They were on their way to the big meeting of the season. Except for a mere dozen of practised ubiquity the camp was empty; for that night, which was to seal the fate of the trestle--perhaps--Koppy was less concerned than usual that the three up on the grade should be deceived.

 

For days he had been polishing up the details of his plan. And of the two methods open to him for passing those details on to his followers, like a true leader he chose personal delivery. Eloquence was a never-failing inspiration of his in the face of crowds, and hysteria, his best ally, worked only at its highest pitch in the mob. Besides, there was a gratifying pomp in the meeting; the thrill he so readily imparted to his audience returned to him double-fold and opened the gates to further honours in the inner councils of the I.W.W.

 

Without underestimating the gravity of failure before such a gathering as he would face that night, self-confidence never deserted him; never yet had it let him down. As a born gambler he had no compunctions at staking everything on one throw.

 

Directly away from the grade he led deep into the woods, and all about them was movement, silent, individual, wrapped in the promise of the meeting. Presently Koppy made a peremptory motion of his hand.

 

"Wait!" He left them there, moving ponderously forward to the heart of a small clearing, where he paced up and down, chin in hand. The three followers watched from a distance.

 

"Nap--or was it Wellington--at Waterloo or somewhere!" jeered Werner in a low voice. "The mutt thinks the whole world is watching . . . and I ain't sure it ain't."

 

Koppy waved his hand, and they rejoined him.

 

Patches of darkness already filled the forest, but a late sun filtered through the tree tops in the thinner spaces and wove a pattern of colour on the brown leaves and dead green moss, the slender spruce needles and straight-standing trunks. Nature was in a gentle glow; the pure clear air of falling evening draped the earth in sweetness. Yet through it wound long lines of ghoulish men who felt it not, held to fiendish things by mistaken ambitions, by an unjustified bitterness that fed on its own helplessness. For, after all, the varying moods of nature are but constituents of a formula of which each man provides for himself the other half--else would the Eskimo be a paragon, the hunter a saint.

 

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.

 

"Cheerful sport, this. A real hi-larious way to end a dull day."

 

Morani's lip curled.

 

"It's all right for you, Chico," muttered Werner. "All you got to do to get your blood running fresh is to slip that stiletto into somebody's ribs. They don't expect any better of a Dago. Me? They'd fasten a rope under my ears and wish me pleasant voyage."

 

The Italian expectorated noisily.

 

"I suppose," continued Werner, "you might's well do that as spit macaroni talk at me. You get me roused and I'll tear off chunks of German and throw them--"

 

Koppy's hand went up for silence. The men plodded on.

 

At the place of meeting not a man was in sight; a great silence seemed to have stifled life itself. But as Koppy raised himself on a slight eminence in the centre of the clearing and made a gesture with his expressive hands, throngs of his followers crowded about him with no sound but shuffling feet.

 

As Koppy looked about on their massed faces a disturbing memory of those strange moments with Tressa Torrance almost unnerved him. He understood these men; he knew the forces that had brought them down to railway work. And the flick of a still faintly breathing conscience made him pale. The daily sight of Tressa Torrance and her simple acceptance of him as a fellow-creature had roused within him thoughts he imagined he had long since stifled. There were times when he contemplated the possibility of carrying her away and leaving all else behind. Never before in America had a decent woman looked at him in such a kindly way. The many women he had known he had been willing to pay for, as was expected of him; here was one he could not buy, yet she was almost within reach for nothing.

 

Sometimes of late his mind had roved beyond a crude camp of logs, with filthy bunks in tiers, with filthy straw on which to lie. Carpeted rooms, with pictures on the walls, and shiny chairs and tables; smart clothes and clean hands; evenings of mental peace in a home of his own. And a woman to manage it and him. That was the bewildering part of it--he wanted a woman to order him about, some one gentle and sweet, to blot from his warped mind the hideous nightmare of strife and scheming amidst which h............