"I thought he was Neuman," replied Kurt, feeling his way. "Is he in on the big deal with father?"

"Which one?" queried the proprietor, with shrewd eyes, taking Kurt's measure. "You're in on both, of course."

"Sure. I mean the wheat sale, not the I.W.W. deal," replied Kurt. He hazarded a guess with that mention of the I.W.W. No sooner had the words passed his lips than he divined he was on the track of sinister events.

"Your father sold out to that Spokane miller. No, Neuman is not in on that."

"I was surprised to hear father had sold the wheat. Was it speculation or guarantee?"

"Old Chris guaranteed sixty bushels. There were friends of his here who advised against it. Did you have rain over there?"

"Fine. The wheat will go over sixty bushels. I'm sorry I couldn't get here sooner."

"When it rained you hurried over to boost the price. Well, it's too late."

"Is Glidden here?" queried Kurt, hazarding another guess.

"Don't talk so loud," warned the proprietor. "Yes, he just got here in a car with two other men. He's up-stairs having supper in his room."

"Supper!" Kurt echoed the word, and averted his face to hide the leap of his blood. "That reminds me, I'm hungry."

He went into the big, dimly lighted dining-room. There was a shelf on one side as he went in, and here, with his back turned to the room, he laid the disjointed gun and his hat. Several newspapers lying near attracted his eye. Quickly he slipped them under and around the gun, and then took a seat at the nearest table. A buxom German waitress came for his order. He gave it while he gazed around at his grim-faced old father and the burly Neuman, and his ears throbbed to the beat of his blood. His hand trembled on the table. His thoughts flashed almost too swiftly for comprehension. It took a stern effort to gain self-control.

Evil of some nature was afoot. Neuman's presence there was a strange, disturbing fact. Kurt had made two guesses, both alarmingly correct. If he had any more illusions or hopes, he dispelled them. His father had been won over by this arch conspirator of the I.W.W. And, despite his father's close-fistedness where money was concerned, that eighty thousand dollars, or part of it, was in danger.

Kurt wondered how he could get possession of it. If he could he would return it to the bank and wire a warning to the Spokane buyer that the wheat was not safe. He might persuade his father to turn over the amount of the debt to Anderson. While thinking and planning, Kurt kept an eye on his father and rather neglected his supper. Presently, when old Dorn and Neuman rose and left the dining-room, Kurt followed them. His father was whispering to the proprietor over the desk, and at Kurt's touch he glared his astonishment.

"You here! What for?" he demanded, gruffly, in German.

"I had to see you," replied Kurt, in English.

"Did it rain?" was the old man's second demand, husky and serious.

"The wheat is made, if we can harvest it," answered Kurt.

The blaze of joy on old Dorn's face gave Kurt a twinge of pain. He hated to dispel it. "Come aside, here, a minute," he whispered, and drew his father over to a corner under a lamp. "I've got bad news. Look at this!" He produced the cake of phosphorus, careful to hide it from other curious eyes there, and with swift, low words he explained its meaning. He expected an outburst of surprise and fury, but he was mistaken.

"I know about that," whispered his father, hoarsely. "There won't be any thrown in my wheat."

"Father! What assurance have you of that?" queried Kurt, astounded.

The old man nodded his gray head wisely. He knew, but he did not speak.

"Do you think these I.W.W. plotters will spare your wheat?" asked Kurt. "You are wrong. They may lie to your face. But they'll betray you. The I.W.W. is backed by—by interests that want to embarrass the government."

"What government?"

"Why, ours—the U.S. government!"

"That's not my government. The more it's embarrassed the better it will suit me."

In the stress of the moment Kurt had forgotten his father's bitter and unchangeable hatred.

"But you're—you're stupid," he hissed, passionately. "That government has protected you for fifty years."

Old Dorn growled into his beard. His huge ox-eyes rolled. Kurt realized then finally how implacable and hopeless he was—how utterly German. Then Kurt importuned him to return the eighty thousand dollars to the bank until he was sure the wheat was harvested and hauled to the railroad.

"My wheat won't burn," was old Dorn's stubborn reply.

"Well, then, give me Anderson's thirty thousand. I'll take it to him at once. Our debt will be paid. We'll have it off our minds."

"No hurry about that," replied his father.

"But there is hurry," returned Kurt, in a hot whisper. "Anderson came to see you to-day. He wants his money."

"Neuman holds the small end of that debt. I'll pay him. Anderson can wait."

Kurt felt no amaze. He expected anything. But he could scarcely contain his fury. How this old man, his father, whom he had loved—how he had responded to the influences that must destroy him!

"Anderson shall not wait," declared Kurt. "I've got some say in this matter. I've worked like a dog in those wheat-fields. I've a right to demand Anderson's money. He needs it. He has a tremendous harvest on his hands."

Old Dorn shook his huge head in somber and gloomy thought. His broad face, his deep eyes, seemed to mask and to hide. It was an expression Kurt had seldom seen there, but had always hated. It seemed so old to Kurt, that alien look, something not born of his time.

"Anderson is a capitalist," said Chris Dorn, deep in his beard. "He seeks control of farmers and wheat in the Northwest. Ranch after ranch he's gained by taking up and foreclosing mortgages. He's against labor. He grinds down the poor. He cheated Neuman out of a hundred thousand bushels of wheat. He bought up my debt. He meant to ruin me. He—"

"You're talking I.W.W. rot," whispered Kurt, shaking with the effort to subdue his feelings. "Anderson is fine, big, square—a developer of the Northwest. Not an enemy! He's our friend. Oh! if only you had an American's eyes, just for a minute!... Father, I want that money for Anderson."

"My son, I run my own business," replied Dorn, sullenly, with a pale fire in his opaque eyes. "You're a wild boy, unfaithful to your blood. You've fallen in love with an American girl.... Anderson says he needs money!"... With hard, gloomy face the old man shook his head. "He thinks he'll harvest!" Again that strange shake of finality. "I know what I know.... I keep my money.... We'll have other rule.... I keep my money."

Kurt had vibrated to those most significant words and he stared speechless at his father.

"Go home. Get ready for harvest," suddenly ordered old Dorn, as if he had just awakened to the fact of Kurt's disobedience in lingering here.

"All right, father," replied Kurt, and, turning on his heel, he strode outdoors.

When he got beyond the light he turned and went back to a position where in the dark he could watch without being seen. His father and the hotel proprietor were again engaged in earnest colloquy. Neuman had disappeared. Kurt saw the huge shadow of a man pass across a drawn blind in a room up-stairs. Then he saw smaller shadows, and arms raised in vehement gesticulation. The very shadows were sinister. Men passed in and out of the hotel. Once old Dorn came to the door and peered all around. Kurt observed that there was a dark side entrance to this hotel. Presently Neuman returned to the desk and said something to old Dorn, who shook his head emphatically, and then threw himself into a chair, in a brooding posture that Kurt knew well. He had seen it so often that he knew it had to do with money. His father was refusing demands of some kind. Neuman again left the office, this time with the proprietor. They were absent some little time.

During this period Kurt leaned against a tree, hidden in the shadow, with keen eyes watching and with puzzled, anxious mind. He had determined, in case his father left that office with Neuman, on one of those significant disappearances, to slip into the hotel at the side entrance and go up-stairs to listen at the door of the room with the closely drawn blind. Neuman returned soon with the hotel man, and the two of them half led, half dragged old Dorn out into the street. They took the direction toward the railroad. Kurt followed at a safe distance on the opposite side of the street. Soon they passed the stores with lighted windows, then several dark houses, and at length the railroad station. Perhaps they were bound for the train. Kurt heard rumbling in the distance. But they went beyond the station, across the track, and turned to the right.

