Chapter XI: "hell-Camp" Court

As Reivers led the way out of the shop Toppy saw that Miss Pearson was standing in the door of the office across the way. He saw also that she was looking at him. He did not respond to her look nor volunteer a greeting, but deliberately looked away from her as he kept pace with Reivers, who was setting the way toward the gate of the stockade.

It was a morning such as the one when, back in Rail Head, the girl had kicked up the snow and said to him, "Isn't it glorious?" But since then Toppy felt bitterly that he had grown so much older, so disillusioned, that never again would he be guilty of the tender feelings that the girl had evoked that morning. The sun was bright, the crisp air invigorating, and the blood bounded gloriously through his young body. But Toppy did not wax enthusiastic.

He was grimly glad of the mighty stream of life that he felt surging within him; he would have use for all the might later on. But no more. The world was a harder, a less pretty place than he, in his inexperience, had fancied it before coming to Hell Camp.

"What's this lesson?" he asked gruffly of Reivers. "What are you going to show me?"

"A little secret in the art of keeping brute-men satisfied with the place in life which a superior mind has allotted to them," replied Reivers. "What is the first need of the brute? Food, of course. And the second is--fight. Give the lower orders of mankind, which is the kind to use in running a camp efficiently, plenty of food and fight, and the problem of restlessness is solved.

"That's history, Treplin, as you know. If these foolish, timid capitalists and leaders of men who are searching their petty souls for a remedy to combat the ravages of the modern disease called Socialism only would read history intelligently, they would find the remedy made to order. Fight! War! Give the lower brutes war; let 'em get out and slaughter one another, and they'd soon forget their pitiful, clumsy attempts to think for themselves. Give them guns with a little sharp steel on the end of the barrel, turn them loose on each other--any excuse would do--and they'd soon be so busy driving said steel into one another's thick bodies that the leaders could slip the yoke back on their necks and get 'em under hand again, where they belong.

"And they'd be happier, too, because a man-brute has got to have so much fighting, or what he calls his brain begins to trouble him; and then he imagines he has a soul and is otherwise unhappy. If there is fighting, or the certain prospect of fighting, there's no alleged thinking. There's the solution of all difficulties with the lower orders. Of course you've noticed how perfectly contented and happy the men in this camp are?" he laughed, turning suddenly on Toppy.

"Yes," said Toppy. "Especially Rosky and his bunch."

The Snow-Burner smiled appreciatively.

"Rosky, poor clod, hadn't had any fighting. I'd overlooked him. Had I known that thoughts had begun to trouble his poor, half-ox brain, I'd have given him some fighting, and he'd have been as content for the next few weeks as a man who--who's just been through delirium tremens.

"He had no object in life, you see. If he'd had a good enemy to hate and fight, he wouldn't have been troubled by thoughts, and consequently he wouldn't now be lying in his bunk with his leg in splints.

"There is the system in a nutshell--give a man an enemy to hate and wish to destroy, and he won't be any trouble to you during working-hours or after. That's what I do--pick out the ones who might get restless and set them to hating each other. And now," he concluded, as they reached the gate and passed through, "you'll have a chance to see how it works out."

The big gate, opened for them by two armed guards, swung shut behind them, and Toppy once more looked around the enclosure in which he had had his first glimpse of the Snow-Burner's system of handling the men under him. The place this morning, however, presented a different, a more impressive scene. It was all but filled with a mass of rough-clad, rough-moving, rough-talking male humanity.

Perhaps a hundred and fifty men were waiting in the enclosure. For the greater part they were of the dark, thick and heavily clumsy type that Toppy had learned to include under the general title of Bohunk; but here and there over the dark, ox-like faces rose the fair head of a tall man of some Northern breed. Slavs comprised the bulk of the gathering; the Scandinavians, Irish, Americans--the "white men," as they called themselves--were conspicuous only by contrast and by the manner in which they isolated themselves from the Slavs.

