Under Handicap

by Jackson Gregory

  CHAPTER XIII

  At half-past three, Conniston, awakened with a start by the jangle andclamor of Tommy Garton's little alarm-clock, got up and dressed. Atthe lunch-counter the man who had been fidgety yesterday and wasmerely sleepy this morning set coffee and flapjacks and bacon beforehim. Before four he had saddled his horse, rolled into a neat bundle ablanket and a couple of quilts from the cot upon which he had sleptlast night, tied them behind his saddle, and was ready for the comingof Bat Truxton. Then Truxton on horseback joined him. Connistonmounted, acknowledged Truxton's short "Good mornin'," and rode withhim away from the sleeping village and out toward the south.

  "Tommy's told you somethin' about what we got ahead of us?" Truxtonasked, when they had ridden half a mile in silence.

  "Yes. We went over the whole thing together as well as we could in aday's time."

  "That's good. If any man's got a head on him for this sort of thing,that man's Tommy Garton. He'd make it as plain as a man could onpaper, without goin' over the ground. To-day we're tyin' into thoseseven sand-hills I mentioned last night. I've got two hundred menworkin' there. So they won't get in each other's way I've divided 'emup in four gangs, fifty men to the gang. There's all kinds of men inthat two hundred, Conniston, and about the biggest part of your day'swork will be to sort of size your men up. I've divided 'em, notaccordin' to efficiency, but partly accordin' to nationality an'mostly accordin' to cussedness. I'm givin' you the tame ones to beginon. I'll take care of the ornery jaspers until you get your hand in.But I can't spare more'n a day or two. Then it'll be up to you. You'llhave to swing the whole bunch, if you can. An' if you can't it'll beup to you to quit! Oh, it ain't so all-fired hard, not if you've gotthe savvy. I've got a foreman over each section that knows what he'sdoin' an' will do pretty much everything if you can furnish the headwork."

  "Where is the trouble with them? What do you mean by the ornery ones?They're all here because they want to work, aren't they? If they getdissatisfied they quit, don't they?"

  Truxton looked at him curiously. "You got a lot of things to learn,Conniston. Just you take a tip from me: You keep your eyes an' earsreal wide open for the next few days an' your mouth shut as long asyou can. Tommy explained to you about the opposition? About whatOliver Swinnerton is doin' an' tryin' to do?"

  "Yes."

  "Then you remember that; don't overlook it for a minute, wakin' orsleepin'. It'll explain a whole lot."

  When they rode into the camp at Little Rome the two hundred menemployed there were just beginning to stir. Conniston's eyes took inwith no little interest the details of the camp. There was one long,low tent, the canvas sides rolled up so that he could see a bigcooking-stove with two or three men working over it. This, plainlyenough, was the kitchen. From each side of the door a long line oftwelve-inch boards laid across saw-horses ran out across the levelsand. Upon the parallel boards were tin plates stacked high in piles,tin cups, knives and forks, and scores of loaves of bread. There werein addition perhaps twenty tin buckets half filled with sugar.

  Scattered here and there upon the sand, some not twenty feet from thetent, some a hundred yards, some few with a little straw under them,the most of them with their blankets thrown upon the sand or uponheaps of cut sage-brush, were Truxton's "muckers." They lay there likea bivouacking army, their bodies disposed loosely, some upon theirbacks, still sleeping heavily; many just sitting up, awakened by theclatter of the cook's big iron spoon against a tin pan.

  Behind the tent, picketed in rows by short ropes, were the horses andmules. And lined up to the right of the tent were twenty big,long-bodied Studebaker wagons, each with four barrels of water. Twomore wagons at the other side of the tent were piled high with boxesand bags of provisions.