Kurt was soft-footed and keen-eyed. He just kept the dim shadows in range. They were heading for some freight-cars that stood upon a side-track. The dark figures disappeared behind them. Then one figure reappeared, coming back. Kurt crouched low. This man passed within a few yards of Kurt and he was whispering to himself. After he was safely out of earshot Kurt stole on stealthily until he reached the end of the freight-cars. Here he paused, listening. He thought he heard low voices, but he could not see the men he was following. No doubt they were waiting in the secluded gloom for the other men apparently necessary for that secret conference. Kurt had sensed this event and he had determined to be present. He tried not to conjecture. It was best for him to apply all his faculties to the task of slipping unseen and unheard close to these men who had involved his father in some dark plot.

Not long after Kurt hid himself on the other side of the freight-car he heard soft-padded footsteps and subdued voices. Dark shapes appeared to come out of the gloom. They passed him. He distinguished low, guttural voices, speaking German. These men, three in number, were scarcely out of sight when Kurt laid his rifle on the projecting shelf of the freight-car and followed them.

Presently he came to deep shadow, where he paused. Low voices drew him on again, then a light made him thrill. Now and then the light appeared to be darkened by moving figures. A dark object loomed up to cut off Kurt's view. It was a pile of railroad ties, and beyond it loomed another. Stealing along these, he soon saw the light again, quite close. By its glow he recognized his father's huge frame, back to him, and the burly Neuman on the other side, and Glidden, whose dark face was working as he talked. These three were sitting, evidently on a flat pile of ties, and the other two men stood behind. Kurt could not make out the meaning of the low voices. Pressing closer to the freight-car, he cautiously and noiselessly advanced.

Glidden was importuning with expressive hands and swift, low utterance. His face gleamed dark, hard, strong, intensely strung with corded, quivering muscles, with eyes apparently green orbs of fire. He spoke in German.

Kurt dared not go closer unless he wanted to be discovered, and not yet was he ready for that. He might hear some word to help explain his father's strange, significant intimations about Anderson.

"...must—have—money," Glidden was saying. To Kurt's eyes treachery gleamed in that working face. Neuman bent over to whisper gruffly in Dorn's ear. One of the silent men standing rubbed his hands together. Old Dorn's head was bowed. Then Glidden spoke so low and so swiftly that Kurt could not connect sentences, but with mounting blood he stood transfixed and horrified, to gather meaning from word on word, until he realized Anderson's doom, with other rich men of the Northwest, was sealed—that there were to be burnings of wheat-fields and of storehouses and of freight-trains—destruction everywhere.

"I give money," said old Dorn, and with heavy movement he drew from inside his coat a large package wrapped in newspaper. He laid it before him in the light and began to unwrap it. Soon there were disclosed two bundles of bills—the eighty thousand dollars.

Kurt thrilled in all his being. His poor father was being misled and robbed. A melancholy flash of comfort came to Kurt! Then at sight of Glidden's hungry eyes and working face and clutching hands Kurt pulled his hat far down, drew his revolver, and leaped forward with a yell, "Hands up!"

He discharged the revolver right in the faces of the stunned plotters, and, snatching up the bundle of money, he leaped over the light, knocking one of the men down, and was gone into the darkness, without having slowed in the least his swift action.

Wheeling round the end of the freight-car, he darted back, risking a hard fall in the darkness, and ran along the several cars to the first one, where he grasped his rifle and kept on. He heard his father's roar, like that of a mad bull, and shrill yells from the other men. Kurt laughed grimly. They would never catch him in the dark. While he ran he stuffed the money into his inside coat pockets. Beyond the railroad station he slowed down to catch his breath. His breast was heaving, his pulse hammering, and his skin was streaming. The excitement was the greatest under which he had ever labored.

"Now—what shall—I do?" he panted. A freight-train was lumbering toward him and the head-light was almost at the station. The train appeared to be going slowly through without stopping. Kurt hurried on down the track a little farther. Then he waited. He would get on that train and make his way somehow to Ruxton, there to warn Anderson of the plot against his life.



CHAPTER X

Kurt rode to Adrian on that freight, and upon arriving in the yards there he jumped off, only to mount another, headed south. He meant to be traveling while it was dark. No passenger-trains ran at night and he wanted to put as much distance between him and Wheatly as possible before daylight.

He had piled into an open box-car. It was empty, at least of freight, and the floor appeared to have a thin covering of hay. The train, gathering headway, made a rattling rolling roar. Kurt hesitated about getting up and groping back in the pitch-black corners of the car. He felt that it contained a presence besides his own. And suddenly he was startled by an object blacker than the shadow, that sidled up close to him. Kurt could not keep the cold chills from chasing up and down his back. The object was a man, who reached for Kurt and felt of him with a skinny hand.

"I.W.W.?" he whispered, hoarsely, in Kurt's ear.

"Yes," replied Kurt.

"Was that Adrian where you got on?"

"It sure was," answered Kurt, with grim humor.

"Than you're the feller?"

"Sure," replied Kurt. It was evident that he had embarked upon an adventure.

"When do we stall this freight?"

"Not while we're on it, you can gamble."

Other dark forms sidled out of the gloomy depths of that cavern-like corner and drew close to Kurt. He realized that he had fallen in with I.W.W. men who apparently had taken him for an expected messenger or leader. He was importuned for tobacco, drink, and money, and he judged that his begging companions consisted of an American tramp, an Austrian, a negro, and a German. Fine society to fall into! That eighty thousand dollars became a tremendous burden.

"How many men on this freight?" queried Kurt, thinking he could ask questions better than answer them. And he was told there were about twenty-five, all of whom expected money. At this information Kurt rather closely pressed his hand upon the revolver in his side coat pocket. By asking questions and making judicious replies he passed what he felt was the dark mark in that mixed company of I.W.W. men; and at length, one by one, they melted away to their warmer corners, leaving Kurt by the door. He did not mind the cold. He wanted to be where, at the first indication of a stop, he could jump off the train.

With his hand on his gun and hugging the bulging coat pockets close to him, Kurt settled himself for what he believed would be interminable hours. He strained eyes and ears for a possible attack from the riffraff I.W.W. men hidden there in the car. And that was why, perhaps, that it seemed only a short while until the train bumped and slowed, preparatory to stopping. The instant it was safe Kurt jumped out and stole away in the gloom. A fence obstructed further passage. He peered around to make out that he was in a road. Thereupon he hurried along it until he was out of hearing of the train. There was light in the east, heralding a dawn that Kurt surely would welcome. He sat down to wait, and addressed to his bewildered judgment a query as to whether or not he ought to keep on carrying the burdensome rifle. It was not only heavy, but when daylight came it might attract attention, and his bulging coat would certainly invite curiosity. He was in a predicament; nevertheless, he decided to hang on to the rifle.

He almost fell asleep, waiting there with his back against a fence-post. The dawn came, and then the rosy sunrise. And he discovered, not half a mile away, a good-sized town, where he believed he surely could hire an automobile.

Waiting grew to be so tedious that he decided to risk the early hour, and proceeded toward the town. Upon the outskirts he met a farmer boy, who, in reply to a question, said that the town was Connell. Kurt found another early riser in the person of a blacksmith who evidently was a Yankee and proud of it. He owned a car that he was willing to hire out on good security. Kurt satisfied him on that score, and then proceeded to ask how to get across the Copper River and into Golden Valley. The highway followed the railroad from that town to Kahlotus, and there crossed a big trunk-line railroad, to turn south toward the river.

In half an hour, during which time Kurt was enabled to breakfast, the car was ready. It was a large car, rather ancient and the worse for wear, but its owner assured Kurt that it would take him where he wanted to go and he need not be afraid to drive fast. With that inspiring knowledge Kurt started off.

