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If any one doubt this, let him take pains to inquire how large a proportion of railway-men get rich in a few years on salaries of from one to two thousand dollars per annum. Nor can this be prevented; for every new check is only a transfer of power from intelligent to ignorant hands; and ignorance, however honest, is a more expensive manager and easier victim than knavery. There is but one remedy.
The baron held his arm out to him, telling him at the same time to pull it, which he did at once. The French doctor took off the officer's cloak, told two of the railway-men to hold him, and then, pushing against him himself, pulled at the poor arm. The baron was very pale, and gave a low whistle. When the arm was back in its place, the doctor shook the baron's other hand.
Men thus braved and thwarted turned to fiends. The sun was not an hour high when the emissaries of the Railway Union were haranguing the people all along these outlying districts. The striking railway-men themselves were redoubling their pleadings with the men who had stood firm, and from pleadings turned to threats.
One met here, not merely the fighting-men, but the forces of all the complicated service behind the lines: gangs of lumbermen from the far North-west, who were to fell the forests of France and make them into railroad-ties and timber for trenches; railway-men, miners, and construction-gangs, engineers and signalmen, bridge-builders and road-makers, telephone-linemen and operators, the drivers of forty thousand motor-cars and of five thousand locomotives; bakers and cooks, menders of shoes and of clothing, farmers to till the soil of France, and doctors and nurses to tend its sick and wounded.
I stood and gazed back over the abyss; I saw the little horrible strip between heaven and hell the perspective of its rails. I was made ill by the relief from terror. Yet I suppose railway-men cross and recross it twenty times a day. Better for them than for me!
This happened on the day before the collision between the railway-men and the river-drivers, and the old priest already knew what trouble was afoot. There was little Felix Marchand did which was hidden from him. He made his way to Ingolby to warn him.
Ingolby had made a tactical mistake in at once removing the office of the merged railway from Manitou, and he saw it quickly. It was not possible to put the matter right at once, however. There had already been collision between his own railway-men and the rivermen from Manitou, whom Felix Marchand had bribed to cause trouble: two Manitou men had been seriously hurt, and feeling ran high.
They were also told that one of the gas-pipes had to be repaired before we could have the light again. The communication was then cut between my car and the rest of the train. We had been going along like this for ten minutes perhaps when everything was suddenly lighted up by a fire, and we saw a gang of railway-men hastening towards us.
Dugdale lifted her in the carriage, almost without a word. One of the railway-men brought from somewhere nobody ever learned where a rug for her feet, and a pillow for her head to lean on. A minute more, and they were whirled away.
Her room was just a converted bedroom, with a dirty wall-paper. The packs of cards were such as one might see railway-men playing with in a lamp-room. Our stakes were a few kopeks, and the refreshments consisted of one tepid cup of tea, without either milk or lemon, and not a biscuit to eat. We all sat with shawls on, as our hostess said it wasn't worth while to light a fire so late at night.
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