And between the two breeds there was not much room for choice. For while the faces of the Slavs were heavy with brute stupidity and malignity, those of the North-bred men reeked with fierceness, cruelty and crime. The Slavs were at Hell Camp because they were tricked into coming and forced to remain under shotgun rule; the others were there mostly because sheriffs found it unsafe and unprofitable to seek any man whom the Snow-Burner had in his camp. They were "hiding out." Criminals, the majority of them, they preyed on the stupid Slavs as a matter of course; and this situation Reivers had utilised, as he put it, "to keep his men content."

Though there was a gulf of difference between the extreme types of the crowd, Toppy soon realised that just now their expressions were strangely alike. They were all impatient and excited. The excitement seemed to run in waves; one man moved and others moved with him. One threw up his head and others did likewise. Their faces were expectant and cruel. It was like the milling of excited cattle, only worse.

"Come along, Treplin," said Reivers, and led the way toward the centre of the enclosure. The noises of the crowd, the talking, the short laughter, the shuffling, ceased instantly at his appearance. The crowd parted before him as before some natural force that brushed all men aside. It opened up even to the centre of the yard, and then Toppy saw whither Reivers was leading.

On the bare ground was roped off a square which Toppy, with practised eye, saw was the regulation twenty-four-foot prize-fight ring. Rough, unbarked tamarack poles formed the corner-posts of the ring, and the ropes were heavy wire logging-cable. A yard from one side of the ring stood a table with a chair upon it. Reivers, with a careless, "Take a seat on the table and keep your eyes open," stepped easily upon the table, seated himself in the chair and looked amused as the men instinctively turned their faces up toward him.

"Well, men," he said in a voice which reached like cold steel into the far corners of the enclosure, "court is open. The first case is Jan Torta and his brother Mikel against Bill Sheedy, whom they accuse of stealing ninety-eight dollars from them while they slept."

As he spoke the names two young Slavs, clumsy but strongly built, their heavy faces for once alight with hate and desire for revenge, pushed close to one side of the ring, while on the other side a huge red-haired Celt, bloated and evil of face, stepped free of the crowd.

"Bill stole the money, all right," continued Reivers, without looking at any of them. "He had the chance, and being a sneak thief by nature he took it. That's all right. The Torta boys had the money; now Bill's got it. The question is: Is Bill man enough to keep it? That's what we're going to settle now. He's got to show that he's a better man than the two fellows he took the money from. If he isn't, he's got to give up the money, or the two can have him to do what they want to with him. All right, boys; get 'em started there."

At his brisk order four men whom Toppy had seen around camp as guards stepped forward, two to Sheedy, two to the Torta brothers, and proceeded first to search them for weapons, next to strip them to the waist. Sheedy hung back.

"Not two av um tuh wanst, Mr. Reivers?" he asked humbly. "One after deh udder it oughta be; two tuh wanst, that ain't no way."

"And why not, Bill?" asked Reivers gently. "You took it from both of them, didn't you? Then keep it against both of 'em, Bill. Throw 'em in there, boys!"

Toppy looked around at the rows of eager faces that were pressing toward the ringside. Prize-fights he had witnessed by the score. He had even participated in one or two for a lark, and the brute lust that springs into the eyes of spectators was no stranger to him. But never had he seen anything like this. There was none of the restraint imposed upon the human countenance by civilisation in the fierce faces that gathered about this ring.

Out of the dull eyes the primitive killing-animal showed unrestrained, unashamed. No dilettante interest in strength or skill here; merely the bare bloodthirsty desire to see a fellow-animal fight and bleed. Up above, the sky was clean and blue; the rough log walls shut out the rest of the world; the breathing of a mob of excited men was the only sound upon the quiet Sunday air. It was the old arena again; the merciless, gore-hungry crowd; the maddened gladiators; and upon the chair on the table, Reivers, lord of it all, the king-man, to whom it was all but an idle moment's play.

Reivers, above it all, untouched by it all, and yet directing and swaying it all as his will listed. Laws, rules, teachings, creeds--all were discarded. Primitive force had for the nonce been given back its rule. And over it, and controlling it, as well as each of the maddened eight-score men around the ring--Reivers.

