Chapter 2. Duff Asserts His "Rights"

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_ CHAPTER II. DUFF ASSERTS HIS "RIGHTS"

"We've a hard afternoon ahead of us, Harry," remarked Tom Reade, as the engineer chums finished the noonday meal in the public dining room of the Mansion House.

"Pshaw! We'll have more real work to do after our material arrives," rejoined young Hazelton. "We're promised the material in four days. If we get it in a fortnight we will be lucky."

"That might be true on some railroads," smiled Tom. "But Mr. Ellsworth, the general manager of the A., G. & N. M., is a hustler, if I ever met one. When we wired to him what we needed, he wired back that enough of the material would be here within four days to keep us busy for some time. I believe Mr. Ellsworth never talks until he knows what he's talking about."

"Well, I hope you can find some work for the men to do this afternoon," murmured Harry, as the two young engineers rose from table. "Hawkins, our superintendent of construction, has about five hundred mechanics and laborers who will soon need work."

"Yes," agreed Tom. "The men took the jobs with the understanding that their pay would run on."

"The day's wages for five hundred workmen is a big item of loss when we're delayed," mused Hazelton.

"There's another consideration that's even worse than the loss," Tom went on in a low voice. "The pay train will be here this afternoon and the men will have a lot of money by evening. This town of Paloma is going to be wide open to-night in the effort to get the money away from our five hundred men."

"We can't stop that," sighed Harry. "We have no control over the way in which the workmen choose to spend their money."

"Want me to tell you a secret?" whispered Tom mysteriously.

"Yes, if it's an interesting one," smiled Harry.

"Very good, then. I know I can't actually interfere with the way the men spend their money. But I'm going to give them some earnest advice about avoiding fellows who would fleece them out of their wages."

"Go slowly, Tom!" warned Hazelton, opening his eyes rather wide. "Don't put yourself in bad with the men, or they may quit you in a body."

"Let them," retorted Tom, with one of his easy smiles. "If these men throw up their work General Manager Ellsworth will know where to find others for us. Few of our men are skilled workers. We can find substitutes for most of them anywhere that laborers can be found."

"But you've no right--"

"Of one thing you may be very sure, Harry. I'll take pains not to step over the line of my own rights, and not to step on the rights of the men who are working for us. What I mean to do is to offer them some very straight talk. I shall also warn them that we are quite ready to discharge any foolish fellows who may happen to go on sprees and unfit themselves for our work. I've one surprise to show you, Harry. Wait until Johnson, the paymaster, gets in. Then you'll see who else is with him."

"Are you gentlemen ready for your horses?" asked a stable boy, coming around to the front of the hotel.

"Yes," nodded Tom.

Two tough, lean, wiry desert ponies were brought around. Tom and Harry mounted, riding away at a slow trot at first.

From an upper window Fred Ransom looked down upon them, then called Duff to his side.

"There is your game, Duff," hinted the agent.

"They'll be easy to a man of my experience," laughed the gambler. "I've a clever scheme for starting trouble with them."

He whispered a few words in his companion's ears, at which Ransom laughed with apparent enjoyment.

"You're a keen one, Duff," grinned the agent from Chicago.

"I've seen enough of life," boasted the gambler quietly, "to be able to judge most people at first sight. You shall soon see whether I don't succeed in starting some hard feeling with Reade and Hazelton."

The nearer edge of the treacherous Man-killer was something more than two miles west of the town of Paloma. In the course of a quarter of an hour Tom and Harry drew rein near a portable wooden building that served as an office in the field.

Mr. Hawkins, a solid-looking, bearded man of fifty, with snapping eyes that contrasted with his drawling speech, stepped from the building.

"Hawkins," called Tom, as a Mexican boy led the horses away to the shade of a stable tent, "I see you have some men idle."

"Nine-tenths of 'em are idle," replied the superintendent of construction. "I warned you, Mr. Reade, that our gangs would soon eat up the little work that you left us. Out there, by the last cave-in you'll see that Foreman Payson, has about fifty men going. They'll be through within an hour."

