He halted and removed the deadly contrivance. Men on watch of his movements could have prepared it against his return; and, indeed, he thought he detected a pair of flitting shadows behind a row of willow bushes lining a Mexican irrigation ditch, but in the dusk he could not be sure. On running thither, he found no one.
The camp was not of a temper, however, to allow the attacks to be all on one side. Atkinson, the superintendent, came to Weir one morning towards the end of the week and informed him workmen were drifting down to San Mateo nightly in hope of trouble.
“They’ll get a knife put into them,” Steele Weir replied, with a frown that did not entirely hide his satisfaction at this evidence of support.
“Maybe; and again maybe not,” the superintendent stated, grinning. “A bunch jumped some of our boys last night and I guess when the dust settled there were a couple of Mexicans beaten nearly to death.”
“Call the men all together this noon,” Weir ordered.
At that hour he gave them a talk for what he called their long-eared cussedness, and laid down a little law and wound up with a number of reasonable explanations for the same. Every man who went out hunting trouble was a camp liability, and would be fired. He did not propose to give the town authorities a chance to jail workmen and impair the dam work, just the thing they 86 were waiting to do. The men should keep away from San Mateo, or at least avoid disputes and rows. If they spent no money there whatever it would sting the town where it would hurt the most, in its pocket-book; and he himself was transferring the company bank account to Bowenville, by way of example. If any man felt the need of change from camp, he could have two days off at the end of the month to spend at Bowenville. But keep away from the Mexicans!
“And if they come up here huntin’ us when we show up no more?” yelled the same big Irishman who had paid his respects to Vorse.
“In that case, tear their heads off,” was the reply. “But put on your gloves first or you’ll dirty your fingers.” Which bit of rough humor caught the crowd’s fancy and won a roar of laughter.
Later as the crowd dispersed to eat Atkinson said to Meyers, “The boss knows how to handle men all right, all right; he put sugar on the pill. The gang went off grinning. They know they’ve got to be good––but only up to a limit.”
Meantime Felipe Martinez had not been idle. He rode up to engineering headquarters on his pony one evening and carried Weir out into the open where their words would not be overheard. He reported that he was quietly working for information of Weir’s father among the older Mexicans who would be likely to remember him, but proceeding cautiously so that no one would suspect his purpose. He represented himself to them as undertaking to write a history of San Mateo County; he must depend upon them for data of early days; it would be a fine book bound in leather, in which their names and possibly their pictures would appear;––which never failed to flatter the parties with whom 87 he talked. And the lawyer laughed with amusement as he related the success of his method.