Gang-master Scipio plainly didn't like the job, but he liked it better than he did the idea of being discharged. So he spoke to four Italians about him, and the five surrounded the man.
"Hol' on dar, Boss Reade!" spoke up a negro. "Ef yo' carry dis matter too far, den dere's gwine to be a strike on dis wohk. Jess ez dis gemman sez, we ain't no slaves. Yo' try to stop all our pleasures ebenings, an' dar's gwine be a strike—-shuah!"
"You may strike right now, if you wish to," Tom retorted, facing the last speaker. "Mr. Renshaw will be prepared to pay you off within hour. Any other man in this camp who isn't content to get along without liquor and gambling may as well strike at the same time. Mr. Renshaw, it's half-past eight. At nine o'clock please be at the house ready to pay off any man who isn't satisfied to live and work in a camp where neither drinking nor gambling is allowed. Scipio, why haven't you started that fellow away from here?"
"Too bigga crowd in front of us," replied the Italian gang-master, shrugging his shoulders.
"Come on, Harry," Tom replied. "We'll see if we can't make a way through the crowd." The two young engineers placed themselves at the head of the squad, and succeeded quickly in opening up a passage through a crowd that seemed to be at least half hostile.
Thus Tom found himself soon face to face with an American.
"Evarts!" Reade cried, angrily. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm here by permission," snarled the discharged foreman.
"Whose permission?" Tom insisted, briskly.
"Mr. Bascomb's," replied Evarts, with a leer so full of satisfaction that
Reade didn't doubt the truth of the statement.