At four o’clock that afternoon, since it was Saturday, the men were paid off for the week. No pay day will ever be satisfactory to the recipients until that happy state of affairs is reached when each man himself decides on the amount which is due him. Even then there will be some who will leave the pay-window with the discontented feeling that they have cheated themselves. The bookkeeper, from his grated window, gave out the pay checks to the line of Mexican laborers who, displaying their brass number tags, passed before him. He kept up a running fire of argument. Over and over he was obliged to explain the amounts of the checks.
“The mess bill comes out of you.”
“You had twenty dollars’ worth of coupons at the store.”
“No, you only worked five days this week.”
“Hospital fee is twenty-five cents.”
These were fair samples of the innumerable[240] arguments which he was compelled to go through with every week. And in spite of all explanations, the poor miners would walk away from the window, looking with dejected, unbelieving eyes at the small figures of their checks. Men of this class can never realize that if out of wages of ninety dollars a month they spend seventy-five for food and store coupons, the balance due to them is not ninety dollars, but fifteen.
As usual on pay day afternoon, in the road before the office, little groups of men were arguing excitedly among themselves, discussing the manner in which they were “cheated.” The dejected droop of their shoulders was accentuated by the quick, jerky movements of their arms as they gesticulated.
Knowlton, the deputy sheriff, who was assigned to Kay, sat on the steps before the office door. He was rolling a cigarette, seemingly unconscious of the noisy crowd. But pay day was always likely to cause trouble, and he was prepared for it.
 
“No one quite dared to lead an attack upon Knowlton, who stood his ground beside the body.” Page 241
 
The group of excited men augmented fast, as little knots of miners were paid off, and found awaiting them a willing audience of their[241] grievances. A word will fire a crowd of this kind as quickly as a fuse will set off a charge of giant powder.
Knowlton watched them closely, out of the corner of his eye. He saw one of the leaders in the discussion stoop down and pick up a large rock.
“Hey, Rigas! drop that, quick!” he shouted.
For answer the rock crashed through the glass of the office window.
Knowlton waded into the midst of the crowd, and seized Rigas by the collar, almost hurling him off his feet. His rough tactics generally overawed his prisoners, but Rigas had been drinking, and fought. The crowd began to close in.
Knowlton dropped his hand to the point where the suspenders joined his belt and whipped out his “automatic.” Raising it in the air, he swung it down with all his strength upon Rigas’s head. There was a stunning report, and the miner lay upon the ground, with a hole two inches wide through his forehead. The crowd, muttering angry curses, drew back. No one quite dared to lead[242] an attack upon Knowlton, who stood his ground beside the body, his still smoking gun in his hand. The camp doctor came up on the run, having heard the sound of the report. Kneeling beside the body, he gave short and incisive directions.
“Valrigo, Peres, Gonzales, and Escallerra; you four carry him over to the hospital!”
The four men whom he had designated bent over and clumsily raised the inanimate body.
“No, no,” said the doctor, “don’t let his head hang back. Here, Valencella! Come and hold up his head. That is right. Now slowly with him, boys; easy, don’t jolt him!”
The doctor walked beside the bearers, his hand on Rigas’s heart, which for a wonder was still beating. Behind them fell in a sullen, straggling, pushing procession of the other men, watching the blood drip from Rigas’s head.
Then Knowlton turned, and walked slowly into the office. As he entered, the volume of curses changed from a mutter to a roar. He found Loring on his knees, locking the combination of the safe.
“Well, Mr. Loring, I’ve done it now. I’ve killed Rigas. These damned automatics! You[243] can beat a man over the head for a week with a Colt without its going off.”
“Too bad!” said Stephen calmly, rising from his knees. “But the character of Rigas was not such that he will be a great loss to the world. He was always causing some sort of mischief.”
“It ain’t Rigas that I am worrying about,” said the deputy. “It’s the rest of them.”
“How long can you hold them in check?” asked Stephen.
“If they were sober, I could hold them until hell froze, but they have just been paid off, and by night they will all be drunk. Then there will be trouble. It has been brewin’ for a week. Some agitator chap has been talking it up to them about the way the Company was stealing from them. I don’t jest know what we had better do,” he concluded, while he fingered his gun nervously, and looked to Loring for guidance.
“Rigas is dead, you said?” asked Stephen.
“Well, not exactly. He might as well be, though. A forty-five calibre hole through your head ain’t healthy. If he ain’t dead now, he won’t live more than a few hours. And when he does die—!” Knowlton broke off gloomily.
[244]
“What are you going to do about it, Mr. Loring?”
“We can only wait,” answered Loring. “We must not let them see that we are anxious.”
“Ain’t you going to do nothing?” Knowlton looked at Loring in perfect amazement.
Stephen smiled, and shook his head. “No, I am going to supper. I would advise you to eat at the mess to-night, instead of at your shack. I am afraid that at present you are not exactly popular.”
He walked off towards the eating-house, while Knowlton stood looking after him blankly.
“He don’t realize that in about three hours after those men get to drinking, the Kay mine won’t exist. If we had a real man in charge here, we might do something about it. He thinks, I suppose, that because the men like him there won’t be trouble. Hell! and I used to think he had sense!” Knowlton almost snorted in his rage.
At supper every man was keyed to a high pitch of excitement. There were only about twenty white men in camp, and though they were well armed, the Mexicans outnumbered them more than fifteen to one. Stephen alone[245] refrained from joining in the flurry of question and conjecture which whirled about the table. Although he seemed unmoved, a close observer would have noticed that he gripped his knife and fork almost as if they had been weapons. Wah slid his plate of soup before him, at the same time patting him on the shoulder with affectionate interest.
“Me bludder like one owl,” he said.
“Hey, Wah, this soup is rotten!” called a young fellow from the end of the table.
“Oh, lubbly, lubbly soup!” chanted Wah. “Lubbly, me bludder, lubbly.”
“I’m not your bludder, Wah,” answered the man politely. “I would rather have an ape for a brother than you.”
“You me bludder, allee samee, allee samee.” Saying which, Wah disappeared into the kitchen, only to stick his head a moment later through the connecting window, and call: “Oh, you pig-faced Swede, Oh, you pig-faced Swede! La, la, boom, boom!”
But even Wah was unable to break the tension that surrounded the supper. As the men were lighting their pipes at the close of the meal, from the gulch behind the camp where were[246] the saloons, came the sound of a fusillade of shots and a burst of shrill yelling.
“The game is on,” thought Loring.
As the noise outside became louder, Stephen said to the men: “I want all you fellows to get your guns and go over into the office to guard the safe. Go as quietly as y............