The Man in the Twilight by Ridgwell Cullum

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He pulled out his timepiece, and the clouds of volcanic anger swept down
again upon his rugged brow. But it was given no play. The door of the
office was thrust open, and the lean figure of the engineer, clad in
greasy overalls, came hurriedly into the room.

Bat challenged him on the instant.

"What's the trouble, boy?" he demanded in his uncompromising fashion.

"Trouble?" Skert's eyes were wide, and his tone was savage. "That's just
it. I reckoned to show Sternford all this stuff," he went on, indicating
the machine hall with a jerk of his head. "But we'll have to let it
pass. Say," he glanced from one to the other, his expression developing
to something like white fury. "They started. It's business this time. I
got a message up they were stopping the grinders. It's the 'heads' gave
the order. Oh, they're all in it. They got a meeting on in that darn
recreation parliament place of theirs, and every mother's son on the
machines was called to it. They've shut down! You get that? There isn't
even a greaser left at the machines. It's set me with a feeling I'm
plumb crazy. I've been down, and they're right there crowding out that
hall. And--"

"I guessed something that way," Bat interrupted with ominous calm. He
turned to Bull, who was closely regarding his lieutenants.

"It's mutiny first and then a sheer strike," he said. "Here, listen.
I'll hand you just what's happenin'. There's been Bolshie agitators
workin' the boys months, and I guess they got a holt on 'em good. It
started with us openin' the new mill on this north shore. We were forced
to collect our labour just where we could. An' they got in like the
miser'ble rats they are. Gee! It makes me hot--hot as hell! The leaders
of this thing ain't workers. I don't guess they done a day's work with
anything but their yahoo mouths in their dirty lives. They're part of
the crowd that's paid from Europe to get around and heave up this
blazin' world of ours just anyway they know. The only thing I don't get
is their coming along here, which is outside most all the rest of the
world. If Labrador can hand 'em loot I'd like to know the sort it is.
And it's just loot they're out for. If I'm a judge there's one hell of a
scrap comin,' and if we're beat it looks like leaving Sachigo a thing
forgotten."

Bull stood up. He laughed without the least mirth.

"It's the Skandinavia," he said decidedly. "War's begun. I'm going right
down to that meeting."

Bat leapt to his feet.

"No," he said. "This is for Skert an' me--"

"Is it?"

Bull brushed his protest aside almost fiercely. Then he turned as the
door opened and a small man hurried in. The fellow snatched his cap from
his head and his eyes settled on Skert Lawton, the man he knew best.

"It ees a document," he cried, in the broken English of a French
Canadian. "They sign him, oh, yes. You no more are the boss. They say
the mill it ees for the 'worker.' All dis big mill, all dis big money.
Oh, yes. Dey sign him."

"Who's this?" Bull demanded.

"One of my machine-minders. He's a good boy," the engineer explained.

Bull nodded.

"That's all right We want all we can get of his sort." He turned to Bat.
"Are there others? I mean boys we can trust?"

"Quite a bunch."

"Can we get them together?"

"Sure."

"Right. This is going to be the real thing. The sort of thing I'd rather
have it."

He turned to Skert who stood by, watching the light of battle in his
chief's eyes.

"Here, shut down the dynamos. Set them clean out of action. Do you get
me? Leave the machines for the time being so they're just so much scrap.
Then, if you got the bunch you can rely on, leave 'em guard. We'll get
on down, an' sign that damned document for 'em."

* * * * *

The recreation room was crowded to suffocation. Men of every degree in
the work of the mill had foregathered. A hubbub of talk was going on.
Voices were raised. There was anger. There was argument, harsh-voiced
argument which mainly expressed feeling. At the far end of the hall, on
the raised platform designed for those who fancied their vocal
attainments, a group of men were gathered about a table upon which was
outspread the folios of an extensive document. The men at the table were
talking eagerly.

The gathering had listened to the furious oratory of a pale-faced man,
with long black hair and a foreign accent. It had listened, and agreed,
and applauded. For he had talked Communism, and the overthrow of the
Capitalists, and the possession of the wealth creating mills for those
who operated them. It had listened to an appeal to the latent instinct
in every human creature, freedom from everything that could be claimed
as servitude, freedom, and possession, and independence for those who
would once and for all rid themselves of the shackles which the pay-roll
and time-sheet imposed upon them.