Before ten o'clock Kurt reached Kilo, far across the Copper River, with the Blue Mountains in sight, and from there less confusing directions to follow. He had been lucky. He had passed the wreck of the freight-train upon which he had ridden from Adrian; his car had been surrounded by rough men, and only quick wits saved him at least delay; he had been hailed by more than one group of tramping I.W.W. men; and he had passed camps and freight-yards where idlers were congregated. And lastly, he had seen, far across the valley, a pall of smoke from forest fire.

He was going to reach "Many Waters" in time to warn Anderson, and that fact gave him strange exultation. When it was assured and he had the eighty thousand dollars deposited in a bank he could feel that his gray, gloomy future would have several happy memories. How would Lenore Anderson feel toward a man who had saved her father? The thought was too rich, too sweet for Kurt to dwell upon.

Before noon Kurt began to climb gradually up off the wonderfully fertile bottom-lands where the endless orchards and boundless gardens delighted his eye, and the towns grew fewer and farther between. Kurt halted at Huntington for water, and when he was about ready to start a man rushed out of a store, glanced hurriedly up and down the almost deserted street, and, espying Kurt, ran to him.

"Message over 'phone! I.W.W.! Hell to pay!" he cried, excitedly.

"What's up? Tell me the message," replied Kurt, calmly.

"It just come—from Vale. Anderson, the big rancher! He 'phoned to send men out on all roads—to stop his car! His daughter's in it! She's been made off with! I.W.W.'s!"

Kurt's heart leaped. The bursting blood burned through him and receded to leave him cold, tingling. Anything might happen to him this day! He reached inside the seat to grasp the disjointed rifle, and three swift movements seemed to serve to unwrap it and put the pieces together.

"What else did Anderson say?" he asked, sharply.

"That likely the car would head for the hills, where the I.W.W.'s are camped."

"What road from here leads that way?"

"Take the left-hand road at the end of town," replied the man, more calmly. "Ten miles down you'll come to a fork. There's where the I.W.W.'s will turn off to go up into the foot-hills. Anderson just 'phoned. You can head off his car if it's on the hill road. But you'll have to drive.... Do you know Anderson's car? Don't you want men with you?"

"No time!" called Kurt, as he leaped into the seat and jammed on the power.

"I'll send cars all over," shouted the man, as Kurt whirred away.

Kurt's eyes and hands and feet hurt with the sudden intensity of strain. All his nervous force seemed set upon the one great task of driving and guiding that car at the limit of its speed. Huntington flashed behind, two indistinct streaks of houses. An open road, slightly rising, stretched ahead. The wind pressed so hard that he could scarcely breathe. The car gave forth a humming roar.

Kurt's heart labored, swollen and tight, high in his breast, and his thoughts were swift, tumultuous. An agony of dread battled with a dominating but strange certainty. He felt belief in his luck. Circumstances one by one had led to this drive, and in every one passed by he felt the direction of chance.

He sped by fields of wheat, a wagon that he missed by an inch, some stragglers on the road, and then, far ahead, he saw a sign-post of the forks. As he neared it he gradually shut off the power, to stop at the cross-roads. There he got out to search for fresh car tracks turning up to the right. There were none. If Anderson's car was coming on that road he would meet it.

Kurt started again, but at reasonable speed, while his eyes were sharp on the road ahead. It was empty. It sloped down for a long way, and made a wide curve to the right, along the base of hilly pastureland, and then again turned. And just as Kurt's keen gaze traveled that far a big automobile rounded the bend, coming fast. He recognized the red color, the shape of the car.

"Anderson's!" he cried, with that same lift of his heart, that bursting gush of blood. "No dream!... I see it!... And I'll stop it!"

The advantage was all his. He would run along at reasonable speed, choose a narrow place, stop his car so as to obstruct the road, and get out with his rifle.

It seemed a long stretch down that long slope, and his car crept along while the other gradually closed the gap. Slower and slower Kurt ran, then turned half across the road and stopped. When he stepped out the other car was two hundred yards or more distant. Kurt saw when the driver slackened his speed. There appeared to be only two people in the car, both in front. But Kurt could not be sure of that until it was only fifty yards away.

Then he swung out his rifle and waved for the driver to stop. But he did not stop. Kurt heard a scream. He saw a white face. He saw the driver swing his hand across that white face, dashing it back.

"Halt!" yelled Kurt, at the top of his lungs.

But the driver hunched down and put on the power. The red car leaped. As it flashed by Kurt recognized Nash and Anderson's daughter. She looked terrified. Kurt dared not shoot, for fear of hitting the girl. Nash swerved, took the narrow space left him, smashing the right front wheel of Kurt's car, and got by.

Kurt stepped aside and took a quick shot at the tire of Nash's left hind wheel. He missed. His heart sank and he was like ice as he risked another. The little high-power bullet struck and blew the tire off the wheel. Nash's car lurched, skidded into the bank not thirty yards away.

With a bound Kurt started for it, and he was there when Nash had twisted out of his seat and over the door.

"Far enough! Don't move!" ordered Kurt, presenting the rifle.

Nash was ghastly white, with hunted eyes and open mouth, and his hands shook.

"Oh it's—Kurt Dorn!" cried a broken voice.

Kurt saw the girl fumble with the door on her side, open it, and stagger out of his sight. Then she reappeared round the car. Bareheaded, disheveled, white as chalk, with burning eyes and bleeding lips, she gazed at Kurt as if to make sure of her deliverance.

"Miss Anderson—if he's harmed you—" broke out Kurt, hoarsely.

"Oh!... Don't kill him!... He hasn't touched me," she replied, wildly.

"But your lips are bleeding."

"Are they?" She put a trembling hand to them. "He—he struck me.... That's nothing... But you—you have saved me—from God only knows what!"

"I have! From him?" demanded Kurt. "What is he?"

"He's a German!" returned Lenore, and red burned out of the white of her cheeks. "Secret agent—I.W.W.!... Plotter against my father's life!... Oh, he knocked father off the car—dragged him!... He ran the car away—with me—forced me back—he struck me!... Oh, if I were a man!"

Nash responded with a passion that made his face drip with sweat and distort into savage fury of defeat and hate.

"You two-faced cat!" he hissed. "You made love to me! You fooled me! You let me—"

"Shut up!" thundered Kurt. "You German dog! I can't murder you, because I'm American. Do you get that? But I'll beat you within an inch of your life!"

As Kurt bent over to lay down the rifle, Nash darted a hand into the seat for weapon of some kind. But Kurt, in a rush, knocked him over the front guard. Nash howled. He scrambled up with bloody mouth. Kurt was on him again.

"Take that!" cried Kurt, low and hard, as he swung his arm. The big fist that had grasped so many plow-handles took Nash full on that bloody mouth and laid him flat. "Come on, German! Get out of the trench!"

Like a dog Nash thrashed and crawled, scraping his hands in the dirt, to jump up and fling a rock that Kurt ducked by a narrow margin. Nash followed it, swinging wildly, beating at his adversary.

Passion long contained burst in Kurt. He tasted the salt of his own blood where he had bitten his lips. Nash showed as in a red haze. Kurt had to get his hands on this German, and when he did it liberated a strange and terrible joy in him. No weapon would have sufficed. Hardly aware of Nash's blows, Kurt tore at him, swung and choked him, bore him down on the bank, and there beat him into a sodden, bloody-faced heap.

Only then did a cry of distress, seemingly from far off, pierce Kurt's ears. Miss Anderson was pulling at him with frantic hands.

"Oh, don't kill him! Please don't kill him!" she was crying. "Kurt!—for my sake, don't kill him!"