And so thoroughly did Reivers dominate the whole affair that Toppy, sitting carelessly on the edge of the table, was conscious of it, and knew that he, too, felt instinctively inclined to do as the men did--to look to Reivers for a sign before daring to speak or make a move. The Snow-Burner was in the saddle. It wasn't natural, but every phase of the situation emanated from his master-man's will. It was even his wish that Toppy should sit thus at his feet and look on, and his wish was gratified.

But it was well that the visor of Toppy's cap hid his eyes, else Reivers might have wondered at the look that flashed up at him from them.

"Throw 'em in!" snapped Reivers, and the handlers thrust the three combatants, stripped to the waists but wearing calked lumberjack shoes, through the ropes.

A cry went up to the sky from a hundred and fifty throats around the ringside--a cry that had close kinship with the joyous, merciless "Au-rr-ruh" of a wolf about to make its kill. Then an instant's silence as the rudely handled fighters came to their feet and faced for action. Then another hideous yelp rent the still air; the fighters had come together!

"Queer ring-costumes, eh, Treplin?" came Reivers' voice mockingly. "Our own rules; the feet as well as the hands. Lord, what oxen!"

The two Slavs had sprung upon their despoiler like two maddened cattle. Sheedy, rushing to meet them, head down, swung right and left overhand; and with a mighty smacking of hard fist on naked flesh, one Torta rolled on the ground while his brother stopped in his tracks, his arms pressed to his middle. The crowd bellowed.

"Yes, I knew Sheedy had been a pug," said Reivers judicially.

Sheedy deliberately took aim and swung for the jaw of the man who had not gone down. The Slav instinctively ducked his head, and the blow, slashing along his jawbone, tore loose his ear. Half stunned, he dropped to his knees, and Sheedy stepped back to poise for a killing kick. But now the man who had been knocked down first was on his feet, and with the scream of a wounded animal he hurled himself through the air and went down, his arms close-locked around Sheedy's right leg. Sheedy staggered. The ring became a little hell of distorted human speech. Sheedy bellowed horrible curses as he beat to a pulp the face that sought to bury itself in his thigh; his assailant screeched in Slavish terror; and the bull-like roar of his brother, rising to his feet with cleared senses and springing into the battle, intermingled with both. Sheedy's red face went pale.

Around the ringside the faces of the Slavs shone with relief. The fight was going their way; they roared encouragement and glee in their own guttural tongue. The others--Irish, Americans, Scandinavians--rooting for Sheedy only because he was of their breed, were silent.

"Hang tough, Bill," said one man quietly; and then in a second the slightly superior brains in Sheedy's head had turned the battle. Like a flash he dropped flat on his back as his fresh assailant reached out to grip him. The furious Slav followed him helplessly in the fall; and a single gruff, appreciative shout came from the few "white men."

For they had seen, even as the Slav stumbled, Bill Sheedy's left leg shoot up like a catapult, burying the calked shoe to the ankle in the man's soft middle and flinging him to one side, a shuddering, senseless wreck. The man with his arms around Sheedy's leg looked up and saw. He was alone now, alone against the big man who had knocked him down with such ease. Toppy saw the man's mouth open and his face go yellow.

"Na, na, na!" he cried piteously, as Sheedy's blows again rained upon him. "I give up, give up, give up!"

He tried to bury his face in Bill's thigh; and Bill, mad with success, strove to pound him loose.

"Kill him, Bill!" said one of the Irishmen quietly. "You got him now; kill him."

"Stop." Reivers did not raise his voice. He seemed scarcely interested. Yet the roars around the ring died down. Sheedy stopped a blow half delivered and dropped his arms. The Slav released his clawlike hold and ran, sobbing, toward his prostrate brother.

"All right, Bill; you keep the money--for all them," said Reivers. "Clear out the ring, boys, and get that other pair in there."

The guards, springing into the ring as if under a lash, picked up the senseless man and thrust him like a sack of grain through the ropes and on to the ground at the feet of a group of his countrymen. Toppy saw these pick the man up and bear him away. The man's head hung down limply and dragged on the ground, and a thin stream of blood ran steadily out of one side of his mouth. His brother followed, loudly calling him by name.

