II
Sandy Macdougal was enjoying his afternoon nod when Hammond dropped in at their bunkhouse, but immediately after the latter’s entry the cook rolled out of the blankets in his sock-feet. “Cripes, didn’t I lock that door?” he gasped as he sat blinking at the newcomer. “Huh, guess I’m gettin’ nerves, but the goings on here lately is enough to make a man loco.”
“Why—what’s up now, Sandy?” laughed Hammond.
“Place is alive with cut-throats,” declared the other. “Fellow has to sleep with one eye open to watch that one of ’em don’t come in to bean him for his wad.”
“Yes, I saw a lot of strangers about the camp,” observed Hammond. “Who are they anyway?”
“Gang of low-brow detectives and strike-breakers brought in from Winnipeg and Duluth on a towed barge early this morning. They’re the scum of creation, and the way they gave orders to my boys when they came in for eats—well, when Acey Smith comes back he’ll have another strike on his hands. My outfit didn’t hire on here to be bossed around by no second-class bums like them.”
“So the North Star’s putting up a bluff of breaking the strike?”
“North Star nothin’!” derided Sandy. “If it was I wouldn’t feel so cussed mean toward them. This gang’s been put in here by the other company—the Kam City Pulp and Paper Mill crowd—to take hold of the camp work if the North Star’s pole-cutters and boom-tenders go out in sympathy with the tugmen. Mooney put me wise, and you bet we make ’em whack up for every meal they get here at rates just the same as if they was stoppin’ at the Royal Aleck in Winnipeg.”
Hammond whistled. “So that’s the idea, eh?” He had to concede to himself that Gildersleeve must have acted with considerable despatch. No doubt he intended to use these men for waterfront land work when he got his tugs over from Duluth to convey the poles to Kam City.
“Oh, they ain’t goin’ to come very much, at that,” insisted Macdougal. “Any old time this strike is settled it will be settled by the North Star itself—and it won’t be settled till then, not if they bring all the strikebreakers and mounties between here and hell’s gangway to the camp.”