“And Reivers drove Pat half mad with that contemptuous smile of his, and Pat pulled a gun; and Reivers says, ‘That’s what I was waiting for,’ and broke Pat’s bones with his bare hands and laid him up. Then, says he, ‘This camp is going on just the same as if nothing had happened, and I’m going to be boss.’ That was all there was to it; he’s been a boss ever since.”
“And you don’t know where he came from? Or anything else about him?”
“Oh, he’s from England—an Oxford man, for that matter,” said Campbell. “He admitted that much once when we were argufying. He’ll be here soon; he comes to quarrel with me every evening.”
“Why does an Oxford man want to be ’way out here bossing a logging-camp?” grumbled Toppy.
Campbell nodded.
“Aye, I asked that of him once,” he said. “ ‘Though it’s none of your business,’ says he, ‘I’ll tell you. I got tired of living where people snivel about laws concerning right and wrong,’ says he, ‘instead of acknowledging that there is only one law ruling life—that the strong can master the weak.’ That is Mr. Reivers’ religion. He was only worshipping his strange gods when he broke Rosky’s leg, for he considers Rosky a weaker man than himself, and therefore ’tis his duty to break him to his own will.”
“A fine religion!” snapped Toppy. “And how about his dealings with you?”
The Scot smiled grimly.
“I’m the best smith he ever had,” he replied, “and I’ve warned him that I’d consider it a duty under my religion to shoot him through the head did he ever attempt to force his creed upon me.” He paused and held up a finger. “Hist, lad. That’s him coming noo. He’s come for his regular evening’s mouthfu’ of conversation.”
Toppy found himself sitting up and gripping the arms of his chair as Reivers came swinging in. He eagerly searched the foreman’s countenance for a sign to indicate whether Tilly, the squaw, had communicated the conversation she had heard between Toppy and Miss Pearson, but if she had there was nothing to indicate it in Reivers’ expression or manner. His self-mastery awoke a sullen rage in Toppy. He felt himself to be a boy beside Reivers.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” greeted Reivers lightly, pulling a chair up to the reading-table. “It is a pleasure to find intelligent society after having spent the last hour handling the broken leg of a miserable brute on two legs. Bah! The whisky, Scotty, please. I wonder what miracles of misbreeding have been necessary to turn out alleged human beings with bodies so hideous compared to what the human body should be. Treplin, if you or I stripped beside those Hunkies the only thing we’d have in common would be the number of our legs and arms.”
He drew toward him a tumbler which Campbell had pushed over beside the bottle and, filling the glass three-quarters full, began to drink slowly at the powerful Scotch whisky as another man might sip at beer or light wine. Old Campbell rocked slowly to and fro in his chair.
“ ‘He that taketh up the sword shall perish by the sword,’ ” he quoted solemnly. “No man is a god to set himself up, lord over the souls and bodies of his fellows. They will put out your light for you one of these days, Mr. Reivers. Have care and treat them a little more like men.”
Reivers smiled a quick smile that showed a mouthful of teeth as clean and white as a hound’s.
“Let’s have your opinion on the subject, Treplin,” he said. “New opinions are always interesting, and Scotty repeats the same thing over and over again. What do you think of it? Do you think I can maintain my rule over those hundred and fifty clods out there in the stockade as I am ruling them, through the law of strength over weakness? Do you think one superior mind can dominate a hundred and fifty inferior organisms? Or do you think, with Scotty here, that the dregs can drag me down?”
Toppy shook his head. He was in no mood to debate abstract problems with Reivers.
“Count me out until I’m a little acquainted with the situation,” he said. “I’m a stranger in a strange land. I’ve just dropped in—from almost another world you might say.”
In a vain attempt to escape taking sides in what was evidently an old argument he hurriedly rattled off the story of his coming to Rail Head and thence to Hell Camp, omitting to mention, however, that it was Miss Pearson who was responsible for the latter part of his journey. Reivers smote his huge fist upon the table as Toppy finished.
“That’s the kind of a man for me!” he laughed. “Got tired of living the life of his class, and just stepped out of it. No explanations; no acknowledgement of obligations to anybody. Master of his own soul. To—— with the niceties of civilisation! Treplin, you’re a man after my own scheme of life; I did the same thing once—only I was sober.
“But let’s get back to our subject. Here’s the situation: This camp is on a natural town-site. There’s water-power, ore and timber. To use the water-power we must build a dam; to use the timber we must get it to the saws. That takes labour, lots of it—muscle-and-bone labour. Labour is scarce up here. It is too far from the pigsties of towns. Men would come, work a few days, and go away. The purpose of the place would be defeated—unless the men are kept here at work.
“That’s what I do. I keep them here. To do it I keep them locked up at night like the cattle they are. By day I have them guarded by armed man-killers—every one of my guards is a fugitive from man’s silly laws, principally from the one which says, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’
“But my best guard is Fear—by which I rule alike my guards and the poor brutes who are necessary to my purpose. There you are: a hundred and fifty of them, fearing and hating me, and I’m making them do as I please. No foolishness about laws, about order, about right or wrong. Just a hundred and fifty half-beasts and myself out here in the woods. As a man with a trained mind, do you think I can keep it up? Or do you think there is mental energy enough in that mess of human protoplasm to muster up nerve enough to put out my light, as Scotty puts it? It’s a problem that furnishes interesting mental gymnastics.”
He propounded the problem with absolutely no trace of personal interest. To judge by his manner, the matter of his life or death meant nothing to him. It was merely an interesting question on which to expend the energy fulminating in his mind. In his light-blue eyes there seemed to gleam the same impersonal brutality which had shown out when he so casually crippled Rosky.
“Oh, it’s an impossible proposition, Reivers!” exploded Toppy, with the picture of the writhing Slav in his mind’s eye. “You’ve got to consider right and wrong when dealing with human beings. It isn’t natural; Nature won’t stand it.”
“Ah!” Reivers’ eyes lighted up with intellectual delight. “That’s an idea! Scotty, you hear? You’ve been talking about my perishing by the sword, but you haven’t given any reason why. Treplin does. He says Nature will revolt, because my system is unnatural.” He threw back his head and laughed coldly. “Rot, Treplin—silly, effeminate, bookish rot!” he roared. “Nature has respect only for the strong. It creates the weaker species merely to give the stronger food to remain strong on.”
Old Scotty had been rocking furiously. Now he stopped suddenly and broke out into a furious Biblical denunciation of Reivers’ system. When he stopped for breath after his first outbreak, Reivers with a few words and a cold smile egged him on. Toppy gladly kept his mouth shut. After an hour he yawned and arose from his chair.
“If you’ll excuse me, I’ll turn in,” he said. “I’m too sleepy to listen or talk.”
Without looking at him Reivers drew a book from his pocket and tossed it toward him.
“ ‘Davis on Fractures’,” he grunted. “Cram up on it to-morrow. There will be need of your help before long. Go on, Scotty; you were saying that a just