"Very efficacious, that left leg of Bill's; eh, Treplin?" said Reivers lightly. "Bill was the superior creature there. He had the wit and will to survive in a crisis; therefore he is entitled to the rewards of the superior over the inferior, which in this case means the ninety-eight dollars which the Torta boys once had. That's justice--natural justice for you, Treplin; and all the fumbling efforts of the lawmakers who've tried through the ages to reduce life to a pen-and-paper basis haven't been able to change the old rule one bit.

"I'll admit that courts and all the fakery that goes with them have reduced the thing to a battle of brains, but after all it's the same old battle; the stronger win and hold. And," he concluded, waving his hand at the crowd, "you'll admit that Bill, and those Torta boys wouldn't be at their best in a contest of intelligence."

Toppy refused Reivers the pleasure of seeing how the brutality of the affair disgusted him.

"Why don't you follow the thing out to its logical conclusion?" he said carelessly. "The thing isn't settled as long as the Torta boys can possibly make reprisals. To be a consistent savage you'd have to let 'em go to it until one had killed the other. But even you don't dare to do that, do you, Reivers?"

Reivers laughed, but the look that he bent on Toppy's bland face indicated that he was a trifle puzzled.

"Then you wouldn't be running the camp efficiently, Treplin," he said. "It wouldn't make any difference if they were all Tortas; but Bill's a valuable man. He furnishes some one a bellyful of hating and fighting every week. No; I wouldn't have Bill killed for less than two hundred dollars. He's one of my best antidotes for the disease of discontent."

The guards now had pulled two other men up to the ropes and were searching and stripping them. Toppy stared at the disparity in the sizes of the men as the clothes were pulled off them. One stood up strong and straight, the muscles bulging big beneath his dark skin, his neck short and heavy, his head cropped and round. He wore a small, upturned moustache and carried himself with a certain handy air that indicated his close acquaintance with ring-events. The other man was short and dark, obviously an Italian; the skin of his body was a sickly white, his face olive green. He stood crouched, and beneath his ragged beard two teeth gleamed, like the fangs of a snarling dog.

"Antonio, the Knife-Expert, and Mahmout, the Strangling Bulgarian," announced Reivers laughingly. "Tony tried to stick Mahmout because of a little lady back in Rail Head, and made such a poor job of it that Mahmout has offered to meet him in the ring; Tony with his knife, Mahmout with his wrestling-tricks. Start 'em off."

The Bulgarian was under the ropes and upright in the ring before the Italian had started. He was in his stocking-feet, and despite the clumsiness of his build he moved with a quickness and ease that told of the fine co-ordination of the effective athlete. When the Italian entered the ring he held his right hand behind his back, and in the hand gleamed the six-inch blade of a wicked-looking stiletto.

A shiver ran along Toppy's spine, but he continued to play the game.

"Evidently Mahmout isn't a valuable man; you don't care what happens to him," he said.

"Not particularly," replied Reivers seriously. "He's a good man on the rollways--nothing extra. Still, I hardly believe Tony can kill him--not this time, at least."

The faces around the ring grew fiercer now. Growled curses and exclamations came through clenched teeth. Here was the spectacle that the brute-spirit hungered for--the bare, living flesh battling for life against the merciless, gleaming steel.

The big Bulgarian moved neatly forward, bent over at the waist, his strong arms extended, hands open before him in the practised wrestler's guard and attack. His feet did not leave the ground as he sidled forward, and his eyes never moved from the Italian's right arm. The latter, snarling and panting, retreated slightly, then began to circle carefully, his small eyes searching for the opening through which he could leap in and drive home his steel.

The Bulgarian turned with him, his guard always before him, as a bull turns its head to face the circling wolf. Without a sound the knife-man suddenly stopped and lunged a sweeping slash at the menacing hands. Mahmout, grasping for a hold on hand or wrist, caught the tip of the blade in his palm, and a slow bellow of rage shook him as he saw the blood flow. But he did not lower his guard nor take his eyes from his opponent.

