The Snow-Burner smiled appreciatively.
“Rosky, poor clod, hadn’t had any fighting. I’d overlooked him. Had I known that thoughts had begun to trouble his poor, half-ox brain, I’d have given him some fighting, and he’d have been as content for the next few weeks as a man who—who’s just been through delirium tremens.
“He had no object in life, you see. If he’d had a good enemy to hate and fight, he wouldn’t have been troubled by thoughts, and consequently he wouldn’t now be lying in his bunk with his leg in splints.
“There is the system in a nutshell—give a man an enemy to hate and wish to destroy, and he won’t be any trouble to you during working-hours or after. That’s what I do—pick out the ones who might get restless and set them to hating each other. And now,” he concluded, as they reached the gate and passed through, “you’ll have a chance to see how it works out.”
The big gate, opened for them by two armed guards, swung shut behind them, and Toppy once more looked around the enclosure in which he had had his first glimpse of the Snow-Burner’s system of handling the men under him. The place this morning, however, presented a different, a more impressive scene. It was all but filled with a mass of rough-clad, rough-moving, rough-talking male humanity.
Perhaps a hundred and fifty men were waiting in the enclosure. For the greater part they were of the dark, thick and heavily clumsy type that Toppy had learned to include under the general title of Bohunk; but here and there over the dark, ox-like faces rose the fair head of a tall man of some Northern breed. Slavs comprised the bulk of the gathering; the Scandinavians, Irish, Americans—the “white men,” as they called themselves—were conspicuous only by contrast and by the manner in which they isolated themselves from the Slavs.
And between the two breeds there was not much room for choice. For while the faces of the Slavs were heavy with brute stupidity and malignity, those of the North-bred men reeked with fierceness, cruelty and crime. The Slavs were at Hell Camp because they were tricked into coming and forced to remain under shotgun rule; the others were there mostly because sheriffs found it unsafe and unprofitable to seek any man whom the Snow-Burner had in his camp. They were “hiding out.” Criminals, the majority of them, they preyed on the stupid Slavs as a matter of course; and this situation Reivers had utilised, as he put it, “to keep his men content.”
Though there was a gulf of difference between the extreme types of the crowd, Toppy soon realised that just now their expressions were strangely alike. They were all impatient and excited. The excitement seemed to run in waves; one man moved and others moved with him. One threw up his head and others did likewise. Their faces were expectant and cruel. It was like the milling of excited cattle, only worse.
“Come along, Treplin,” said Reivers, and led the way toward the centre of the enclosure. The noises of the crowd, the talking, the short laughter, the shuffling, ceased instantly at his appearance. The crowd parted before him as before some natural force that brushed all men aside. It opened up even to the centre of the yard, and then Toppy saw whither Reivers was leading.
On the bare ground was roped off a square which Toppy, with practised eye, saw was the regulation twenty-four-foot prize-fight ring. Rough, unbarked tamarack poles formed the corner-posts of the ring, and the ropes were heavy wire logging-cable. A yard from one side of the ring stood a table with a chair upon it. Reivers, with a careless, “Take a seat on the table and keep your eyes open,” stepped easily upon the table, seated himself in the chair and looked amused as the men instinctively turned their faces up toward him.