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Updated: June 3, 2025
Thar ain't no better place for it." The crowd beneath Koppy's perch was growing fast. The Pole could hear their whispered exclamations, see the whites of their faces turned up to him for the report of each shot. In a wave of anger and misgiving he realised the rashness of adding another responsibility to those of leadership.
Koppy's hand went up for silence. The men plodded on. At the place of meeting not a man was in sight; a great silence seemed to have stifled life itself. But as Koppy raised himself on a slight eminence in the centre of the clearing and made a gesture with his expressive hands, throngs of his followers crowded about him with no sound but shuffling feet.
"I don't care a tinker's cuss what he say. It's what I say counts on this job." "Did they hurt boss?" Koppy's voice was servilely anxious. "Lefty tell me Morani stab." Torrance laughed contemptuously. He was stroking his moustache with the injured hand; now he threw both arms out and repeated the sneering laugh. "Chico's knife is more dangerous to himself than to me."
And feelings like that were always his guiding motives. He could not explain the cause of his worry, for the sounds of camp life seemed little less than usual, but he paused a long time above the dotted scene, eyes and ears alert. Feverishly he sought Koppy's shack.
His eye moved upward from the camp and settled on one lone shack that crowned a promontory overlooking the ugly scene below. "Koppy's at home," he called. "Some day you'll find out something about your underforeman," she teased. "I wish I could," he returned so viciously that she laughed aloud. "You've been wishing it a long time, but to date he seems innocent enough.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "He wouldn't, of course. But wouldn't it have been a story?" "The sort of story that never happens even in books," he sighed. Three low taps sounded on the side of Koppy's shack. The underforeman rose and, standing well back in the gloom of the interior, peered through the open door to the boss's shack beside the grade.
From the foot of the tree the bohunks read crucial drama in Koppy's manner. . . . With a bellow of rage Torrance was on his feet. A single blow he struck at Werner's mad eyes. The head before him snapped back, the bent legs crumpled. As if he had been shot, Werner's limp body slid backwards down the sand. For a moment it hung balanced over the edge, then bent slowly over and plunged out of sight.
But ever since he had been forced to knock Koppy's pointing rifle from his hands to save Juno the half breed had been oppressed by a thousand fears. He did not understand the bohunks he did not want to. In his vivid life he had met most kinds of men, but the wild Continental scum that took to railway construction as its own special line of effort was beyond his experience.
Koppy's body crashed through the branches and fell among his gaping followers. There was blood now, more than they wished. It spurted over them from their fallen leader. It welled from a shrieking companion who lay twisting on the ground beside their dead leader. One incredulous moment then, clutching and clawing, but silent as ever in their fears, they ran for the camp, the only haven they knew.
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