Conrad's shack was strategically situated. Half-way up the sloping path between camp and trestle, it overlooked the former unobtrusively. From his door he had his men under his eye, with all the advantages of a not too distant isolation.
The scene of the commotion was apparent enough, a small excited group of men, probably the participators in one of the games of chance always in progress in the evenings in the open space between the camp and the water. Far more industriously the bohunk gambled his pay away in the evening than he earned it by day. And always overhung the contractors this peril of a camp quarrel.
Almost before Conrad had seized the spirit of the incident, it was swelled by the accession of other disputants. Five seconds' thoughtful scrutiny warned him that to attempt to quell it without assistance was taking an unjustifiable risk. Small groups were rising angrily everywhere about the river bottom, and crowding to the fringes of the altercation. Alone, he might fail, and it were better then not to have tried. By the time he could reach the scene half the camp would probably be involved.
For he saw at a glance that this was no personal squabble but one of the infrequent but always impending race feuds.
He jerked his head about to see if Torrance knew. But the shack door up at the trestle was empty; Torrance and Tressa would be in the kitchen cleaning up. Thereupon Conrad set off at a run up the sloping path, watching intermittently the angry scene below.
A hundred yards from the grade he put his fingers to his lips and whistled. Torrance came instantly to the door. He saw the fight, saw Conrad's beckoning hand, and, without hat or coat, dashed out to the grade. But even as he leaped the rails his mood altered: pulling up, he strolled leisurely on down the path.
Conrad was intent on the waxing conflict. Group by group it was extending. He realised the wisdom of the instinct that had sent him for help—if the affray had not already passed control. There were only the two of them to count on. Koppy, whose duty it was to forestall such conflicts, was nowhere in sight; and anyway Conrad had learned not to trust the Pole. Casting hasty eyes upward toward the underforeman's shack topping the promontory overlooking the camp, he fancied a dim movement in the darkness of the interior. Unless his eyes deceived him, Koppy was out of the reckoning in case of need. Irritated, Conrad swung about impatiently. Torrance was sauntering downward, filling his pipe.
"Here," the foreman called sharply, "we must stop that, and quick."
"It's only a fight," drawled Torrance.
Conrad's face darkened with disgust. "Don't cut your own throat. You don't seem to have heard of where these fights sometimes lead—Swanson's, for instance, and Tillman's, to mention only last year's. You'd be in a fine mess with one of those on your hands in late July, wouldn't you?"