They had been called together to witness the iniquity of spending their
lives in the degrading operation of filling the pockets of those who
laboured not, by the toil in which their lives were spent. They had been
told every flowery fairy tale of the modern communistic doctrine, which
possesses as much truth and sanity in it as is to be found in an asylum
for the mentally deficient. And they had swallowed the bait whole. The
talk had been by the tongue of a skilled fanatic, who was well paid for
his work, and who kept in the forefront of his talk that alluring
promise of ease, and affluence, and luxury, which never fails in its
appeal to those who have never known it.

But something approaching an impasse had been reached when the would-be
benefactors passed over the demand that their deluded victims should
sign the roll of Communal Brotherhood. The bait that had been offered
had been all to the taste of these rough creatures who had never known
better than an existence with a threat of possible unemployment
overshadowing their lives. But in the signature to the elaborate
document they scented the concealed poison in the honeyed potion. There
was hesitation, reluctance. There was argument in a confusion of tongues
well-nigh bewildering. A surge of voices filled the great building.

The agents were at work, men who posed as workers to attain their ends.
And the pale, long-haired creature and his satellites waited at the
table. They understood. It was their business to understand. They knew
the minds they were dealing with, and their agents were skilled in their
craft. The process they relied on was the unthinking stupidity of the
sheep. Every man that could be persuaded had his friends, and each
friend had his friend. They knew friend would follow friend well-nigh
blindly, and, having signed, native obstinacy and fear of ridicule would
hold them fast to their pledge.

Presently the signing began. It began with a burly river-jack who
laughed stupidly to cover his doubt. He was followed by a
machine-minder, who hurled taunts at those who still held back. Then
came others, others whose failure to think for themselves left them
content to follow the lead of their comrades.

The stream of signatures grew. A pale youth, whose foolish grin revealed
only his fitness for the heavy, unskilled work he was engaged upon,
came up. The pen was handed him, and the name of Adolph Mars was
scrawled on the sheet. The long-haired man at the table looked up at
him. He smiled with his lips, and patted the boy's hand. Then something
happened.

It was movement. Sudden movement on the platform. The babel in the body
of the hall went on. But the long-haired man and his supporters at the
table turned with eyes that were concerned and anxious. A dozen men had
entered swiftly through the door in rear of the platform. Bull Sternford
led them. And he moved over to the table, with the swift, noiseless
strides of a panther, and looked into the unwholesome face of the
Bolshevist leader.

It was only for the fraction of a second. The man made a movement which
needed no interpretation. His hand went to a hip pocket. Instantly
Bull's great hands descended. The man was picked up like a child. He was
lifted out of his seat and raised aloft. He was borne towards the window
where he was held while the master of the mill crashed a foot against
its wooden sash. The next moment the black-clothed body was hurled with
terrific force out into the snowdrift waiting to receive it. It was all
so swiftly done. The whole thing was a matter of seconds only. Then Bull
Sternford was back at the table, while his comrades, Bat and Lawton, and
the men of loyalty they relied on, lined the platform.

As Bull snatched up the document and held it aloft, a deathly silence
reigned throughout the hall, and every eye was turned angrily upon the
intruders. Bull yielded not a moment for those witless minds to recover
from their shock. His voice rang out fiercely.

"Here," he cried, "d'you know what you're doing, listening to that fool
guy I've thrown through that window, and signing this crazy paper he's
set out for you? No. You don't unless you're just as crazy yourselves.
You're declaring war. You're starting a great fight to steal the
property that hands you your living. You reckon you've got all you need
of our brains, and your own brute force and darnation foolishness can
run these great mills which are to hand you the big money you reckon it
hands us. That means war. Maybe you fancy it's the one-sided war you'd
like to have it. Maybe you fancy there's about a dozen of us, and we're
going to be made to work for the wage you figger to hand us. You're dead
wrong. It's going to be a hell of a war if you swallow the dope these
fellows hand you. You've begun it, and we're taking up the challenge.
We've fired the first shot, too. It's not gun-play yet. No. Maybe it'll
come to that and you'll find we can hand you shot for shot. No. We're
quicker than that. The mill's closed down! Wages have ceased! And all
power has been cut off! There's not a spark of light or heat, for the
whole of Sachigo. The vital parts of the power station have been
removed, and you can't get 'em back. I've only to give the word and the
_penstocks on the river will be cut so you can't repair them_. It's
forty degrees below Zero out there, where I've shot that crazy Bolshie,
and so you know just how you stand here on Labrador with no means of
gettin' away until the thaw comes. You and your wives and kiddies'll
have to pay in the cold for the crime of theft you reckon to put
through. We're ready for you, whether it's gun-play or any other sort of
war you want to start. That's the thing I've come here to tell you."