"And the material, even if delivered within the promised time, is still two days away," remarked Reade. "I'll confess that I don't like to see the railroad lose so much through paying men for idle time."

"It can't be helped, sir," replied the superintendent. "Of course, if you like, you can set the laborers at work shoveling in more dirt at the points where the last slide of the quicksand occurred. But, then, shoveling dirt in, without the timbers and the hollow steel piles will do no good," continued Hawkins, with a shake of his head. "It would be worse than wasted work."

"I know all that," Tom admitted. "To tell you the truth, Mr. Hawkins, I wouldn't mind the men's idleness quite so much if it weren't that the pay train comes in this afternoon. An idle man, not over-nice about his habits, and with a lot of money in his pockets, is a source of danger. We're going to have five hundred such danger spots as soon as the men are paid off."

"Don't know that, sir!" demanded Superintendent Hawkins. "The town of Paloma is just dancing on sand-paper, it's so uneasy about getting its hand into the pile of more than thirty-eight thousand dollars that the pay train is going to bring in this afternoon."

"I know," nodded Tom rather gloomily. "I hate to see the men fleeced as they're likely to be fleeced to-night. Some of our men will be so badly done up that it will be a week before they get back to work--unless there is some way that we can stop the fleecing."

"There isn't any such way," declared Superintendent Hawkins, with an air of conviction.

"You've surely been around rough railroading camps enough to know that, Mr. Reade."

"I've seen a good deal of the life, Hawkins," Tom answered, "but of course I don't know it all."

"Yet you know that you can't hope to stop railroad jacks from spending their money in their own way. The saloons in Paloma will take in thousands of dollars from our lads to-night and all day to-morrow. The gamblers will swindle them out of a whole lot more. Day after to-morrow, Mr. Reade, you wouldn't be able to borrow twenty dollars from our whole force."

"It's a shame," burst from Tom indignantly, as the three turned to gaze westward across the desert. "These men work as hard as any toilers in the world. They receive good wages. Yet where do you find a railroad jack who, after years and years of toil on these burning deserts, has two or three hundred dollars of his own saved?"

Hawkins shrugged his shoulders.

"I know all about it," he responded, "and I grow angry every time I think about it. Yet how is one going to protect these, men against themselves?"

"I believe there's a way," spoke Tom confidently.

"I hope you can find it, then, Mr. Reade," retorted Hawkins skeptically.

"At any rate, I'm going to try."

"What are you going to do, Mr. Reade?" demanded the superintendent curiously.

"You'll be with me, won't you?" coaxed Tom.

"You'll stand with us, shoulder to shoulder."

"I certainly will, Mr. Reade!"

"And the foremen? You can depend upon them?"

"On every one of them," declared Hawkins promptly. "Even to the Mexican foreman, Mendoza. He's a greaser, but he's a brick, and a white man all the way through!"

"Call the foremen in, then--all except Payson, who is with his gang."

Tom and Harry stepped inside the office. Mr. Hawkins strolled away, but within ten minutes he was back again, followed by Foremen Bell, Rivers and Mendoza.

"Two wagons have driven up, east of here," announced Mr. Hawkins, as he entered the office building. "They've stopped a quarter of a mile below here and have dumped two tents. I think they're about to raise them."

Tom stepped hastily outside, glancing eastward, where they saw what the superintendent had described. One of the tents had just been raised, though the pitching of it had not yet been thoroughly done.

"What crowd is that?" Reade asked. "Who is at the head of it?"

"I see one man there--the only man in good clothes--who looks like Jim Duff," replied the superintendent, using his field glasses.

"The gambler?" asked Tom sharply.

"The same."

"He's pitching his tent on the railroad's dirt, isn't he!"

"Yes, sir."

"Come along. We'll have a look at that place."

A few minutes of brisk walking brought the young engineers, the superintendent and the three foremen to the spot.

Tent number one had been pitched. It was a circular tent, some forty feet in diameter. The second tent, only a little smaller, was now being hoisted.

"Who's in charge of this work?" asked Tom in his usual pleasant tone.

