The Young Engineers in Arizona Part 6

"Have you lost your nerve, Jim?" bawled a l.u.s.ty American laborer. "You want this boy, as you call him, thrown out, and we're waiting to see you do it. It you haven't the nerve to tackle the job, then you're not a man to give us orders!"

Tom's smiling good humor and his fair proposition had swung the balance of feeling against the gambler. Duff saw that he had lost ground.

"Boy," called a few voices, "if Duff won't throw you out, then you turn the tables and throw him out."

"It isn't necessary," laughed Tom. "After the tents are gone Duff won't have any desire to remain around here. Mr. Duff, I ask you for the last time, will you have your men take down the tents and remove them?"

"I won't!" snarled the gambler.

"Mr. Rivers!" called Tom.

"Yes, sir," replied the foreman, stepping forward.

"Mr. Rivers, take twenty-five laborers and bring the tents down at once.

Be careful to see that no damage is done. As soon as they are down you will load them on the wagons."

"Yes, sir."

"On second thought, you had better take fifty men. See that the work is done as promptly as possible."

The Mexicans, who were in the majority, and nearly all of whom were wildly eager to gamble as soon as their money arrived, stirred uneasily. They might have interfered, but Foreman Mendoza ran among his countrymen, calling out to them vigorously in Spanish, and with so much emphasis that the men sullenly withdrew.

Foreman Rivers speedily had his fifty men, together, none of whom were Mexicans.

"Touch a single guy-rope at your peril!" warned Jim Duff menacingly, but big Superintendent Hawkins seized the gambler by the shoulders, gently, though, firmly, removing him from the vicinity of the tents.

All in a flash the work was done. Canvas and poles were loaded on to the wagons. Mr. Rivers's men had entered so thoroughly into the spirit of the thing that, they forced the drivers to start off, and the gambler's men to follow.

Goaded to the last ditch of desperation, Jim Duff now strode over to where Tom stood. No one opposed him, nor did Reade's smile fail.

"Boy, you've had your laugh, just now," announced the gambler, in his most threatening, tone. "It will be your last laugh."

"Oh, I hope not," drawled Tom.

"You will know more within twenty-four hours. You have treated me, with your own crowd about you, like a dog."

"You're wrong again," laughed Tom.. "Jim is fond of dogs. They are fine fellows."

"You may laugh as much as you want, just now," jeered Jim Duff. "You've made an enemy, and one of the worst in Arizona! I won't waste any more talk on you--except to warn you."

"Warn me? About what?" asked Tom curiously.

Instead of answering, Jim Duff turned on his heel, stalking off with a majesty that, somehow, looked sadly damaged.

"He has warned you," murmured Superintendent Hawkins in an undertone.

"That is your hint that Duff will fight you to the death at the first opportunity."

"May it be long in coming!" uttered Tom devoutly.

Then, as he turned about and saw scores of laborers coming in his direction, Reade remembered what he wished to do.

"Mr. Hawkins," he continued, turning toward the superintendent, "I see that Mr. Payson's gang is coming in from work. As all our men are now idle, I wish you would direct the foremen to see that all hands a.s.semble here. I have something to say to them."

Within ten minutes the five hundred laborers and mechanics had been gathered in a compact crowd. Now that the excitement of hustling the gambler off the scene had died away, many of the men were sorry that they had not made their disapproval plainer. Though Tom Reade plainly understood the mood of the men, he mounted a barrel, holding up both hands as a sign for silence.

"Now, men," he began, "you all know that the pay train is due here this afternoon. You are all eager to get your money--for what? It is a strange fact that gold is the carrion that draws all of the vultures. A few minutes ago you saw one of the vultures here, preparing to get his supposed share of your money away from you. Does Jim Duff care a hang about any of you? Do any of you care anything whatever for Jim Duff?

Then why should you be so eager to get into one of his tents and let him take your money away from you?