That last poignant appeal brought Kurt to his senses. He let go of Nash. He allowed the girl to lead him back. Panting hard, he tried to draw a deep, full breath.

"Oh, he doesn't move!" whispered Lenore, with wide eyes on Nash.

"Miss Anderson—he's not—even insensible," panted Kurt. "But he's licked—good and hard."

The girl leaned against the side of the car, with a hand buried in her heaving breast. She was recovering. The gray shade left her face. Her eyes, still wide and dark and beginning to glow with softer emotions, were upon Kurt.

"You—you were the one to come," she murmured. "I prayed. I was terribly frightened. Ruenke was taking me—to the I.W.W. camp, up in the hills."

"Ruenke?" queried Kurt.

"Yes, that's his German name."

Kurt awoke to the exigencies of the situation. Searching in the car, he found a leather belt. With this he securely bound Ruenke's hands behind his back, then rolled him down into the road.

"My first German prisoner," said Kurt, half seriously. "Now, Miss Anderson, we must be doing things. We don't want to meet a lot of I.W.W.'s out here. My car is out of commission. I hope yours is not broken."

Kurt got into the car and found, to his satisfaction, that it was not damaged so far as running-gear was concerned. After changing the ruined tire he backed down the road and turned to stop near where Ruenke lay. Opening the rear door, Kurt picked him up as if he had been a sack of wheat and threw him into the car. Next he secured the rifle that had been such a burden and had served him so well in the end.

"Get in, Miss Anderson," he said, "and show me where to drive you home."

She got in beside him, making a grimace as she saw Ruenke lying behind her. Kurt started and ran slowly by the damaged car.

"He knocked a wheel off. I'll have to send back."

"Oh, I thought it was all over when we hit!" said the girl.

Kurt experienced a relaxation that was weakening. He could hardly hold the wheel and his mood became one of exaltation.

"Father suspected this Ruenke," went on Lenore. "But he wanted to find out things from him. And I—I undertook—to twist Mr. Germany round my finger. I made a mess of it.... He lied. I didn't make love to him. But I listened to his love-making, and arrogant German love-making it was! I'm afraid I made eyes at him and let him believe I was smitten.... Oh, and all for nothing! I'm ashamed... But he lied!"

Her confidence, at once pathetic and humorous and contemptuous, augmented Kurt's Homeric mood. He understood that she would not even let him, for a moment, have a wrong impression of her.

"It must have been hard," agreed Kurt. "Didn't you find out anything at all?"

"Not much," she replied. Then she put a hand on his sleeve. "Your knuckles are all bloody."

"So they are. I got that punching our German friend."

"Oh, how you did beat him!" she cried. "I had to look. My ire was up, too!... It wasn't very womanly—of me—that I gloried in the sight."

"But you cried out—you pulled me away!" exclaimed Kurt.

"That was because I was afraid you'd kill him," she replied.

Kurt swerved his glance, for an instant, to her face. It was at once flushed and pale, with the deep blue of downcast eyes shadowy through her long lashes, exceedingly sweet and beautiful to Kurt's sight. He bent his glance again to the road ahead. Miss Anderson felt kindly and gratefully toward him, as was, of course, natural. But she was somehow different from what she had seemed upon the other occasions he had seen her. Kurt's heart was full to bursting.

"I might have killed him," he said. "I'm glad—you stopped me. That—that frenzy of mine seemed to be the breaking of a dam. I have been dammed up within. Something had to break. I've been unhappy for a long time."

"I saw that. What about?" she replied.

"The war, and what it's done to father. We're estranged. I hate everything German. I loved the farm. My chance in life is gone. The wheat debt—the worry about the I.W.W.—and that's not all."

Again she put a gentle hand on his sleeve and left it there for a moment. The touch thrilled all through Kurt.

"I'm sorry. Your position is sad. But maybe it is not utterly hopeless. You—you'll come back after the war."

"I don't know that I want to come back," he said. "For then—it'd be just as bad—worse.... Miss Anderson, it won't hurt to tell you the truth.... A year ago—that first time I saw you—I fell in love with you. I think—when I'm away—over in France—I'd like to feel that you know. It can't hurt you. And it'll be sweet to me.... I fought against the—the madness. But fate was against me.... I saw you again.... And it was all over with me!"

He paused, catching his breath. She was perfectly quiet. He looked on down the winding road. There were dust-clouds in the distance.

"I'm afraid I grew bitter and moody," he went on. "But the last forty-eight hours have changed me forever... I found that my poor old dad had been won over by these unscrupulous German agents of the I.W.W. But I saved his name.... I've got the money he took for the wheat we may never harvest. But if we do harvest I can pay all our debt.... Then I learned of a plot to ruin your father—to kill him!... I was on my way to 'Many Waters.' I can warn him.... Last of all I have saved you."

The little hand dropped away from his coat sleeve. A soft, half-smothered cry escaped her. It seemed to him she was about to weep in her exceeding pity.

"Miss Anderson, I—I'd rather not have—you pity me."

"Mr. Dorn, I certainly don't pity you," she replied, with an unexpected, strange tone. It was full. It seemed to ring in his ears.

"I know there never was and never could be any hope for me. I—I—"

"Oh, you know that!" murmured the soft, strange voice.

But Kurt could not trust his ears and he had to make haste to terminate the confession into which his folly and emotion had betrayed him. He scarcely heard her words.

"Yes.... I told you why I wanted you to know.... And now forget that—and when I'm gone—if you think of me ever, let it be about how much better it made me—to have all this good luck—to help your father and to save you!"

The dust-cloud down the road came from a string of automobiles, flying along at express speed. Kurt saw them with relief.

"Here come the cars on your trail," he called out. "Your father will be in one of them."

* * * * *

Kurt opened the door of the car and stepped down. He could not help his importance or his pride. Anderson, who came running between two cars that had stopped abreast, was coatless and hatless, covered with dust, pale and fire-eyed.

"Mr. Anderson, your daughter is safe—unharmed," Kurt assured him.

"My girl!" cried the father, huskily, and hurried to where she leaned out of her seat.

"All right, dad," she cried, as she embraced him. "Only a little shaky yet."

It was affecting for Dorn to see that meeting, and through it to share something of its meaning. Anderson's thick neck swelled and colored, and his utterance was unintelligible. His daughter loosened her arm from round him and turned her face toward Kurt. Then he imagined he saw two blue stars, sweetly, strangely shining upon him.

"Father, it was our friend from the Bend," she said. "He happened along."

Anderson suddenly changed to the cool, smiling man Kurt remembered.

"Howdy, Kurt?" he said, and crushed Kurt's hand. "What'd you do to him?"

Kurt made a motion toward the back of the car. Then Anderson looked over the seats. With that he opened the door and in one powerful haul he drew Ruenke sliding out into the road. Ruenke's bruised and bloody face was uppermost, a rather gruesome sight. Anderson glared down upon him, while men from the other cars crowded around. Ruenke's eyes resembled those of a cornered rat. Anderson's jaw bulged, his big hands clenched.

"Bill, you throw this fellow in your car and land him in jail. I'll make a charge against him," said the rancher.

"Mr. Anderson, I can save some valuable time," interposed Kurt. "I've got to return a car I broke down. And there's my wheat. Will you have one of these men drive me back?"

"Sure. But won't you come home with us?" said Anderson.

"I'd like to. But I must get home," replied Kurt. "Please let me speak a few words for your ear alone." He drew Anderson aside and briefly told about the eighty thousand dollars; threw back his coat to show the bulging pockets. Then he asked Anderson's advice.

"I'd deposit the money an' wire the Spokane miller," returned the rancher. "I know him. He'll leave the money in the bank till your wheat is safe. Go to the national bank in Kilo. Mention my name."