"My manager, Mr. Bemis--Dock Bemis," answered Jim Duff suavely, as he moved forward to meet the party. "Dock, come here. I want you to know Mr. Reade, the engineer in charge of this job."

Duff's manners were impudently easy and assured. The fellow known as Dock Bemis, an unprepossessing, shabbily dressed man of thirty-five, with a mean face and an ugly-looking eye, came forward.

"I'll take Mr. Bemis's acquaintance for granted," Tom continued, with an easy smile. "You own this outfit, don't you, Mr. Duff?"

"I've rented it, if you mean the tents, tables and chairs," assented the gambler. "I've a stock of liquors coming over as soon as I send one of the wagons back."

"What do you propose to do with all this?" Tom inquired.

"Why, of course, you see," smiled Duff, with all the suavity in the world, "as your boys are going to be paid off this afternoon they'll want to go somewhere to enjoy themselves. As the day is very hot I thought it would be showing good intentions if I brought an outfit over here. I'll have everything ready within an hour."

"So that you can get our men intoxicated and fleece them more easily?" asked Tom, with his best smile. "Is that the idea?"

Jim buff flushed angrily. Then his face became pale.

"It's a crude way you have of expressing it, Mr. Reade, if you Ill allow me to say so," the gambler answered, in a voice choked with anger. "I am going to offer your men a little amusement. It's what they need, and what they'll insist upon. Do you see? There's a small mob coming this way now."

Tom turned, discovering about a hundred railroad laborers coming down the road.

"Mr. Duff," asked the young chief engineer, "can you show any proof of your authority to erect tents on the railroad's land?"

"What other place around here, Mr. Reade, would be as convenient?" demanded the gambler.

"I repeat my question, sir! Have you any authority or warrant for erecting tents here?"

"Do you mean, have I a permit from the railroad company?"

"You know very well what I mean, Duff."

Though Reade's tone was somewhat sharper, his smile was as genial as ever.

"I didn't imagine you'd have any objection to my coming here," the gambler replied evasively.

"Have you any authority to be on the railroad's land's?" persisted Tom Reade. "Yes or no?"

"No-o-o-o, I haven't, unless I can persuade you to see how reasonable it is that your men should be provided with enjoyment right at their own camp."

"Take the tents down, then, as quickly as you can accomplish it," directed Tom, though in a quiet voice.

"And--if I don't?" asked Duff, smiling dangerously and displaying his white, dog-like teeth.

"Then I shall direct one of the foremen to call a sufficient force, Mr. Duff, to take down your tents and remove them from railroad property. I am not seeking trouble with you, sir; I don't want trouble. But, as long as I remain in charge here no gambling or drinking places are going to be opened on the railroad's land."

"Mr. Reade," inquired the gambler, his smile fading, "do you object to giving me a word in private?"

"Not at all," Tom declared. "But it won't help your plans."

"I'd like just a word with you alone," coaxed the gambler.

Nodding, Reade stepped away with the gambler to a distance of a hundred feet or so from the rapidly increasing crowd.

"I expect to make a little money out of this tent outfit, of course," explained Jim Duff.

"I expect that you won't make a dollar out of it--on railway property," returned Reade steadily.

"I'm going to make a little money--not much," Duff went on. "Now, if I can make the whole deal with you, and if no one else is allowed to bother me, I can afford to pass you one hundred dollars a day for the tent privilege."

Before even expectant Tom realized what was happening, Duff had pressed a wad of paper money into his hand.

"What is this?" demanded Reade.

"Don't let everyone see it," warned the gambler. "You'll find two hundred dollars there, in bills. That's for the first two days of our tent privilege here."

"You contemptible hound!" exclaimed Tom angrily.

Whish! The tightly folded wad of bank notes left Tom's hand, landing squarely in Jim Duff Is face.

In an instant the gambler's face turned white. His hand flew back to a pocket in which he carried a pistol. _

Read next: Chapter 3. Tom Makes A Speech On Gambling

Read previous: Chapter 1. The Man Of "Card Honor"

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