CHAPTER XIII
THE SABCAT CAMP
To Mary Warren's ears, had she struggled in her captor's arms lessviolently, the sound of the wheels might have changed from the loam ofthe lane to the gravel of the highway as they passed. But she heardnothing, noted nothing, did not understand why, after a time, thedriver pulled up, and with much profanity for his team, descended fromhis seat. Apparently he fastened the horses near the road. He cameback. "Git down, and hurry," said he. "Here's where we change cars."
She heard the grind of a motor's starting crank, the chug of an engine.As its strident whirring continued her captor came again to her side,and with rudeness aided her to the seat of what she took to be a smallcar. She felt the leap of the car under his rude driving as he turnedthe gas on full, felt it sway as it set to its pace. She now knew thatthey were on some highway.
"Now we go better," laughed Big Aleck, his face at her ear. "Theycan't catch us now. These Johns 'll find what's what, heh? Lookyonder--five fires in sight, besides plenty stock bumped off. They'lllearn how the free brothers work. If you can't see, you can't tell.All the better!"
She shrank back into the seat, undertaking no reply to his maudlinboastings. She was passing away from the only place in all the worldthat meant shelter for her now, and already it felt like home, thisplace that she was leaving.
The car shifted and slowed down, apparently on a less usedthoroughfare. "Where are you going?" she cried. "You've left theroad!"
Big Aleck laughed uproariously after his fashion. "I should say wehave," said he. "But any road's good enough just so it gets us up toour jungle. You don't know what iss a jungle? Well, it's where thesabcat brothers meets all by theirselves on the Reserve."
"Reserve?" asked Mary Warren. "What do you mean?"
"Where the timber is that them army scum is cutting for the Government.Pine, some spruce. This road was made to get timber out. I ought toknow about it--I was foreman of the road gang! I know every treethat's marked for the Government. My old bunch of bundle stiffs andbefore-the-war wobblies is in there now. What chance has themGovernment cockroaches got against my bullies? Wait till the wheatclocks[1] get started and the clothes[2] begins. We ain't forgot whatwe knew when they tried to draft us. We're free men now, same as inRussia and Germany."
He laughed again and again at the vast humor of this situation as itlay before him, exulting in the mystification his thieves' jargon wouldcreate. His liquor made him reckless.
"It's a rough road, up Tepee Creek," said he, "but nobody comes. Thisis a Government car--the Cossacks would think I'm going up to work.They got to mark some trees. I'll mark 'em--so they can tell, whenthey come to saw 'em, heh?"
He said little more, but one hand cast over her shoulder was his answerto her panting silence, every time she edged over in the impulse tofling herself out of the car. He was a man of enormous strength.
Continually the jolting of the car grew worse and worse. She began tohear the rush of water. Twice she felt the logs of a rude bridge underthe wheels as they crossed some stream. They were winding their way upthe valley of a stream, into a higher country? Yes. As they climbednow, she could catch the scent of the forest as the wind changed fromtime to time. The profanity of her captor grew as the difficulty ofthe trail increased. They were climbing at a gradient as steep as thelaboring car could negotiate.
At last, after interminable time, they seemed to strike a sandier soil,more level country--indeed, the trail was following the contour of ahigh sandy ridge among the pines.
On ahead she heard a shout. "Halt! Stop there! Who are you?"
"Don't shoot, John," replied the driver of the car, laughing. "It'sAleck."
"Well, I'll be damned!" was the reply. "Time you was back, Aleck.Who's that with you?"
"That's a friend of mine I brought along! She's come up to see how uswobblies lives!"
Again his coarse laugh, which made her shudder. Then more brokenlaughs, whispered words. She was obliged to take the arm of her roughcaptor to descend from the car.
"She don't see very well," said Aleck in explanation. "Maybe just aswell she don't, heh?"
She stood looking about her vaguely, helpless. She could hear the highmoaning of the wind above her, in the tops of pine trees. Some one ledher to the front of a tent--she could hear the flapping of the fly inthe wind. She sank down by chance upon a blanket roll. Her captorthrew down the front flap of the tent. She heard voices of other men.They paid not too much attention to her at first. Big Aleck, theirleader, went on with hurried orders.
"We got to get out of here in not more'n an hour or so," said he. "TheJohns'll come. I fixed a couple dozen stacks of hay for them."
"See anybody down below, Aleck?" asked a voice which Mary Warrenrecognized as different from the others she had heard. And then somelow question was asked, to which Big Aleck replied.
"Well, I'll take her along with me, when I go out, far as that'sconcerned," said he. "She says she's Sim Gage's housekeeper! Huh!"