Then Kurt told Anderson of the plot against his fortunes and his life.

"Neuman! I.W.W.! German intrigue!" growled the rancher. "All in the same class!... Dorn, I'm forewarned, an' that's forearmed. I'll beat this outfit at their own game."

They returned to Anderson's car. Kurt reached inside for his rifle.

"Aren't you going home with us?" asked the girl.

"Why, Miss Anderson, I—I'm sorry. I—I'd love to see 'Many Waters,'" floundered Kurt. "But I can't go now. There's no need. I must hurry back to—to my troubles."

"I wanted to tell you something—at home," she returned, shyly.

"Tell me now," said Kurt.

She gave him such a glance as he had never received in his life. Kurt felt himself as wax before those blue eyes. She wanted to thank him. That would be sweet, but would only make his ordeal harder. He steeled himself.

"You won't come?" she asked, and her smile was wistful.

"No—thank you ever so much."

"Will you come to see me before you—you go to war?"

"I'll try."

"But you must promise. You've done so much for me and my father.... I—I want you to come to see me—at my home."

"Then I'll come," he replied.

Anderson clambered into the car beside his daughter and laid his big hands on the wheel.

"Sure he'll come, or we'll go after him," he declared, heartily. "So long, son."



CHAPTER XI

Late in the forenoon of the next day Kurt Dorn reached home. A hot harvest wind breathed off the wheat-fields. It swelled his heart to see the change in the color of that section of Bluestem—the gold had a tinge of rich, ripe brown.

Kurt's father awaited him, a haggard, gloomy-faced man, unkempt and hollow-eyed.

"Was it you who robbed me?" he shouted hoarsely.

"Yes," replied Kurt. He had caught the eager hope and fear in the old man's tone. Kurt expected that confession would bring on his father's terrible fury, a mood to dread. But old Dorn showed immense relief. He sat down in his relaxation from what must have been intense strain. Kurt saw a weariness, a shade, in the gray lined face that had never been there before.

"What did you do with the money?" asked the old man.

"I banked it in Kilo," replied Kurt. "Then I wired your miller in Spokane.... So you're safe if we can harvest the wheat."

Old Dorn nodded thoughtfully. There had come a subtle change in him. Presently he asked Kurt if men had been hired for the harvest.

"No. I've not seen any I would trust," replied Kurt, and then he briefly outlined Anderson's plan to insure a quick and safe harvesting of the grain. Old Dorn objected to this on account of the expense. Kurt argued with him and patiently tried to show him the imperative need of it. Dorn, apparently, was not to be won over; however, he was remarkably mild in comparison with what Kurt had expected.

"Father, do you realize now that the men you were dealing with at Wheatly are dishonest? I mean with you. They would betray you."

Old Dorn had no answer for this. Evidently he had sustained some kind of shock that he was not willing to admit.

"Look here, father," went on Kurt, in slow earnestness. He spoke in English, because nothing would make him break his word and ever again speak a word of German. And his father was not quick to comprehend English. "Can't you see that the I.W.W. mean to cripple us wheat farmers this harvest?"

"No," replied old Dorn, stubbornly.

"But they do. They don't want work. If they accept work it is for a chance to do damage. All this I.W.W. talk about more wages and shorter hours is deceit. They make a bold face of discontent. That is all a lie. The I.W.W. is out to ruin the great wheat-fields and the great lumber forests of the Northwest."

"I do not believe that," declared his father, stoutly. "What for?"

Kurt meant to be careful of that subject.

"No matter what for. It does not make any difference what it's for. We've got to meet it to save our wheat.... Now won't you believe me? Won't you let me manage the harvest?"

"I will not believe," replied old Dorn, stubbornly. "Not about my wheat. I know they mean to destroy. They are against rich men like Anderson. But not me or my wheat!"

"There is where you are wrong. I'll prove it in a very few days. But in that time I can prepare for them and outwit them. Will you let me?"

"Go ahead," replied old Dorn, gruffly.

It was a concession that Kurt was amazed and delighted to gain. And he set about at once to act upon it. He changed his clothes and satisfied his hunger; then, saddling his horse, he started out to visit his farmer neighbors.

The day bade fair to be rich in experience. Jerry, the foreman, was patrolling his long beat up and down the highway. Jerry carried a shot-gun and looked like a sentry. The men under him were on the other side of the section of wheat, and the ground was so rolling that they could not be seen from the highway. Jerry was unmistakably glad and relieved to see Kurt.

"Some goin's-on," he declared, with a grin. "Since you left there's been one hundred and sixteen I.W.W. tramps along this here road."

"Have you had any trouble?" inquired Kurt.

"Wal, I reckon it wasn't trouble, but every time I took a peg at some sneak I sort of broke out sweatin' cold."

"You shot at them?"

"Sure I shot when I seen any loafin' along in the dark. Two of them shot back at me, an' after thet I wasn't particular to aim high.... Reckon I'm about dead for sleep."

"I'll relieve you to-night," replied Kurt. "Jerry, doesn't the wheat look great?"

"Wal, I reckon. An' walkin' along here when it's quiet an' no wind blowin', I can just hear the wheat crack. It's gittin' ripe fast, an' sure the biggest crop we ever raised.... But I'm tellin' you—when I think how we'll ever harvest it my insides just sinks like lead!"

Kurt then outlined Anderson's plan, which was received by the foreman with eager approval and the assurance that the neighbor farmers would rally to his call.

Kurt found his nearest neighbor, Olsen, cutting a thin, scarcely ripe barley. Olsen was running a new McCormack harvester, and appeared delighted with the machine, but cast down by the grain prospects. He did not intend to cut his wheat at all. It was a dead loss.

"Two sections—twelve hundred an' eighty acres!" he repeated, gloomily. "An' the third bad year! Dorn, I can't pay the interest to my bank."

Olsen's sun-dried and wind-carved visage was as hard and rugged and heroic as this desert that had resisted him for years. Kurt saw under the lines and the bronze all the toil and pain and unquenchable hope that had made Olsen a type of the men who had cultivated this desert of wheat.

"I'll give you five hundred dollars to help me harvest," said Kurt, bluntly, and briefly stated his plan.

Olsen whistled. He complimented Anderson's shrewd sense. He spoke glowingly of that magnificent section of wheat that absolutely must be saved. He promised Kurt every horse and every man on his farm. But he refused the five hundred dollars.

"Oh, say, you'll have to accept it," declared Kurt.

"You've done me good turns," asserted Olsen.

"But nothing like this. Why, this will be a rush job, with all the men and horses and machines and wagons I can get. It'll cost ten—fifteen thousand dollars to harvest that section. Even at that, and paying Anderson, we'll clear twenty thousand or more. Olsen, you've got to take the money."

"All right, if you insist. I'm needin' it bad enough," replied Olsen.

Further conversation with Olsen gleaned the facts that he was the only farmer in their immediate neighborhood who did not have at least a little grain worth harvesting. But the amount was small and would require only slight time. Olsen named farmers that very likely would not take kindly to Dorn's proposition, and had best not be approached. The majority, however, would stand by him, irrespective of the large wage offered, because the issue was one to appeal to the pride of the Bend farmers. Olsen appeared surprisingly well informed upon the tactics of the I.W.W., and predicted that they would cause trouble, but be run out of the country. He made the shrewd observation that when even those farmers who sympathized with Germany discovered that their wheat-fields were being menaced by foreign influences and protected by the home government, they would experience a change of heart. Olsen said the war would be a good thing for the United States, because they would win it, and during the winning would learn and suffer and achieve much.

