He paused and took a deep breath. Betty even thought she saw him sway. The men kept an intense silence.
"Well?" he went on a moment later, pulling himself together with an evident effort. "I'm just here to talk straight business, and that's what you're going to listen to. First, I'll tell you this fellow's going to get his right medicine through me in the proper manner. Then, second and last, I want to give you a plain understanding of things between ourselves. There's going to be no rise in wages. I just can't do it. That's all. But I'm going to give each man in my camp a big bonus, a nice fat wad of money with which to paint any particular town he favors red, when the work's done. That's to be extra, above his wages. And the whole lot of you shall work for me next season on a guarantee. But from now to the late fall you're going to work, boys, you're going to work as if the devil himself was driving you. We've got time to make up, and shortage besides, and you've got to make it up. I don't want any slackers. Men who have any doubts can get right out. You've got to work as you never worked in your lives before. Now, boys, give us your word. Is it work or——"
Dave got no further. A shout—hearty, enthusiastic—went up from the crowd. It meant work, and he was satisfied.
The next few minutes were passed in a scene of the wildest excitement. The men closed round the buckboard, and struggled with each other to grip the big man's hand. And Dave, faint and weary as he was, knew them too well to reject their friendly overtures. Besides, they were, as he said, like himself, men of the woods, and he was full of a great sympathy and friendliness for them. At last, however, he turned to Chepstow.
"Drive back to the dugout, Tom," he said. "Things are getting misty. I think—I'm—done."
CHAPTER XXX
IN THE DUGOUT
Three arduous and anxious days followed the ending of the strike, and each of the occupants of Mason's dugout felt the strain of them in his or her own particular way. Next to the strike itself, Dave's wound was the most serious consideration. He was the leader, the rudder of his ship; his was the controlling brain; and he was a most exasperating patient. His wound was bad enough, though not dangerous. It would be weeks before the use of his left arm was restored to him; but he had a way of forgetting this, of forgetting that he had lost a great quantity of blood, until weakness prostrated him and roused him to a peevish perversity.
Betty was his self-appointed nurse. Tom Chepstow might examine his wound and consider his condition, but it was Betty who dressed his wound, Betty who prepared his food and ministered to his lightest needs. From the moment of his return to the dugout she took charge of him. She consulted no one, she asked for no help. For the time, at least, he was her possession, he was hers to lavish all the fulness of her great love upon, a love that had something almost maternal in its wonderful protective instinct.