He paused for a moment to watch the effect of his words. It was there on
the instant. A furious hubbub arose. There was not a man in the room who
did not understand the dire threat which the _coup_ of the master mind
imposed. Power cut off! Light! Heat! Power! Forty degrees below Zero!
The terror of the Labrador winter was in every man's mind. Life would be
unendurable without heat. There were the forests. Oh, yes. They could
get heat of sorts. The sort of heat which the men on a winter trail were
accustomed to. _Their electrically-heated houses were without stoves in
which they could burn wood_.

Bull listened to the babel of tongues while his men watched for any act
that might come. Every man on the platform was armed ready.

"Here!"

Bull's voice rang out again, but he was interrupted.

A man shouted at him from the back of the hall.

"Who the hell are you, anyway? You ain't the guy owning these mills. We
know where you come from--"

Like lightning Bull took him up.

"Do you?" he shouted back. "Then we know where you come from. The man
who knew me before I became boss here must belong to the Skandinavia.
That's the only place any lumber-jack could have known me. Here. Come up
here. Stand out. Show yourself. And I'll hand the boys your pedigree.
It'll be easy. It's the trouble with us just now, we've got too many
stiffs from the Skandinavia, and you've got our own good boys paralysed.
They haven't the guts to stand on the notions that have handed them the
best wages in the pulp trade these fifteen years. Guess you've persuaded
them they ain't got swell houses, and good food, and cheap heat and
light, and, instead are living like all sorts of swine in their hogpens.
It's the way of the Skandinavia just now. The Skandinavia's out for our
blood. They want to smash us. Do you know why? Because they're an alien
firm who wants to steal these forests from the Canadians to fill their
own pockets with our wealth. We're for the Canadians, and we've built up
a proposition that's going to beat the foreigner right out into the sea.
But that don't matter now. These guys, these long-haired, unwashed guys,
that reckon to hand you boys these mills, are sent by the Skandinavia
to wreck us. Well, go right over to 'em. Help 'em. Sign every darn
document they hand you. They'll be your own death warrants, anyway. You
want war. You can have it. I'm here to fight. Meanwhile you best get
home to your cold houses, for the mills are closed down. You're locked
out."

He turned without waiting a second and passed through the back door by
which he had entered. And his men followed on his heels.

* * * * *

Bull was in his office. For all the storm of the morning the rest of the
day had passed quietly. Now it was late at night. His stove was
radiating a luxurious heat. He was quite unconcerned that the
electrically-heated steam radiators were cold. He was alone. Harker and
the engineer were still down at the mill. He was awaiting the report
they would bring him later.

He had passed some time in reading the pledge of Communal Brotherhood
which he had brought away with him from the recreation room, and he had
read the signatures that had been affixed to it. The latter were few,
and every name inscribed was of foreign origin. But it was the document
itself which concerned him most. If it were honest he felt that its
authors were wild people who should be kept under restraint. If it were
not honest, then hanging or shooting was far too lenient a fate to be
meted out to them. It was Communism in its wildest, most unrestrained
form.

In his final disgust he flung the papers on his desk. And as he did so a
sound reached him from the outer office, which had long since been
closed for the night by the half-breed, Loale.

He leapt to his feet. Without a second thought he moved over to the door
and flung it wide.

"What the--?" He broke off. "Good God!" he cried. "You, Father?" He
laughed. "Why I thought it was some of the Bolshies from down at the
mill."

He withdrew the gun from his coat pocket in explanation. Then he stood
aside.

"Will you come right in?"

The man Bull had discovered made no answer. But as he stood aside, tall,
clad in heavy fur from head to foot, Father Adam strode into the room.

Bull watched him with questioning eyes. Then he closed the door and his
visitor turned confronting him in the yellow lamplight.

"I've made more than a hundred miles to get you to-night," Father Adam
said.

Then he flung back the fur hood from his head, and ran a hand over his
long black hair, smoothing it thoughtfully.

"Yes?"

Bull's eyes were still questioning.

"Won't you shed your furs and sit?" he went on. "The Chink's abed, but
I'll dig him out. You must get food."

The other glanced round the pleasant office, and his eyes paused for a
moment at the chair at the desk.