The Italian retreated and circled again. A horrible sneer distorted his face, and the knife flashed in the sunlight as he slashed it to and fro before the other's hands. The crowd growled its appreciation. Three times Antonio leaped forward, slashed, and leaped back again; and each time the blood flowed from Mahmout's slashed fingers. But the wrestler's guard never lowered nor did he falter in his set plan of battle. He was working to get his man into a corner.

The Italian soon saw this and, leaping nimbly sidewise, lunged for Mahmout's ribs. The right arm of the Bulgarian dropped in time to save his life, but the knife, deflected from its fatal aim, ripped through the top muscles of his back for six inches. The mob roared at the fresh blood, but Mahmout was working silently. In his spring the Italian had only leaped toward another corner of the ring.

Mahmout leaped suddenly toward him. Antonio, stabbing swiftly at the hands reached out for him, jumped back. A cry from a countryman in the crowd warned him. Swiftly he glanced over his shoulder, saw that he was cornered, and with a low, sweeping swing of the arm he threw the knife low at Mahmout's abdomen.

The blade glinted as it flashed through the air; it thudded as it struck home; but the death-cry which the mob yelped out died short. With the expert's quickness Mahmout had flung his huge forearms before the speeding blade. Now he held his left arm up. The stiletto, quivering from the impact, had pierced it through.

With a fierce roar Mahmout plucked out the knife, hurled it from the ring and dived forward. The Italian fought like a fury, feet, teeth and fingernails making equal play. He sank his teeth in the injured left arm. Mahmout groped with his one sound hand and methodically clamped a hold on an ankle. He made sure that the hold was a firm one; then he wrenched suddenly--once. The Italian screamed and stiffened straight up under the appalling pain. Then he fell flat to the ground, and Toppy saw that his right foot was twisted squarely around and that the leg lay limp on the ground like a twisted rag.

"Stop," said Reivers, and Mahmout stepped back. "Take Tony's knife away from him, boys. Mahmout wins--for the time being."

"Inconsistent again," muttered Toppy. "Your scheme is all fallacies, Reivers. You give Tony a knife with which he may kill Mahmout at one stroke, but you don't let Mahmout finish him when he's got him down. Why don't you carry your system to its logical conclusion?"

"Why don't I?" chuckled Reivers, stepping down from the table. "Why, simply because Signor Antonio is the camp cook, and cooks are too scarce to be destroyed unnecessarily. Now come along, Treplin. Court's adjourned; a light docket to-day. I've been thinking of your wanting to learn how to run a logging-camp. I'm going to give you a change of jobs. You'll be no good in the blacksmith-shop till your ankle's normal again. Come along; I'll show you what I've picked out for you."

He turned away from the ring as from a finished episode in the day's work. That was over. Whether Torta or Antonio lived or died, were whole or crippled for the rest of their lives, had no room in his thoughts. He strode toward the gate as if the yard were empty, and the crowd opened a way far before him. Outside the gate he led the way around the stockade toward where the river roared and tumbled through the chutes of Cameron Dam.

A cliff-like ledge, perhaps thirty feet in height, situated close to one end of the dam, was Reivers' objective, and he led Toppy around to the side facing the river. Here the dirt had been scraped away on the face of the ledge, and a great cave torn in the exposed rock. The hole was probably fifty feet wide, and ran from twelve to fifteen feet under the brow of the ledge. Toppy was surprised to see no timbers upholding the rocky roof, which seemed at any moment likely to drop great masses of jagged stone into the opening beneath.

"My little rock-pile," explained Reivers lightly. "When my brutes aren't good I put 'em to work here. The rock goes into the dam out there. Just at present Rosky's band of would-be malcontents are the ones who are suffering for daring to be dissatisfied with the--ah--simplicity, let us say, of Hell Camp."

He laughed mirthlessly.

"I'm going to put you in charge of this quarry, Treplin. You're to see that they get one hundred wheelbarrows of rock out of here per hour. You'll be here at daylight to-morrow."

