His narrow eyes smiled. But the smile died almost at its birth, lost in a bitter hatred for the man who had robbed him upon the Yukon trail twenty years ago.
The door of his room opened and Frank hurried in. His manner was nervous, quite unlike his usual manner. He was changed in appearance, too. Nor was it a change for the better. He looked older. His eyes were painfully serious. His dress wore an air of neglect. Whatever else the work of a labor organizer had done for him there was no outward sign of improvement.
"You sent for me?" he demanded, a look of nervous expectation in his serious eyes.
"Sure." Leyburn nodded. His manner was final. It was also the manner of an employer to a subordinate. The intimacy between these two had somehow died out.
Leyburn gazed at him thoughtfully, and the superiority of his position was displayed therein. Frank experienced a feeling of irritation. Leyburn frequently irritated him now. When they had first met, the boy's enthusiasm had made him regard this leader as something in the nature of a god. Since then he had discovered a good deal of clay about the feet of his deity.
"Guess I'm going to hand you a change of work, boy," Leyburn said at last, his manner deliberately impressive. "Say, you weren't a big hit with the railroaders." Frank winced perceptibly, and the other saw that his thrust had gone home. "Oh, I don't blame you a hell of a lot," he went on patronizingly. "You've never been a railroader—that's where it comes in. I'd say the feller that talks to those boys needs to be one of 'em. We got plenty without you, and—so I'm going to hand you a change, to the farming racket." Then he smiled. "Guess you're a bit of a mossback yourself. You'll understand those boys, and be able to talk 'em their own way."
Frank's face had flushed with the poignancy of his feelings over his failure. He felt even more the crudeness of this man's manner.
"I'll do my best," he said briefly.
There was none of his earlier enthusiasm in his assurance. Truth to tell, something of his enthusiasm had died on the night of his failure at the railroaders' meeting, and it had died after Alexander Hendrie had left him.
"That's right," said Leyburn, with some geniality. "I don't like your 'cocksures.' Give me the man out to do his damnedest. You'll make good, lad—this time. Say, I'm going to set you chasing up the work among the farms. See it's going ahead. Ther's men out to do the gassing. You'll just have to see they gas right. Get me? There's going to be a strike around harvest—this year. It's going to happen along with the transporters."