"Food don't worry, thanks," he said, his mildly smiling eyes coming back
to his host's face. "I've eaten--ten miles back. I rested the dogs
there, too. I've maybe a ha'f hour to tell you the thing I came for.
There's trouble in the woods. Bad trouble. If it's not straightened out,
why, it looks like all work at your mills'll quit, and you're going to
get your forest limits burnt out stark."

CHAPTER XIX

THE HOLD-UP

Ole Porson took a final glance round his shanty. The last of the
daylight was rapidly fading. There was still sufficient penetrating the
begrimed double window, however, to reveal the littered, unswept
condition of the place. But he saw none of it. It was the place he knew
and understood. It was at once his office, and his living quarters; a
shanty with a tumbled sleeping bunk, a wood stove, and a table littered
with the books and papers of his No. 10 camp. He was a rough creature,
as hard of soul as he was of head, who could never have found joy in
surroundings of better condition.

He solemnly loaded the chambers of a pair of heavy guns. Then he
bestowed them in the capacious pockets of his fur pea-jacket. He also
dropped in beside them a handful of spare cartridges. In his lighter
moments he was apt to say that these weapons were his only friends. And
those who knew him best readily agreed. Drawing up the storm-collar
about his face, he passed out into the snow which was falling in flakes
the size of autumn leaves. There was not a breath of wind to disturb the
deathly stillness of the winter night.

Minutes later he was lounging heavily against the rough planked counter
of Abe Risdon's store. He was talking to the suttler over a deep
"four-fingers" of neat Rye, while his searching eyes scanned the body of
the ill-lit room. The place was usually crowded with drinkers when the
daylight passed, but just now it was almost empty.

"Who's that guy in the tweed pea-jacket an' looks like a city man?" he
asked his host in an undertone, pointing at one of the tables where a
stranger sat surrounded by four of the forest men.

Abe's powerful arms were folded as he leant on the counter.

"Blew in about noon," he said. "Filled his belly with good hash an' sat
around since."

"He's a bunch o' the boys about him now, anyway. An' I guess he's
talking quite a lot, an' they're doing most o' the listening. Seems
like he's mostly enjoying hisself."

Abe shrugged. But the glance he flung at the man sitting at the far-off
table was without approval.

"It's mostly that way now," he said, with an air of indifference his
thoughtful eyes denied. "There's too many guys come along an' sell
truck, an' set around, an' talk, an' then pass along. Things are
changing around this lay out, an' I don't get its meanin'. Time was I
had a bunch of boys ready most all the time to hand me the news going
round. Time was you'd see a stranger once in a month come along in an'
buy our food. Time was they mostly had faces we knew by heart, and we
knew their business, and where they came from. Tain't that way now. You
couldn't open the boys' faces fer news of the forest with a can-opener.
These darn guys are always about now. They come, an' feed the boys'
drink, an' talk with 'em most all the time. An' they're mostly
strangers, an' the boys mostly sit around with their faces open like
fool men listenin' to fairy tales. How's the cut goin'?"

Porson laughed. There was no light in his hard eyes.

"At a gait you couldn't change with a trail whip."

The other nodded.

'"That's how 'nigger' Pilling said. He guessed the cut was down by
fifty. What is it? A buck? Wages?"

Porson's hand was fingering one of the guns in his pocket. His eyes were
snapping.

"Curse 'em," he cried at last. "I just don't get it. They're goin'
slow."

He pushed his empty glass at the suttler who promptly re-filled it.

"Young Pete Cust," Abe went on confidentially, "handed me a good guess
only this mornin'. He'd had his sixth Rye before startin' out to work.
Maybe he was rattled and didn't figger the things he said. He was astin'
fer word up from the mills. I didn't worry to think, and just said I
hadn't got. I ast 'why'? The boy took a quick look round, kind o'
scared. He said, 'jest nothin'.' He reckoned he'd a dame somewhere
around Sachigo. She'd wrote him things wer' kind of bad with the mills.
They were beat fer dollars, and looked like a crash. He'd heard the same
right there, an' it had him rattled. He thought of quittin' and goin'
over to the Skandinavia. Maybe it's the sort o' talk that's got 'em all
rattled. Maybe they're goin' slow on the cut, worryin' for their
pay-roll. You can't tell. They don't say a thing. Seems to me we want
Sternford right here to queer these yarns. Father Adam's around an'
talked some. But--"

Porson drank down his liquor, and his glass hit the counter with angry
force.