Kurt rode away from Olsen in a more thoughtful frame of mind. How different and interesting the points of view of different men! Olsen had never taken the time to become a naturalized citizen of the United States. There had never been anything to force him to do it. But his understanding of the worth of the United States and his loyalty to it were manifest in his love for his wheatlands. In fact, they were inseparable. Probably there were millions of pioneers, emigrants, aliens, all over the country who were like Olsen, who needed the fire of the crucible to mold them into a unity with Americans. Of such, Americans were molded!

* * * * *

Kurt rode all day, and when, late that night, he got home, weary and sore and choked, he had enlisted the services of thirty-five farmers to help him harvest the now famous section of wheat.

His father had plainly doubted the willingness of these neighbors to abandon their own labors, for the Bend exacted toil for every hour of every season, whether rich or poor in yield. Likewise he was plainly moved by the facts. His seamed and shaded face of gloom had a moment of light.

"They will make short work of this harvest," he said, thoughtfully.

"I should say so," retorted Kurt. "We'll harvest and haul that grain to the railroad in just three days."

"Impossible!" ejaculated Dorn.

"You'll see," declared Kurt. "You'll see who's managing this harvest."

He could not restrain his little outburst of pride. For the moment the great overhanging sense of calamity that for long had haunted him faded into the background. It did seem sure that they would save this splendid yield of wheat. How much that meant to Kurt—in freedom from debt, in natural love of the fruition of harvest, in the loyalty to his government! He realized how strange and strong was the need in him to prove he was American to the very core of his heart. He did not yet understand that incentive, but he felt it.

After eating dinner Kurt took his rifle and went out to relieve Jerry.

"Only a few more days and nights!" he exclaimed to his foreman. "Then we'll have all the harvesters in the country right in our wheat."

"Wal, a hell of a lot can happen before then," declared Jerry, pessimistically.

Kurt was brought back to realities rather suddenly. But questioning Jerry did not elicit any new or immediate cause for worry. Jerry appeared tired out.

"You go get some sleep," said Kurt.

"All right. Bill's been dividin' this night watch with me. I reckon he'll be out when he wakes up," replied Jerry, and trudged away.

Kurt shouldered his rifle and slowly walked along the road with a strange sense that he was already doing army duty in protecting property which was at once his own and his country's.

The night was dark, cool, and quiet. The heavens were starry bright. A faint breeze brought the tiny crackling of the wheat. From far distant came the bay of a hound. The road stretched away pale and yellow into the gloom. In the silence and loneliness and darkness, in all around him, and far across the dry, whispering fields, there was an invisible presence that had its affinity in him, hovered over him shadowless and immense, and waved in the bursting wheat. It was life. He felt the wheat ripening. He felt it in reawakened tenderness for his old father and in the stir of memory of Lenore Anderson. The past active and important hours had left little room for thought of her.

But now she came back to him, a spirit in keeping with his steps, a shadow under the stars, a picture of sweet, wonderful young womanhood. His whole relation of thought toward her had undergone some marvelous change. The most divine of gifts had been granted him—an opportunity to save her from harm, perhaps from death. He had served her father. How greatly he could not tell, but if measured by the gratitude in her eyes it would have been infinite. He recalled that expression—blue, warm, soft, and indescribably strange with its unuttered hidden meaning. It was all-satisfying for him to realize that she had been compelled to give him a separate and distinct place in her mind. He must stand apart from all others she knew. It had been his fortune to preserve her happiness and the happiness that she must be to sisters and mother, and that some day she would bestow upon some lucky man. They would all owe it to him. And Lenore Anderson knew he loved her.

These things had transformed his relation of thought toward her. He had no regret, no jealousy, no fear. Even the pang of suppressed and overwhelming love had gone with his confession.

But he did remember her presence, her beauty, her intent blue glance, and the faint, dreaming smile of her lips—remembered them with a thrill, and a wave of emotion, and a contraction of his heart. He had promised to see her once more, to afford her the opportunity, no doubt, to thank him, to try to make him see her gratitude. He would go, but he wished it need not be. He asked no more. And seeing her again might change his fulness of joy to something of pain.

So Kurt trod the long road in the darkness and silence, pausing, and checking his dreams now and then, to listen and to watch. He heard no suspicious sounds, nor did he meet any one. The night was melancholy, with a hint of fall in its cool breath.

Soon he would be walking a beat in one of the training-camps, with a bugle-call in his ears and the turmoil of thousands of soldiers in the making around him: soon, too, he would be walking the deck of a transport, looking back down the moon-blanched wake of the ship toward home, listening to the mysterious moan of the ocean; and then soon feeling under his feet the soil of a foreign country, with hideous and incomparable war shrieking its shell furies and its man anguish all about him. But no matter how far away he ever got, he knew Lenore Anderson would be with him as she was there on that dim, lonely starlit country road.

And in these long hours of his vigil Kurt Dorn divined a relation between his love for Lenore Anderson and a terrible need that had grown upon him. A need of his heart and his soul! More than he needed her, if even in his wildest dreams he had permitted himself visions of an earthly paradise, he needed to prove to his blood and his spirit that he was actually and truly American. He had no doubt of his intelligence, his reason, his choice. The secret lay hidden in the depths of him, and he knew it came from the springs of the mother who had begotten him. His mother had given him birth, and by every tie he was mostly hers.

Kurt had been in college during the first year of the world war. And his name, his fair hair and complexion, his fluency in German, and his remarkable efficiency in handicrafts had opened him to many a hint, many a veiled sarcasm that had stung him like a poison brand. There was injustice in all this war spirit. It changed the minds of men and women. He had not doubted himself until those terrible scenes with his father, and, though he had reacted to them as an American, he had felt the drawing, burning blood tie. He hated everything German and he knew he was wrong in doing so. He had clear conception in his mind of the difference between the German war motives and means, and those of the other nations.

Kurt's problem was to understand himself. His great fight was with his own soul. His material difficulties and his despairing love had suddenly been transformed, so that they had lent his spirit wings. How many poor boys and girls in America must be helplessly divided between parents and country! How many faithful and blind parents, obedient to the laws of mind and heart, set for all time, must see a favorite son go out to fight against all they had held sacred!

That was all bad enough, but Kurt had more to contend with. No illusions had he of a chastened German spirit, a clarified German mind, an unbrutalized German heart. Kurt knew his father. What would change his father? Nothing but death! Death for himself or death for his only son! Kurt had an incalculable call to prove forever to himself that he was free. He had to spill his own blood to prove himself, or he had to spill that of an enemy. And he preferred that it should be his own. But that did not change a vivid and terrible picture which haunted him at times. He saw a dark, wide, and barren shingle of the world, a desert of desolation made by man, where strange, windy shrieks and thundering booms and awful cries went up in the night, and where drifting palls of smoke made starless sky, and bursts of reddish fires made hell.

Suddenly Kurt's slow pacing along the road was halted, as was the trend of his thought. He was not sure he had heard a sound. But he quivered all over. The night was far advanced now; the wind was almost still; the wheat was smooth and dark as the bosom of a resting sea. Kurt listened. He imagined he heard, far away, the faint roar of an automobile. But it might have been a train on the railroad. Sometimes on still nights he caught sounds like that.

Then a swish in the wheat, a soft thud, very low, unmistakably came to Kurt's ear. He listened, turning his ear to the wind. Presently he heard it again—a sound relating both to wheat and earth. In a hot flash he divined that some one had thrown fairly heavy bodies into the wheat-fields. Phosphorus cakes! Kurt held his breath while he peered down the gloomy road, his heart pounding, his hands gripping the rifle. And when he descried a dim form stealthily coming toward him he yelled, "Halt!"

