These were something of Frank's amazed thoughts as he watched the gesticulating figure silhouetted against the ruddy skyline.
But now, as he stood, the man's words reached him, and, in a moment, their startling purpose held him spellbound.
What was that he was saying? Hark!
Leyburn's harsh voice rang out in clarion tones—
"I hadn't intended to come along yet, boys," he was saying. "I hadn't intended to come till next year. You see, this is a new union, and funds are not big. It needs money to fight these gilded hogs. But when I saw the way things were going; when I heard the way you were herded alongside a crowd of lousy niggers, and set to work with 'em, like a pack of galley slaves; when I heard these things, and learned that these dirty blacks were taking the place of legitimate white workers for less wages, then my blood just got red hot, and I couldn't sleep o' nights. Say, boys, it broke me all up. I couldn't eat nor sleep till I'd rushed through a financial arrangement with other labor organizations, which sets you clear beyond the chances of want. There's money and plenty for a strike right now. Money and plenty to kill the harvest of these swine of men who roll about in their automobiles, every bolt of which, every soft cushion they sit on, has been paid for by the sweat of your big hearts.
"What's your wages? A dollar a day? Don't you wish it was? Don't you wish they'd let you have it? I was going to say 'earn' it. By hell, earn it! You're earning hundreds a day for this skunk of a man, Hendrie. Hundreds and hundreds. Say, he's got millions, no one knows how rich he is, and you boys are the fellows who earn it for him. Do you get that? Do you get its meaning right? Here's one man sits around on top, with you boys lying around whining at his feet for a fraction of the result of your own work."
Frank murmured the word "syndicalism" to himself. But the rabid tongue of Leyburn was still at work.
"Say, d'you know what set war raging between the northern and southern states? Do you know what set sons and fathers at each other's throats? I'll tell you. It was the high-minded folk of the north couldn't stand for slavery, even of the blacks. Do you know what you are to-day? You're slaves, slaves of this man—white slaves. 'Out you go into my fields,' he says, 'and I'll let you live—just live—that's all. His fields, mark you. His! By what right are they his? Ain't they yours? Didn't the Creator set you out here just the same as him, and hand you this world for your own? His fields! And out you go into them, and you grind, and sweat, and you fill his safe full of money, so he can live in a luxury you can never enjoy."
"The cur," muttered the listener. "The miserable cur." Something stirred behind him, but it remained unnoticed.
"Listen to me," Leyburn shouted above the hubbub of agreement and applause which arose from the half-drunken portion of the crowd. "Do you know what's going to happen right here, quite soon? Course you don't. You don't know these gilded hogs same as I do. I'll tell you what's going to happen. Hendrie told me himself. He says niggers are easier dealt with than whites. He says he can get them cheaper. He says they work just as well. He says he'll run Deep Willows on black labor entirely—soon, just as soon as he can get enough of 'em. He cares nothing for any of you, not even for you boys who've worked years for him. Out you got to go—the lot of you, so he can make bigger money out of the black. Get that? You know what it means to you? Will you stand for it?"