  Truxton and Conniston unsaddled swiftly, and after staking out theirhorses, Conniston throwing his roll of bedding down behind the tent,they walked around to the front. Already most of the men were up,rolling blankets or hurrying to the rude tables. Several of them hadgone to the aid of the cooks, and now were hurrying up and downbetween the parallel boards, setting out immense black pots of coffee,great lumps of butter, big pans of mush, beans, stewed "jerky," andpotatoes boiled in their jackets. The men who had rolled out of theirbeds fully dressed, save for shoes, formed in a long line near thetent door and moved swiftly along the tables, taking up knives,forks, plates, and cups as they went, helping themselves generously toeach different dish as they came to it. Many stopped at the fartherends of the boards, standing and eating from them. Many more tooktheir plates and cups of coffee away from the tables and squatted downto eat, placing their dishes upon the sand. There was remarkablylittle confusion, no time lost, as the two hundred men helpedthemselves to their breakfast. They did not appear to have seenTruxton; they glanced swiftly at Conniston and seemed to forget hispresence in their hunger.

  Never had Conniston seen a crowd of men like these. There wereAmericans there, and from the broken bits of conversation whichfloated to him he knew that they hailed from east, west, north, andsouth. There were Hungarians, Slavonians, Swedes--heavy, stolid,slow-moving men whose knowledge of the English language rose and setin "damn" and "hell." There were Chinamen and Japs--a dozen of theslant-eyed, yellow-faced Orientals--the Chinamen all big, gaunt menwith their queues coiled about their heads. There were Italians, thelower class known to the West as "Dagoes." And almost to the last manof them they were the hardest-faced men he had ever seen.

  There was a big, loose-limbed giant of an Englishman who walked like asailor, who carried a great white scar across his cheek and upper lip,and who wore a long unscabbarded knife swinging from his belt. Therewas a wiry little Frenchman who showed a deep scar at the base of histhroat, from which his shirt was rolled back, and who snarled like acat when another man accidentally trod upon his foot. Conniston saw adozen faces scarred as though by knife-cuts; twisted, evil faces;dark, scowling faces; faces lined by unbridled passions; brutal,heavy-jawed faces.

  But if their faces showed the handiwork of the devil, from their chinsdown they were men cast in the mold of the image of God. From thebiggest Dane standing close to six feet six inches to the smallest Japless than five feet tall, they were men of iron and steel. Quick-eyed,quick-footed, hard, they were the sort of men to drive the fightagainst the desert.

  Breakfast finished, the men dropped their cups and plates into one oftwo big tubs as they passed by the tent, their knives and forks intoanother, and went quietly and promptly to work. Each man had his dutyand went about it without waiting to be told. They filled buckets atthe water-barrels and watered their horses; they harnessed and hitchedup to plows and scrapers; half a dozen of them hitched four horses toeach of six of the wagons whose barrels had been emptied, and swungout across the plain toward the Half Moon for more water.

  Truxton beckoned to Conniston and led him toward the south. Andsuddenly, coming about the foot of a little knoll, Conniston had hisfirst glimpse of the main canal.

  Here it was a great ditch, ten feet deep, thirty feet wide, its bankssloping, the earth which had been dragged out of it by the scraperspiled high upon each side in long mounds, like dikes. Truxton stoodstaring at it, his eyes frowning, his jaw set and stern.

  "There she is, Conniston. A simple enough thing to look at, but so isthe business end of a mule. This thing is goin' to make the Old Man athousand times over--or it's goin' to break him in two like a rottenstick."

  The workmen were coming up, driving their teams with draggingtrace-chains to be hitched to the scrapers and big plows standingwhere they had quit work the night before. Truxton, tuggingthoughtfully at his grizzled mustache, watched them a moment as they"hooked up" and dropped, one behind another, into a long, slow-movingprocession, the great shovel-like scrapers scooping up ton after tonof the soft earth, dragging it up the slope where the end of the ditchwas, wheeling and dumping it along the edge of the excavation, turningagain, again going back down into the cut to scoop up other tons ofdirt, again to climb the incline to deposit it upon the bank. He
reConniston counted forty-nine teams and forty-nine drivers. One man--itwas the big Englishman with the scarred lip and cheek and theunsheathed knife--was standing ten feet away from the edge of theditch, his great bare arms folded, watching.