Instantly the form wavered, moved swiftly, with quick pad of footfalls. Kurt shot once—twice—three times—and aimed as best he could to hit. The form either fell or went on out of sight in the gloom. Kurt answered the excited shouts of his men, calling them to come across to him. Then he went cautiously down the road, peering on the ground for a dark form. But he failed to find it, and presently had to admit that in the dark his aim had been poor. Bill came out to relieve Kurt, and together they went up and down the road for a mile without any glimpse of a skulking form. It was almost daylight when Kurt went home to get a few hours' sleep.



CHAPTER XII

Next day was one of the rare, blistering-hot days with a furnace wind that roared over the wheat-fields. The sky was steely and the sun like copper. It was a day which would bring the wheat to a head.

At breakfast Jerry reported that fresh auto tracks had been made on the road during the night; and that dust and wheat all around the great field showed a fresh tramping.

Kurt believed a deliberate and particular attempt had been made to insure the destruction of the Dorn wheat-field. And he ordered all hands out to search for the dangerous little cakes of phosphorus.

It was difficult to find them. The wheat was almost as high as a man's head and very thick. To force a way through it without tramping it down took care and time. Besides, the soil was soft, and the agents who had perpetrated this vile scheme had perfectly matched the color. Kurt almost stepped on one of the cakes before he saw it. His men were very slow in finding any. But Kurt's father seemed to walk fatally right to them, for in a short hundred yards he found three. They caused a profound change in this gloomy man. Not a word did he utter, but he became animated by a tremendous energy.

The search was discouraging. It was like hunting for dynamite bombs that might explode at any moment. All Kurt's dread of calamity returned fourfold. The intense heat of the day, that would ripen the wheat to bursting, would likewise sooner or later ignite the cakes of phosphorus. And when Jerry found a cake far inside the field, away from the road, showing that powerful had been the arm that had thrown it there, and how impossible it would be to make a thorough search, Kurt almost succumbed to discouragement. Still, he kept up a frenzied hunting and inspired the laborers to do likewise.

About ten o'clock an excited shout from Bill drew Kurt's attention, and he ran along the edge of the field. Bill was sweaty and black, yet through it all Kurt believed he saw the man was pale. He pointed with shaking hand toward Olsen's hill.

Kurt vibrated to a shock. He saw a long circular yellow column rising from the hill, slanting away on the strong wind.

"Dust!" he cried, aghast.

"Smoke!" replied Bill, hoarsely.

The catastrophe had fallen. Olsen's wheat was burning. Kurt experienced a profound sensation of sadness. What a pity! The burning of wheat—the destruction of bread—when part of the world was starving! Tears dimmed his eyes as he watched the swelling column of smoke.

Bill was cursing, and Kurt gathered that the farm-hand was predicting fires all around. This was inevitable. But it meant no great loss for most of the wheat-growers whose yield had failed. For Kurt and his father, if fire got a hold in their wheat, it meant ruin. Kurt's sadness was burned out by a slow and growing rage.

"Bill, go hitch up to the big mower," ordered Kurt. "We'll have to cut all around our field. Bring drinking water and whatever you can lay a hand on ... anything to fight fire!"

Bill ran thumping away over the clods. Then it happened that Kurt looked toward his father. The old man was standing with his arms aloft, his face turned toward the burning wheat, and he made a tragic figure that wrung Kurt's heart.

Jerry came running up. "Fire! Fire! Olsen's burnin'! Look! By all thet's dirty, them I.W.W.'s hev done it!... Kurt, we're in fer hell! Thet wind's blowin' straight this way."

"Jerry, we'll fight till we drop," replied Kurt. "Tell the men and father to keep on searching for phosphorus cakes.... Jerry, you keep to the high ground. Watch for fires starting on our land. If you see one yell for us and make for it. Wheat burns slow till it gets started. We can put out fires if we're quick."

"Kurt, there ain't no chance on earth fer us!" yelled Jerry, pale with anger. His big red hands worked. "If fire starts we've got to hev a lot of men.... By Gawd! if I ain't mad!"

"Don't quit, Jerry," said Kurt, fiercely. "You never can tell. It looks hopeless. But we'll never give up. Hustle now!"

Jerry shuffled off as old Dorn came haltingly, as if stunned, toward Kurt. But Kurt did not want to face his father at that moment. He needed to fight to keep up his own courage.

"Never mind that!" yelled Kurt, pointing at Olsen's hill. "Keep looking for those damned pieces of phosphorus!"

With that Kurt dove into the wheat, and, sweeping wide his arms to make a passage, he strode on, his eyes bent piercingly upon the ground close about him. He did not penetrate deeper into the wheat from the road than the distance he estimated a strong arm could send a stone. Almost at once his keen sight was rewarded. He found a cake of phosphorus half buried in the soil. It was dry, hard and hot either from the sun or its own generating power. That inspired Kurt. He hurried on. Long practice enabled him to slip through the wheat as a barefoot country boy could run through the corn-fields. And his passion gave him the eyes of a hunting hawk sweeping down over the grass. To and fro he passed within the limits he had marked, oblivious to time and heat and effort. And covering that part of the wheat-field bordering the road he collected twenty-seven cakes of phosphorus, the last few of which were so hot they burnt his hands.

Then he had to rest. He appeared as wet as if he had been plunged into water; his skin burned, his eyes pained, his breast heaved. Panting and spent, he lay along the edge of the wheat, with closed eyelids and lax muscles.

When he recovered he rose and went back along the road. The last quarter of the immense wheat-field lay upon a slope of a hill, and Kurt had to mount this before he could see the valley. From the summit he saw a sight that caused him to utter a loud exclamation. Many columns of smoke were lifting from the valley, and before him the sky was darkened. Olsen's hill was as if under a cloud. No flames showed anywhere, but in places the line of smoke appeared to be approaching.

"It's a thousand to one against us," he said, bitterly, and looked at his watch. He was amazed to see that three hours had passed since he had given orders to the men. He hurried back to the house. No one was there except the old servant, who was wringing her hands and crying that the house would burn. Throwing the cakes of phosphorus into a watering-trough, Kurt ran into the kitchen, snatched a few biscuits, and then made for the fields, eating as he went.

He hurried down a lane that bordered the big wheat-field. On this side was fallow ground for half the length of the section, and the other half was ripe barley, dry as tinder, and beyond that, in line with the burning fields, a quarter-section of blasted wheat. The men were there. Kurt saw at once that other men with horses and machines were also there. Then he recognized Olsen and two other of his neighbors. As he ran up he was equally astounded and out of breath, so that he could not speak. Old Dorn sat with gray head bowed on his hand.

"Hello!" shouted Olsen. His grimy face broke into a hard smile. "Fires all over! Wheat's burnin' like prairie grass! Them chips of phosphorus are sure from hell!... We've come over to help."

"You—did! You left—your fields!" gasped Kurt.

"Sure. They're not much to leave. And we're goin' to save this section of yours or bust tryin'!... I sent my son in his car, all over, to hurry men here with horses, machines, wagons."

Kurt was overcome. He could only wring Olsen's hand. Here was an answer to one of his brooding, gloomy queries. Something would be gained, even if the wheat was lost. Kurt had scarcely any hope left.

"What's to be done?" he panted, hoarsely. In this extremity Olsen seemed a tower of strength. This sturdy farmer was of Anderson's breed, even if he was a foreigner. And he had fought fires before.

"If we have time we'll mow a line all around your wheat," replied Olsen.

"Reckon we won't have time," interposed Jerry, pointing to a smoke far down in the corner of the stunted wheat. "There's a fire startin'."

"They'll break out all over," said Olsen, and he waved a couple of his men away. One had a scythe and the other a long pole with a wet burlap bag tied on one end. They hurried toward the little cloud of smoke.

