Comrades Part 22

"I didn't know but that you made a bluff at it to lead the others on.

What can I do, for heaven's sake?"

Norman looked at her in a helpless sort of way while Barbara rolled up her sleeves. For the first time he saw her beautifully rounded bare arm to its full length. He stood with open-eyed admiration. Never had he seen anything so white and round and soft, so subtly and seductively suggestive of tenderness and love.

"For heaven's sake, what do I do?" he repeated, blankly.

"Get some meal in that bucket for my cow, and see that her calf don't get to her--I'll do the rest."

Norman hustled to the barn with the other boys, got his bucket of meal, placed it in front of the cow Barbara had selected, and stood watching with admiration the skill with which her deft little hands pressed two streams of white milk into the bucket at her feet.

"Goodness, you're a wonder," he cried, admiringly. "But where's the calf I'm supposed to be watching?"

"I think that's the one standing close to the gate in the next lot watching me with envy. The first time the gate's opened he'll jump through if he gets half a chance--so look out!"

"I'll watch him," Norman promised, without lifting his eyes from the rhythmic movement of the bare white arms.

He had scarcely spoken when a careless boy swung the gate wide open, and the l.u.s.ty calf, whose soft eyes had been watching Barbara through the fence, made a break for his mother. In a swift, silent rush he planted one foot in Barbara's milk-pail, knocked her over with the other, switched his tail, and fell to work on his own account without further concern. It was all done so suddenly it took Norman's breath.

He sprang to Barbara's side and helped her to her feet.

Norman grabbed the calf by the ear with one hand and by the tail with the other, and started toward the gate.

The animal suddenly ducked his head, plunged forward, jerked Norman to his knees, and dragged him ten yards before he could regain his feet.

The young leader rose, tightened his grip, and started with a rush toward the gate, but the calf swerved in time to avoid it, gaining speed with each step, and started off with his escort in a mad race around the lot, galloping at a terrific speed, bellowing and snorting at every jump.

The others stopped their work to laugh and cheer as round and round the maddened little brute flew with the tall, heroic leader galloping by his side.

Norman had no time to call for help. He couldn't let go and he couldn't stop the calf.

As he made the second round of the lot, upsetting buckets, smashing milk-pails, and stampeding peaceful cows, a boy yelled through the roars of laughter:

"Twist his tail! Twist his tail an' he'll go the way you want him!"

Norman misunderstood the order, loosened the head and grabbed the tail with both hands. With a loud bellow the calf plunged into a wilder race around the lot, dragging his tormentor now with regular, graceful easy jumps. He made the rounds twice thus, single file, amid screams of laughter, suddenly turned and plunged headlong through an osage hedge, and left Norman sitting in a dusty heap on the ground among the thorns. He rose, brushed his clothes sheepishly, and looked through the hedge at the calf which had turned and stood eyeing him now with an expression of injured innocence.

Barbara came up, wiping the tears of laughter from her eyes.

"I've learned something new," Norman quietly observed. "All labour may be equally honourable. It's not equally expedient. I wish you'd look at that beast eyeing me through the fence! It's positively uncanny. I believe he's possessed of the devil. I don't wonder at that belief of the ancients. I've tackled many a brute on the football field--but this is one on me!"

The brilliant young leader of the new moral world led the procession of milkmaids back to the house as the shadows of evening fell, a sadder but wiser man for the day's experience.

CHAPTER XVIII

A NEW ARISTOCRACY

Three members of the executive council, Norman, Barbara, and Tom, began at once the task of a.s.signing work. The problems which immediately faced the council were overwhelming, but they were urgent and could admit of no delay. The absolute refusal of every member of the Brotherhood to do the dirty and disagreeable work brought at once two issues to a crisis. Either labour must be voluntary or involuntary. The people who did this work must be induced to agree to perform it or they must be forced to do it by a superior authority without their consent.

They could only be led to choose this work by inducements of an extraordinary nature--the payment of enormously high wages and the shortening of each day's work to a ridiculous minimum.

If wages were made unequal, the old problem of inequality would remain unsolved. For equal wages no man would lift his hand.

Confronted by this dilemma the executive council decided at once to fix wages on an unequal basis rather than reduce its unwilling members to a condition of involuntary labour, which is merely a long way to spell slavery.

When this decision was announced, Roland Adair, the Bard of Ramcat, once more lifted his voice in solemn protest:

"I denounce this act in the name of every principle which has brought us together," he cried, with solemn warning. "You have established a system far more infamous than the unequal wages of the old society where the law of the survival of the fittest is the court of last resort. You have opened the door of fathomless corruption by subst.i.tuting the whim of an executive council for the law of nature.

It is the beginning of jealousy, strife, favouritism, jobbery, and injustice."

"Then what's a better way?" Old Tom asked, with a sneer.

"It's your business to find a better way," cried the man of visions.

Tom glared at the poet with a look of fury and Norman whispered to the old miner:

"Remember, Tom, you're sitting as a judge in the Supreme Court of State!"

"Can't help it. I never did have no use for a fool. Ef he can't tell us a better way, let 'im shet up."

Barbara pressed Tom's arm, and he subsided.

The court at once entered into the question of wages for domestic service.

It had been agreed, at the suggestion of the Wolfs, that they should spend their time in quietly investigating the qualifications of each member of the Brotherhood for the work to be a.s.signed, and make their reports in secret to the majority of the court, which should sit continuously until all had been decided.

Neither Norman, Barbara, nor the old miner suspected for a moment the deeper motive which Wolf concealed behind this withdrawal from the decision of these cases. They found out in a very startling way later.

The chief cook demanded a hundred dollars a month.

Old Tom snorted with contempt. Norman smiled and spoke kindly:

"Remember, Louis, you only received $75 a month in San Francisco. Here the Brotherhood provides every man with his food, his clothes, and his house. Wages are merely the inducement used to satisfy each individual that labour may still be done by free contract, not by force."

"Well, it'll take a hundred a month to satisfy me," was the stolid reply. "I didn't come here to cook. I could do that in the old h.e.l.l we lived in. I came here to do better and bigger things. I can do them, too----"

"But we've fixed the salary of the general manager at only seventy-five dollars a month, and you demand a hundred?"

"I do, and if the general manager prefers my job, I'll trade with you and guarantee to do your work better than it's being done."

"Yes, you will!" old Tom growled, as he leaned over Barbara and whispered to Norman.

"Make it thirty dollars a month, and if he don't go to work--leave him to me, I'll beat him till he does it."

"No, we can't manage it that way, Tom. We must try to satisfy him."

"Hit's a hold-up, I tell ye--highway robbery--the triflin' son of a gun! Don't you say so, miss?" Tom appealed earnestly to Barbara.