"But suppose she gets away and squeals on us?" spoke a voice.
"She can't get away. Let's go eat."
She was close enough to where they sat eating and drinking to hear allthat was said, and they spoke with utter disregard of her presence.She never had heard such language in her life, nor known that such menlived. Never yet had she so fully taken home to herself the actualpresence of a Government, of a country, never before known what threatsagainst that country actually might mean. An enemy? Why, here was theenemy still, entrenched inside the lines of victorious andpeace-abiding America--trusting, foolish, blind America, which hadaccepted anything a human riff-raff sneeringly and cynically hadoffered her in return for her own rich generosity! Mary Warren beganto see, suddenly, the tremendous burden of duty laid on every man andevery woman of America--the lasting and enduring and continuous duty ofa post-bellum patriotism, that new and terrible thing; that sweet andsplendid thing which alone could safeguard the country that had foughtfor liberty so splendidly, so unselfishly.
"If they ever run across us in here with the goods on us--good-night!"hesitated a voice. "I don't like to carry this here cyanide--we gotenough for all the sheep and cattle in Montana."
"Our lawyers'll take care of us if we get arrested," said Big Aleckindifferently.
"Yes, but we mightn't get arrested--these here ranch Johns is handywith rope and lead."
"Ach, no danger," argued Aleck. "It's safer than to blow up a armoryor a powder mill, or even a public building--and we done all that,while the war was on. We'll give 'em Force! This Republic bedamned--there is no republic but the republic of Man!"
These familiar doctrines seemed to excite the applause usual amonghearers of this sort. There was a chorus of approval, so that theirorator went on, much inspired.
"People in Gallatin offered a thousand dollars for one man catchedputting matches in a threshing machine. Other ranchers was willing togive a thousand if they found out what made their hay get a-fire! Hah!They don't know how we set a bomb so the sun'll start it! They don'tthink that the very fellers running the threshing machine is the onesthat drops the matches in! They don't think that the man running themowing machine is the one that fixes the sickle bar! They don't thinkthat the man in charge of this here road gang is the one that'sa-doctoring trees!
"They're still eating all sorts of things for bread now," he resumed."Folks in the cities pays more and more. Wheat'll go to four dollarsbefore we're through. We're the farmer's friends, huh? Hay'll beworth fifty dollars a ton in this valley before we're through--butthere won't be no horses left to haul it to town! There's thousands ofright boes all across the country now. If fourteen thousand iron andsteel people was out at one time in Cleveland, what couldn't we do, ifwe once got a good strike started all across the country, now the waris done? We've made 'em raise wages time and again, haven't we? Itell you, freedom's coming to its own."
Cleveland! Mary Warren pricked up h
er ears. She had reason; for nowthe voice went on, mentioning a name which Annie Squires had madefamiliar--Dorenwald, Charlie Dorenwald, the foreman in the rollingrooms!
"Charlie Dorenwald's the head of that bunch. He's a good man. Youknow what he pulled in Youngstown."
"Well, I don't know," said one voice, "they lynched a man in Illinois.America's getting lawless! Think about lynching people! It ain'tright!"
"There's nothing they won't do," said Big Aleck's voice, virtuously."They ask us we shall have respect for a Government that lets peoplelynch folks!"
"You didn't see any one when you was down in the road, Aleck?" askedsome one again, uneasily.
"I told you, no. Well, we got to get to work."
Mary Warren heard them rising from their places. Footfalls passed hereand there, shuffling. The woman could not repress her shuddering.This was Force--unrestrained, ignorant, unleashed, brute Force, thatsame aftermath Force which was rending apart the world back of thenew-dried battlefields of Europe! Order and law, comfort, love,affection, trust--all these things were gone!
What then was her footing here--a woman? Was God indeed asleep? Sheheard her own soul begging for alleviating death.
Then came silence, except for the airs high up in the sobbing trees.They were gone on their errand. After that,--what?
After a time she heard a sound of dread--the sliddering of a footfallin the sand. She recognized the heavy, dragging stride of the man whohad brought her here. He had come back--alone.
Terror seized her, keen and clarifying terror. She screamed, again andagain, called aloud the only name that came to her mind.
"_Sim_!" she cried aloud again and again--"_Sim_! _Sim_!"
[1] Wheat clocks: Phosphorus bombs left in wheat or haystacks and firedby the sun.
[2] Clothes: Argot terms for phosphorus, cyanide and other chemicalsused in destruction of property or life.
The Sagebrusher: A Story of the West Page 13