"It is true that, once in a while, a solitary player gets a few dollars away from a gambler. Yet, in the end, the gambler has every dollar of the crowd that patronizes him. You men have been out in the hot sun for weeks, working hard to earn the money that the pay train is bringing you. Has Jim Duff done any work in the last few weeks? While you men have been toiling and sweating, what has Duff been doing? Hasn't he been going around wearing the clothes and the air of a gentleman, while you men have been giving all but your lives for your dollars, while you have been denied most of the comforts of living. Hasn't Duff been up at the Mansion House, living on the fat of the land and smiling to himself every time he thought of you men, who would be ready to hand him all of your money as soon as it came to you? Is the gambler, who grows fat on the toil of others, but never toils himself, any better than the vulture that feeds upon the animals killed by others? Isn't the gambler a parasite, pure and simple? On whose lifeblood does the gambler feed, unless it's on yours?"

Tom continued his harangue, becoming more and more intense, yet carrying his talk along in all simplicity, and with a directness that made scores of the workmen look sheepish.

"Whenever you find a man anywhere who professes to be working for your good, or for your amus.e.m.e.nt, and who gets all the benefit in the end, why don't you open your eyes to him?" Tom inquired presently. "Over in Paloma there are saloon keepers who are cleaning up their dives and opening new lots of liquor that they feel sure they're going to sell you to-night. These dive keepers are ready to welcome you with open arms, and they'll try to make you feel that you're royal good fellows and that they are the best friends you have in the world. Yet, to-morrow morning, how will the property be divided? The keepers of these saloons and Jim Duff will have all your money and what will you have?"

Tom paused, whipping out a white handkerchief that he deftly bound around his head, meanwhile looking miserable.

"That's what you men will have--and that's all that you'll have left,"

croaked the young chief engineer dismally. "Now, friends, is the game worth a candle of that sort? How many of you have money in the bank? Let every man here who has put up his hand. Not one of you? Who's keeping your money in bank for you? Jim Duff and the sellers of poisons? Will they ever hand your money back to you? Some of you men have dear ones at home. If one of these dear ones sends a hurried, frenzied appeal for money in time of sickness or death what will your answer have to be?

Just this: 'I have been working like a slave for a year, but I can send you only my love. Jim Duff, who hasn't worked in all his life, won't let me send you any money.' Friends, is that what you're burning yourselves black on the desert for?"

While Tom Reade spoke Foreman Mendoza had marshaled his Mexicans and was translating the young engineer's words into Spanish.

Nor was it long ere Tom's fine presentation of the matter caught the men in the n.o.bler part of their feelings.

"Don't blame Duff so much," Tom finally went on. "He may be a parasite, a vulture, a feeder on blood, but you and men just like you have helped to make the Duffs. You're not going to do so after this, are you, my friends? You're not going to keep the breath of life in monsters who drain you dry of life and manhood?"

"No!" came a thunderous shout, even though all of Reade's hearers did not join in it.

Even the Mexicans, listening to Mendoza's translation, became interested, despite their lesser degree of intelligence.

Tom continued to talk against time, though he wasted few words. All that he said went home to many of the laborers. While he was still talking the whistle of the pay train was heard.

Reade quickly sent his foremen and a few trusted workmen to head off any "runners" who might attempt to come in from Paloma while the men were being paid off.

As the train came to a stop Tom leaped upon a flat car behind the engine and introduced one of the newcomers--the vice president of a savings bank over in Tucson. This man, who knew the common people, talked for fifteen minutes, after which a clerk appeared from the pay car with a book in which to register the signatures of those who wished to open bank accounts. Then the paymaster and his a.s.sistants worked rapidly in paying off.

That railroad pay day proved a time of gloom to many in the town of Paloma. The returning pay train carried the bank officials and twenty-four thousand dollars that had been deposited as new accounts from the men. Of the money that remained in camp much of it was carried in the pockets of men who meant to keep it there until they received something worth while it exchange.

True, this did not trouble the majority of people in Paloma, who were sober, decent American citizens engaged in the proper walks of life.

But Jim Duff and a few others held an indignation meeting that night.

"We've been robbed!" complained one indignant saloon keeper.

"Gentlemen," observed Jim Duff, in his oiliest tones, though his face was ghastly white, "you have a new enemy, who threatens your success in business. How are you going to deal with him?"

"We'll run him off the desert, or bury him there!" came the snarling response.