"They're a gang of sneakin' cutthroats that call theirselfs the Industrial Workers of the World, though why they claim they're workers is more'n what any one knows. They won't work, an' they won't let no one else work. The only time they take a job is when they think there's a chanct to sneak around an' put the kibosh on whatever work is goin' on. They tell the men they're downtrod by capital an' they'd ort to raise up an' kill off the bosses an' grab everything fer theirselfs. Alongside of them birds, rattlesnakes an' skunks is good companions."
"Aren't there any laws that will reach them?"
"Naw," growled Hurley in disgust. "When they git arrested an' convicted, the rest of 'em raises such a howl that capital owns the courts, an' the judges is told to hang all the workin' men they kin, an' a lot of rot like that, till the governors git cold feet an' pardon them. If the government used 'em right, it'd outlaw the whole kaboodle of 'em. Some governors has got the nerve to tell 'em where to head in at—Washington, an' California, an' Minnesota, too, is comin' to it. They're gittin' in their dirty work in the woods—but believe me, they won't git away with nothin' in my camps! I'm just a-layin' an' a-honin' to tear loose on 'em. Them three birds over there is goin' to need help when I git through with 'em."
"Why don't you fire 'em now?"
"Not me. I want 'em to start somethin'! I want to git a crack at 'em. There's three things don't go in my camps—gamblin', booze, an' I. W. W.'s. I've logged from the State of Maine to Oregon an' halfways back. I've saw good camps an' bad ones a-plenty, an' I never seen no trouble in the woods that couldn't be charged up ag'in' one of them three."
The train stopped at a little station and Hurley rose with a yawn. "Guess I'll go have a look at the horses," he said, and clambered down the ladder at the end of the car.
The boss did not return when the train moved on and the boy sat upon the top of the jolting, swaying box car and watched the ever changing woods slip southward. Used as he was to the wide open places, Connie gazed spellbound at the dazzling brilliance of the autumn foliage. Poplar and birch woods, flaunting a sea of bright yellow leaves above white trunks, were interspersed with dark thickets of scarlet oak and blazing sumac, which in turn gave place to the dark green sweep of a tamarack swamp, or a long stretch of scrubby jack pine. At frequent intervals squared clearings appeared in the endless succession of forest growth, where little groups of cattle browsed in the golden stubble of a field. A prim, white painted farmhouse, with its big red barn and its setting of conical grain stacks would flash past, and again the train would plunge between the walls of vivid foliage, or roar across a trestle, or whiz along the shore of a beautiful land-locked lake whose clear, cold waters sparkled dazzlingly in the sunlight as the light breeze rippled its surface.
Every few miles, to the accompaniment of shrieking brake shoes, the train would slow to a stop, and rumble onto a siding at some little flat town, to allow a faster train to hurl past in a rush of smoke, and dust, and deafening roar, and whistle screams. Then the wheezy engine would nose out onto the main track, back into another siding, pick up a box car or two, spot an empty at the grain spout of a sagging red-brown elevator, and couple onto the train again with a jolt that threatened to bounce the cars from the rails, and caused the imprisoned horses to stamp and snort nervously. The conductor would wave his arm and, after a series of preliminary jerks that threatened to tear out the drawbars, the train would rumble on its way.
At one of these stations a longer halt than usual was made while train crew and lumberjacks crowded the counter of a slovenly little restaurant upon whose fly swarming counter doughnuts, sandwiches, and pies of several kinds reposed beneath inverted semispherical screens that served as prisons for innumerable flies.
"The ones that wiggles on yer tongue is flies, an' the ones that don't is apt to be blueberries," explained a big lumberjack to Connie as he bit hugely into a wedge of purplish pie. Connie selected doughnuts and a bespeckled sandwich which he managed to wash down with a few mouthfuls of mud-coloured coffee, upon the surface of which floated soggy grounds and flakes of soured milk.