“How did it get there?” he asked.
“Tell you after supper,” said the fellow. “They’re bringing it along.”
A whistle blew and Prescott followed his companions into a shed built of railroad ties and galvanized iron. It was lighted by kerosene lamps which diffused an unpleasant odor, and fitted with rude tables and benches; but the meal laid out in it was bountiful and varied: pork, hard steak, fish from the lakes, potatoes, desiccated fruits, and tea. The shovel-gang paid six dollars a week for their board and got good value. As usual, most of them were satisfied in fifteen minutes, for in the West the rank and file eat with determined haste, and when they trooped out Prescott went back with his new friends to the fire. Taking out his pipe, he made himself as comfortable as possible on a pile of gravel and, tired with a long day’s march, looked lazily about. The strong light still blazed along the bank where hurrying men passed through the stream of radiance, vanished into the shadows, and appeared again. There was a continuous rattling and clinking and roar of falling stones; rails rang as they were moved, and now and then hoarse orders came out of the darkness.
After Prescott had asked a few leading questions, the men began to talk of Kermode, who had already left the camp, and the rancher was able to put together the story of his doings there.
The muskeg was an unusually bad one. It swallowed the rock the men dumped in; logs, brush, and branches afforded no foundation, and a long time elapsed before the engineers were satisfied about the base of the embankment. The weather remained unusually hot until late in the fall, and the contractor, already behind time and anxious to make progress before the frost interfered with his work, developed a virulent temper. His construction foreman drove the men mercilessly, spurring on the laggards with scathing words and occasionally using a heavy fist when they showed resentment. The laborers’ nerves were worn raw, their strength was exhausted; but the muskeg must be filled and, while carload after carload of rock and gravel was hurled down, the line crept on.
Things were in this state when Kermode reached the camp and, on applying for work, was given a shovel and made to use it in a strenuous fashion. It appeared that he was not expert with the tool and the foreman’s most pointed remarks were generally addressed to him, but he had a humorous manner which gained him friends. Once or twice, to his comrades’ admiration, he engaged his persecutor in a wordy contest and badly routed him, which did not improve matters. Indeed, his last victory proved a costly one, because afterward when there was anything particularly unpleasant or dangerous to be done, Kermode was selected. As it happened, the risks that must be faced were numerous.
Kermode stood it for some weeks, though he grew thin and his hands were often bleeding. In spite of this, his eyes still twinkled mischievously and, when occasion demanded, his retort was swift and edged with wit. Now and then he made reprisals, for when, as happened once or twice, a load of gravel nearly swept the foreman down the bank, Kermode was engaged in the vicinity. Another time, the bullying martinet was forced to jump into the muskeg, where he sank to the waist, in order to avoid a mass of ballast sent down before its descent was looked for.
There was a difference of opinion about the cause of Kermode’s holding out. Some of his comrades said he must have meant to wait for the arrival of the pay car, so as to draw his wages before he left; others declared that this did not count with him, and he stayed because he would not be driven out. The Englishman took the latter view for, as he told Prescott, Kermode once said to him, “I want the opposition to remember me when I quit.”
By degrees the foreman’s gibes grew less frequent. Kermode was more than a match for him, and his barbed replies were repeated with laughter about the camp; but his oppressor now relied on galling commands which could not be disobeyed. Kermode’s companions sympathized with him, and waited for the inevitable rupture, which they thought would take a dramatic shape. At length two big steel dump cars were sent up from the east and run backward and forward between the muskeg and a distant cutting where they were filled with broken rock. This was deposited in places where the embankment needed the most reinforcing, but after a while the foreman decided that the locomotive of the gravel train need not be detained to move the cars. They could, he said, be pushed by hand, and nobody was surprised when Kermode was among the men chosen for the task.