Toppy nodded quietly.

"What's the punishment here?" he asked, puzzled. "It looks like nothing more than hard work to me."

Reivers smiled the same smile that he had smiled upon Rosky.

"Look at the roof of that pit, Treplin," he said. "You've noticed that it isn't timbered up. Occasionally a stone drops down. Sometimes several stones. But one hundred barrows an hour have to come out of there just the same. And those rocks up there, you'll notice, are beautifully sharp and heavy."

Toppy felt Reivers' eyes upon him, watching to see what effect this explanation would have, and consequently he no more betrayed his feelings than he had at the brutal scenes of the "court."

"I see," he said casually. "I suppose this is why you made me read up on fractures?"

"Partly," said Reivers. He looked up at the jagged rocks in the roof of the pit and grinned. "And sometimes an accident here calls for a job for a pick and shovel. But I'm just, Treplin; only the malcontents are put to work in here."

"That is, those who have dared to declare themselves something besides your helpless slaves."

"Or dared to think of declaring themselves thus," agreed Reivers promptly.

"I see." Toppy was looking blandly at the roof, but his mind was working busily.

"Just why do you give me charge of this hole, Reivers--if you don't mind my asking? Isn't it rather an unusual honour for a green hand to be put over a crew like this?"

"Unusual! Oh, how beastly banal of you, Treplin!" laughed Reivers carelessly. "Surely you didn't expect me to do the usual thing, did you? You say you want to learn how to handle a camp like this. You're an interesting sort of creature, and I'd like to see you work out in the game of handling men, so I give you this chance. Oh, I'll do great things for you, Treplin, before I'm done with you! You can imagine all that I've got in store for you."

The smile vanished and he turned away. He was through with this incident, too. Without another word or look at Toppy he went back to the stockade, his mind already busy with some other project. Toppy stood looking after him until Reivers' broad back disappeared around the corner of the stockade.

"No, you clever devil!" he muttered. "I can't imagine. But whatever it is, I promise I'll hand it back to you with a little interest, or furnish a job for a pick and shovel."

He walked slowly back to the blacksmith-shop. He was glad to be left alone. Though he had permitted no sign of it to escape him, Toppy had been enraged and sickened at what he had seen in the stockade. He admitted to himself that it was not the fact that men had been disabled and crippled, nor the brutal rules that had governed, nor that men had been exposed to death at the hands of others before his eyes, that had stirred him so. It was--Reivers. Reivers sitting up there on the table playing with men's bodies and lives as with so many cards--Reivers, the dominant, lord over his fellows.

The veins swelled in Toppy's big neck as he thought of Reivers, and his hitherto good-natured face took on a scowl that might have become some ancestral man-captain in the days of mace and mail, but which never before had found room on Toppy's countenance--not even when the opposing half-backs were guilty of slugging. But he was playing another game now, an older one, a fiercer one, and one which called to him as nothing had called before. It was the man-game now; and out there in the old, stern forest, spurred by the challenge of the man who was his natural enemy, the primitive fighting-man in Toppy shook off the restraint with which breeding, education and living had cumbered him, and stood out in a fashion that would have shocked Toppy's friends back East.

Near the shop he met Miss Pearson. By her manner he saw that she had been waiting for him, but Toppy merely raised his cap and made to pass on.

"Mr. Treplin!" There was astonishment at his rudeness in her exclamation.

"Well?" said Toppy.

"Your ankle?"

"Oh, yes. Pardon me for not expressing my thanks before. It's almost well--thanks to you and Mr. Reivers."

She made a slight shrinking movement and stood looking at him for a moment. She opened her lips, but no words came.

"Old Scotty told me about your kindness in coming to see me, you and Mr. Reivers together," said Toppy. "It was a relief to learn that your confidence in Reivers was justified."

She looked up quickly, straight into his eyes. A troubled look swept over her face. Then with a toss of the head she turned and crossed the road, and Toppy swung on his way to the room in the rear of the shop and closed the door behind him with a vicious slam.