  "That's one of your foremen," Truxton said, his eyes followingConniston's. "Ben, his name is. He knows his business, too. He'll takecare of this gang for you while you come along with me. I'll show youyour other shift."

  They followed a line marked by the survey stakes for a quarter of amile past the camp. Here another fifty men were at work; and here,where the top of the sand had already been scraped away, a harder soilcalled for the use of the big plows before the scrapers could be ofany use. The foreman here, a South-of-Market San-Franciscan by hisspeech, shouted a command to one of the drivers and came up toTruxton.

  "Whatcher want to-day?" he demanded. "Ten foot?"

  "Nine," Truxton told him, shortly. "Nine an' a half by the time youget to that first stake. Nine three-quarters at the second. Can youget that far to-day?"

  The foreman turned a quid of tobacco, squinted his eye at the twostakes, and nodded.

  "Sure thing," he said.

  And then he turned on his heel and went back to the point he had quit,yelling his orders as he went.

  "Another good man," Truxton muttered. "Thank the Lord, we've got someof them you couldn't beat if you went a thousand miles for 'em."

  Still farther on was the third gang, and beyond that the fourth. Thesehundred men were at work on the "Seven Knolls." And there Truxtonhimself would superintend the work to-day. He stopped and stood withConniston upon one of the mounds, from which they could see all thatwas being done. And with slow, thoughtful carefulness he toldConniston all that he could of the work in detail.

  "You do a good deal of watchin' to-day," he ended. "Ben an' theLark--that's what they call that little cuss bossin' the secondgang--listen to him whistle an' you'll know why--know well what to do.Right now an' right here the work's dead easy, Conniston. Only don'tgo an' let 'em drive you in a hole where you have to admit you don'tknow. You've _got_ to know."

  The work here was in reality so simple that men like Ben and the Larkgrasped it quickly. Conniston had little trouble in seeing readilywhat was to be done. The details Truxton furnished him.

  When noon came they ate with the men. And at one o'clock Truxtoncalled Ben and the Lark aside and told them shortly that Conniston wasthe new engineer and that they were to take orders from him. WhereuponConniston took upon himself the responsibility of "bossing" a hundredmen, the biggest responsibility which he had ever taken upon hiscare-free shoulders.

  He had seen the slow, measuring glances which both of his two foremenhad bestowed upon him when Truxton told them; knew that they acceptedhim as their overseer because they took orders from Truxton, but sawin their faces that they reserved judgment of him personally untilsuch time as they could see how much or how little he knew. He was notgreatly in fear of the outcome. The work was running so smoothly,there were so few possible difficulties to come up now, that it seemedto him that all he had to do was to stand and watch.

  And at first he did little but watch and, as Truxton had suggested,try to study his men. He saw that both the Lark and Ben said very fewwords, that when they did speak they barked out short, explosivecommands surcharged with profanity, that when they interfered therewas a good reason for it, that their commands were obeyed withouthesitation and without question. Not once in two hours did either ofthem so much as look toward him. And the long processions of men andhorses came and went, scooped and dumped their big scraper-loads, andswung back into the ditch, each man of them moving like a machine.

  It was after three o'clock when he noticed something which he wouldhave seen before had he been used to the work and the men. He saw thelong string of scrapers come to a halt for perhaps two minutes; sawthat the cause of the halt was a big Northlander who had stopped justas he came upon the bank and was working over at race-chain whichseemed to be causing trouble. In a moment he started up again, theother scrapers began to move, and Conniston dismissed the matter as ofno consequence. This was the gang over which Ben was foreman. Heglanced quickly at the big Englishman and saw that his eyes were uponthe Northlander. Again, not twenty minutes later, came a second briefstoppage, again the Swede was working over a trace-chain--and now Benhad swung about and was striding toward Conniston.