"They're mush-faced hoodlams anyway," he cried fiercely. "Ther' ain't a
thing wrong with the mills. I'd bet a million on it."

He stood up from the counter and thrust his hands deep in the pockets of
his coat. He was a powerful figure with legs like the tree trunks it was
his work to see cut. Quite abruptly he moved away, and Abe's questioning
eyes followed him.

He strode down amongst the scattered tables and came to a halt before
the tweed-coated stranger. All the men looked up, and their talk died
out.

"Say, what's your bizness around here?"

Ole Person's manner was threatening as he made his demand. The stranger
dived at the bag lying on the floor beside his chair. He picked it up
and flung it open.

"Why, I got right here the dandiest outfit of swell jewellery," he
cried, grinning amiably up at the man's threatening eyes. "There's just
everything here," he went on, with irrepressible volubility, "to suit
you gents of the forest, an' make you the envy of every jack way down
at Sachigo. Here, there's a be-autiful Prince Albert for your watch.
This ring. It's full o' diamonds calculated to set Kimberly hollerin'.
Maybe you fancy a locket with it. It'll take a whole bunch of your
dame's--"

"You'll light right out of this camp with daylight to-morrow!"

The tone of the camp-boss banished the last shadow of the pedlar's
cast-iron smile.

"Oh, yes?" he said, his eyes hardening.

"That's wot I said. This camp's private property an' you'll light out.
You get that? Daylight. If you don't, we've a way of dealing with Jew
drummers that'll likely worry you. Get it. An' get it good."

For a moment they looked into each other's eyes. There was not the
flicker of an eyelid between them. Then Porson turned and strode away.

He passed down the store re-fastening his coat. He paused at the door as
a chorus of rough laughter reached him from the little gathering at the
table. But it was only for an instant. He looked back. No face was
turned in his direction. So he passed out.

* * * * *

The night outside was inky black. The heavy falling snow made progress
almost a blind groping. But Porson knew every inch of the way. He passed
down the lines of huts and paused outside each bunkhouse. His reason was
obvious. There was a question in his mind as to the whereabouts of the
crowd of his men who usually thronged the liquor store at this hour of
the evening.

It was at the last bunkhouse he paused longest. He stood for quite a
while listening under the double glassed window. Then he passed on and
stood beside the tightly closed storm-door. The signs and sounds he
heard were apparently sufficient. For, after a while, he turned back and
set out to return to his quarters.

For many minutes he groped his way through the blinding snow, his mind
completely given up to the things his secret watch had revealed. His
brutish nature, being what it was, left him concerned only for the
forceful manner by which he could restore that authority which he felt
to be slipping away from him under the curious change which had come
over the camp. His position depended on the adequate output of his
winter's cut and on nothing else. That, he knew, was desperately
falling, and--

But in a moment, all concern was swept from his mind. A sound leapt at
him out of the stillness of the night. It was the whimper of dogs and
the sharp command of a man's voice. He shouted a challenge and waited.
And presently a dog train pulled up beside him.

* * * * *

Bull Sternford was standing before the wood stove in the camp-boss's
shanty. He had removed his snow-laden fur coat. He had kicked the damp
snow from his moccasins. Now he was wiping the moisture out of his eyes,
and the chill in his limbs was easing under the warmth which the stove
radiated.

Ole Porson's grim face was alight with a smile of genuine welcome, as he
stood surveying his visitor across the roaring stove.

"It's surely the best thing happened in years, Mr. Sternford," he was
saying. "I'm more glad you made our camp this night than any other.
Maybe I'd ha' got through someways, but I don't know just how. We're
down over fifty on our cut, an', by the holy snakes, I can't hand you
why."

Bull put his coloured handkerchief away, and removed the pea-jacket
which he had worn under his furs.

"Don't worry," he said with apparent unconcern. "I can hand it you.
That's why I'm here."

The camp-boss waited. He eyed his chief with no little anxiety. He had
looked for an angry outburst.

Bull pulled up a chair. He flung the litter of books it supported on to
the already crowded table and sat down. Then he filled his pipe and lit
it with a hot coal from the stove.

"Here," he said, "I'll tell you. I've been the round of four camps. I've
been over a month on the trail, and I've heard just the same tale from
every camp-boss we employ. I've three more camps to visit besides yours,
and when I've made them maybe I'll get the sleep I'm about crazy for.
Night and day I've been on the dead jump for a month following the trail
of a red-hot gang that's going through our forests. If I come up with
them there's going to be murder."

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