Bitter, fierce, ominous, his wrath loomed up in his heart. His fists gripped tight together, his teeth clenched. Oh, for a moment to have his hand upon the throat of S. Behrman, wringing the breath from him, wrenching out the red life of him—staining the street with the blood sucked from the veins of the People!
To the first friend that he met, Dyke told the tale of the tragedy, and to the next, and to the next. The affair went from mouth to mouth, spreading with electrical swiftness, overpassing and running ahead of Dyke himself, so that by the time he reached the lobby of the Yosemite House, he found his story awaiting him. A group formed about him. In his immediate vicinity business for the instant was suspended. The group swelled. One after another of his friends added themselves to it. Magnus Derrick joined it, and Annixter. Again and again, Dyke recounted the matter, beginning with the time when he was discharged from the same corporation’s service for refusing to accept an unfair wage. His voice quivered with exasperation; his heavy frame shook with rage; his eyes were injected, bloodshot; his face flamed vermilion, while his deep bass rumbled throughout the running comments of his auditors like the thunderous reverberation of diapason.
From all points of view, the story was discussed by those who listened to him, now in the heat of excitement, now calmly, judicially. One verdict, however, prevailed. It was voiced by Annixter: “You’re stuck. You can roar till you’re black in the face, but you can’t buck against the Railroad. There’s nothing to be done.”
“You can shoot the ruffian, you can shoot S. Behrman,” clamoured one of the group. “Yes, sir; by the Lord, you can shoot him.”
“Poor fool,” commented Annixter, turning away.
Nothing to be done. No, there was nothing to be done—not one thing. Dyke, at last alone and driving his team out of the town, turned the business confusedly over in his mind from end to end. Advice, suggestion, even offers of financial aid had been showered upon him from all directions. Friends were not wanting who heatedly presented to his consideration all manner of ingenious plans, wonderful devices. They were worthless. The tentacle held fast. He was stuck.
By degrees, as his wagon carried him farther out into the country, and open empty fields, his anger lapsed, and the numbness of bewilderment returned. He could not look one hour ahead into the future; could formulate no plans even for the next day. He did not know what to do. He was stuck.
With the limpness and inertia of a sack of sand, the reins slipping loosely in his dangling fingers, his eyes fixed, staring between the horses’ heads, he allowed himself to be carried aimlessly along. He resigned himself. What did he care? What was the use of going on? He was stuck.
The team he was driving had once belonged to the Los Muertos stables and unguided as the horses were, they took the county road towards Derrick’s ranch house. Dyke, all abroad, was unaware of the fact till, drawn by the smell of water, the horses halted by the trough in front of Caraher’s saloon.
The ex-engineer dismounted, looking about him, realising where he was. So much the worse; it did not matter. Now that he had come so far it was as short to go home by this route as to return on his tracks. Slowly he unchecked the horses and stood at their heads, watching them drink.
“I don’t see,” he muttered, “just what I am going to do.”
Caraher appeared at the door of his place, his red face, red beard, and flaming cravat standing sharply out from the shadow of the doorway. He called a welcome to Dyke.
“Hello, Captain.”
Dyke looked up, nodding his head listlessly.
“Hello, Caraher,” he answered.
“Well,” continued the saloonkeeper, coming forward a step, “what’s the news in town?”
Dyke told him. Caraher’s red face suddenly took on a darker colour. The red glint in his eyes shot from under his eyebrows. Furious, he vented a rolling explosion of oaths.
“And now it’s your turn,” he vociferated. “They ain’t after only the big wheat-growers, the rich men. By God, they’ll even pick the poor man’s pocket. Oh, they’ll get their bellies full some day. It can’t last forever. They’ll wake up the wrong kind of man some morning, the man that’s got guts in him, that will hit back when he’s kicked and that will talk to ’em with a torch in one hand and a stick of dynamite in the other.” He raised his clenched fists in the air. “So help me, God,” he cried, “when I think it all over I go crazy, I see red. Oh, if the people only knew their strength. Oh, if I could wake ’em up. There’s not only Shelgrim, but there’s others. All the magnates, all the butchers, all the bloodsuckers, by the thousands. Their day will come, by God, it will.”
By now, the ex-engineer and the barkeeper had retired to the saloon back of the grocery to talk over the details of this new outrage. Dyke, still a little dazed, sat down by one of the tables, preoccupied, saying but little, and Caraher as a matter of course set the whiskey bottle at his elbow.
It happened that at this same moment,