  "Hi say there," he said, as he came to Conniston's side. "Bat saysHi'm to take horders off you. Do you want me to 'andle those Johnnies?Hor do you figure on a-stepping in? Hi?"

  "What do you mean?" demanded Conniston, a bit puzzled. "I haven'tinterfered with you, have I?"

  "No. Hi just want to know, you know. Hi 'andle 'em my wi, hor Hi quit,you know."

  "You are to do just as you have always done," Conniston told him,shortly. "If you can handle them, all right. Go to it. If you need anyhelp--What's the matter?"

  "Hi don't awsk any 'elp," muttered Ben. "Just one man--"

  "You mean that Swede with the big white mare in the lead?" interruptedConniston, quickly.

  Ben looked at him swiftly. Grunting an answer which Conniston did notcatch, he turned and went back along the edge of the ditch.

  The Swede was again coming up the bank. At the top he did as he haddone more than once before: turned out in a wide circle, letting twomen pass him. The Englishman strode swiftly toward him.

  "Hi, there, you big Swede!" he yelled, his words accompanied by avolley of insulting epithets born in the slums of London. "Wot youtrying to do? Want the 'ole works to pawss you w'ile you rest? Youblooming spoonbill, get inter that! Step lively, man!"

  The Northlander's heavy, slow-moving feet stopped entirely as heturned a stolid face toward the foreman.

  "I bane to like I tam plase," he muttered, slowly. "Yo bane go hell."

  The big Englishman sprang back, swept up a broken pick-handle halfburied in the sand, and leaped forward. As he leaped he swung the bitof heavy, hard wood above his head. The Swede dropped his reins andthrew up his arms to guard himself, but the pick-handle, wielded in agreat, sinewy right hand, beat down his arms and struck him a crashingblow across his forehead. Conniston heard the thud of it where hestood. The Swede's arms flew out and he went down like a steer in aslaughter-house.

  "You bloody spoonbill!" cried the Englishman, standing over theprostrate body. "Wot are you laying down for? Get hup, hor Hi'll beatthe bloody 'ead hoff your bloody shoulders! Get hup!"

  Slowly, weakly, reeling as he got upon his knees, the Swede rose tohis feet. A great, smoldering, cold-blooded wrath shone in his blueeyes, mingled with a surly fear. He made no motion toward the man whostood three feet from him threatening him. Nor did he stir toward hisfallen reins. Instead he turned half about toward the camp.

  "I bane quit," he muttered, thickly. "I bane get my time."

  "Quit!" yelled Ben--"quit, will you!"

  The Swede muttered something which Conniston did not catch. Ben tookone short, quick step forward, swinging his pick-handle high above hishead. For a moment the Swede paused, hesitating. And then, againmuttering, he stooped, picked up his reins, and swung his team backinto the cut.

  The other men had all stopped to watch. Now Ben swung about upon them,his voice lifted in a string of cockney oaths, commanding them not tostand still all day, but to get to work. At almost his first word theteams began to move again, the men laughing, calling to one another,jeering at the defeated Swede, or merely shrugging their shoulders.And Greek Conniston, his face still white from what he had justwitnessed, began to see, although still dimly, what it was he hadtaken into his two hands to do.

  He glanced down at his hands. The middle finger of the right one, withwhich he had struck Brayley's heavy cheek-bone, was swollen to twiceits natural size, stiff and sore. The nails were broken and blackened.There were a dozen scratches and little cuts. The palms were hard andcalloused, with bits of loose skin along the base of the fingers whereblisters had formed and broken and healed over.

  H
e lifted his head, and his speculative eyes ran back along the ditch.The work was again running smoothly, quietly, save for the clanking ofthe scrapers and the men's voices calling to their horses and mules,each man intent upon his own duty, the face of the desert as peacefulas the hot, clear arch of the sky above.