchmen of the illimitable; to spare and attain next place to a fair potato-crop in their esteem; to manage them for their and his own good.

To the latter end he bent his words, addressing them, half jocularly, in their own argot. "Well, boys, we've played our game to a finish, but before we throw away the deck let's count tricks. I don't blame you for striking. You have a right to sell your labor in the dearest market as I have to buy mine in the cheapest. You simply asked more than I felt able to pay, so while you rested I took a jaunt down to the States to see how you stood on the market. What did I find? First let us take a look at your hand.

"What do you hold? Harvest is half over and the wheat farmers from the Portage to Brandon and down to the Pipestone have hired their help at two dollars a day. No betterment there. You can't break prairie in the fall, so there's nothing at home except eating, and the lumber-camps don't open up before the snows. On the other hand, your stake in this line is as big as mine. Unfinished, you are without the markets you have been shouting for these years; finished, it lets in American competition and trebles your values in land." Pausing, he shook his head, and smiling, went on: "Looks as if some one had dealt you a miserable hand, and I wonder if it wouldn't pay you to shuffle, cut, and try another deal? Now before I bring in new crews – "

"New crews? Where kin you get them?"

All through the men had given close attention, and after a single impatient glance at Michigan Red the faces turned back to Carter, who ignored the interruption. Leaning eagerly forward, they took the words from his mouth as he ran on roughly outlining his own plans, prospecting the coming years. Few of them, perhaps none, were given to looking beyond the present, and the vista to which he turned their dull eyes glimmered like sunshine on the prairies. This was to be no casual job! The province, ay, and the whole Northwest, required branch roads; would be gridironed with them before the finish! So what of construction in summer, logging in winter, they could look for profitable employment the round of the seasons!

"So talk it over among yourselves," he finished, "and those who feel that a fresh deal is in order can call round at the office after supper."

Long before that, nods and approving murmurs had testified to his victory, and as the burr of hot tongues followed them out through the open windows, Bender exclaimed: "Whipped to a finish! But what about them new crews?" Then catching Carter's grin, he burst out in uproarious laughter. "What a bluff!"

"Not a man in Minneapolis," Carter confirmed. "But that wasn't what we went down for. So it didn't matter."

"But will they believe it?" Smythe asked.

"Believe it?" Bender took it upon himself to answer it. "A frightened man will run from his shadow, an' they're that badly scared 'twon't take them five minutes to locate them crews."

He gave them, indeed, too much time, for, as he said, fear destroys perspective and the strikers were almost ready to believe that Carter could conjure men from the trackless forest.

Carrots Smith led the panic with a theory, even as he had headed the run from Michigan's horse. "Said he'd been prospectin' down in the States? Minneapolis, I'll bet you, an' the place jes' rotten with whaleback Swedes."

"Sawyer's gang is through with the N.P.'s Devil's Lake extension," another added. "I read it in the paper Sunday. Old Sawyer ud on'y be too glad for a chance to finish out the fall."

Other theories were not wanting, nor could Michigan Red stem the rout. Just twenty minutes thereafter a sheepish delegation presented itself at the office door and delivered itself through the mouth of Bill of the Anderson ilk.

"We've concluded," said Bill, "as 'twouldn't hardly be right to leave you ditched."

Albeit Carter's eyes returned Hart's twinkle, he replied in kind. "I'm real tickled to think that you won't desert me."

And so, with this bit of diplomatic comedy, ended not only the strike, but also the bitter fight which he, like every village Hampden, had had to wage against the envious ignorance of his fellows. For a while, to be sure, their stiff necks would balk at the homage secret consciousness dictated as his meed. They would refuse it, indeed, till the world outside sealed his success; whereafter every man of them would proclaim himself as the particular prophet who had discerned greatness in his humble beginnings. But in the mean time they would refrain from further hostilities.

"What about that Red man?" Smythe said, as the delegation made its jubilant way back to its fellows. "You'll surely discharge him?"

"Michigan Red?" Carter said. "Not if he wants to stay. His team is worth any two in camp, and his teeth are drawn for good. But he won't stay."