"I found a lot of cakes over along the road," declared Kurt, with a grim surety that he had done that well.

"They've surrounded your wheat," returned Olsen. "But if enough men get here we'll save the whole section.... Lucky you've got two wells an' that watertank. We'll need all the water we can get. Keep a man pumpin'. Fetch all the bags an' brooms an' scythes. I'll post lookouts along this lane to watch for fires breakin' out in the big field. When they do we've got to run an' cut an' beat them out.... It won't be long till most of this section is surrounded by fire."

Thin clouds of smoke were then blowing across the fields and the wind that carried them was laden with an odor of burning wheat. To Kurt it seemed to be the fragrance of baking bread.

"How'd it be to begin harvestin'?" queried Jerry. "Thet wheat's ripe."

"No combines should be risked in there until we're sure the danger's past," replied Olsen. "There! I see more of our neighbors comin' down the road. We're goin' to beat the I.W.W."

That galvanized Kurt into action and he found himself dragging Jerry back to the barns. They hitched a team to a heavy wagon, in record time, and then began to load with whatever was available for fighting fire. They loaded a barrel, and with huge buckets filled it with water. Leaving Jerry to drive, Kurt rushed back to the fields. During his short absence more men, with horses and machines, had arrived; fire had broken out in the stunted wheat, and also, nearer at hand, in the barley. Kurt saw his father laboring like a giant. Olsen was taking charge, directing the men. The sky was obscured now, and all the west was thick with yellow smoke. The south slopes and valley floor were clouding. Only in the east, over the hill, did the air appear clear. Back of Kurt, down across the barley and wheat on the Dorn land, a line of fire was creeping over the hill. This was on the property adjoining Olsen's. Gremniger, the owner, had abandoned his own fields. At the moment he was driving a mower along the edge of the barley, cutting a nine-foot path. Men behind him were stacking the sheaves. The wind was as hot as if from a blast-furnace; the air was thick and oppressive; the light of day was growing dim.

Kurt, mounted on the seat of one of the combine threshers, surveyed with rapid and anxious gaze all the points around him, and it lingered over the magnificent sweep of golden wheat. The wheat bowed in waves before the wind, and the silken rustle, heard above the confusion of yelling men, was like a voice whispering to Kurt. Somehow his dread lessened then and other emotions predominated. He saw more and more farmers arrive, in cars, in wagons, with engines and threshers, until the lane was lined with them and men were hurrying everywhere.

Suddenly Kurt espied a slender column of smoke rising above the wheat out in front of him toward the highway. This was the first sign of fire in the great section that so many farmers had come to protect. Yelling for help, he leaped off the seat and ran with all his might toward the spot. Breasting that thick wheat was almost as hard as breasting waves. Jerry came yelling after him, brandishing a crude beater; and both of them reached the fire at once. It was a small circle, burning slowly. Madly Kurt rushed in to tear and stamp as if the little hissing flames were serpents. He burned his hands through his gloves and his feet through his boots. Jerry beat hard, accompanying his blows with profane speech plainly indicating that he felt he was at work on the I.W.W. In short order they put out this little fire. Returning to his post, Kurt watched until he was called to lend a hand down in the stunted wheat.

Fire had crossed and had gotten a hold on Dorn's lower field. Here the wheat was blasted and so burned all the more fiercely. Horses and mowers had to be taken away to the intervening barley-field. A weird, smoky, and ruddy darkness enveloped the scene. Dim red fire, in lines and dots and curves, appeared on three sides, growing larger and longer, meeting in some places, crisscrossed by black figures of threshing men belaboring the flames. Kurt came across his father working like a mad-man. Kurt warned him not to overexert himself, and the father never heard. Now and then his stentorian yell added to the medley of cries and shouts and blows, and the roar of the wind fanning the flames.

Kurt was put to beating fire in the cut wheat. He stood with flames licking at his boots. It was astonishing how tenacious the fire appeared, how it crept along, eating up the mowed wheat. All the men that could be spared there were unable to check it and keep it out of the standing grain. When it reached this line it lifted a blaze, flamed and roared, and burned like wildfire in grass. The men were driven back, threshing and beating, all to no avail. Kurt fell into despair. There was no hope. It seemed like an inferno.

Flaring high, the light showed the black, violently agitated forms of the fighters, and the clouds of yellow smoke, coalescing and drifting, changing to dark and soaring high.

Olsen had sent three mowers abreast down the whole length of the barley-field before the fire reached that line. It was a wise move, and if anything could do so it would save the day. The leaping flame, thin and high, and a mile long, curled down the last of the standing wheat and caught the fallen barley. But here its speed was checked. It had to lick a way along the ground.

In desperation, in unabated fury, the little army of farmers and laborers, with no thought of personal gain, with what seemed to Kurt a wonderful and noble spirit, attacked this encroaching line of fire like men whose homes and lives and ideals had been threatened with destruction. Kurt's mind worked as swiftly as his tireless hands. This indeed was being in a front line of battle. The scene was weird, dark, fitful, at times impressive and again unreal. These neighbors of his, many of them aliens, some of them Germans, when put to this vital test, were proving themselves. They had shown little liking for the Dorns, but here was love of wheat, and so, in some way, loyalty to the government that needed it. Here was the answer of the Northwest to the I.W.W. No doubt if the perpetrators of that phosphorus trick could have been laid hold of then, blood would have been shed. Kurt sensed in the fierce energy, in the dark, grimy faces, shining and wet under the light, in the hoarse yell and answering shout, a nameless force that was finding itself and centering on one common cause.

His old father toiled as ten men. That burly giant pushed ever in the lead, and his hoarse call and strenuous action told of more than a mercenary rage to save his wheat.

Fire never got across that swath of cut barley. It was beaten out as if by a thousand men. Shadow and gloom enveloped the fighters as they rested where their last strokes had fallen. Over the hills faint reflection of dying flames lit up the dark clouds of smoke. The battle seemed won.

Then came the thrilling cry: "Fire! Fire!"

One of the outposts came running out of the dark.

"Fire! the other side! Fire!" rang out Olsen's yell.

Kurt ran with the gang pell-mell through the dark, up the barley slope, to see a long red line, a high red flare, and lifting clouds of ruddy smoke. Fire in the big wheat-field! The sight inflamed him, carried him beyond his powers, and all he knew was that he became the center of a dark and whirling melee encircled by living flames that leaped only to be beaten down. Whether that threshing chaos of fire and smoke and wheat was short or long was beyond him to tell but the fire was extinguished to the last spark.

Walking back with the weary crowd, Kurt felt a clearer breeze upon his face. Smoke was not flying so thickly. Over the western hill, through a rift in the clouds, peeped a star. The only other light he saw twinkled far down the lane. It was that of a lantern. Dark forms barred it now and then. Slowly Kurt recovered his breath. The men were talking and tired voices rang with assurance that the fire was beaten.

Some one called Kurt. The voice was Jerry's. It seemed hoarse and strained. Kurt could see the lean form of his man, standing in the light of the lantern. A small dark group of men, silent and somehow impressive, stood off a little in the shadow.

"Here I am, Jerry," called Kurt, stepping forward. Just then Olsen joined Jerry.

"Boy, we've beat the I.W.W.'s, but—but—" he began, and broke off huskily.

"What's the matter?" queried Kurt, and a cold chill shot over him.

Jerry plucked at his sleeve.

"Your old man—your dad—he's overworked hisself," whispered Jerry. "It's tough.... Nobody could stop him."

Kurt felt that the fulfilment of his icy, sickening dread had come. Jerry's dark face, even in the uncertain light, was tragic.

"Boy, his heart went back on him—he's dead!" said Olsen, solemnly.

Kurt pushed the kind hands aside. A few steps brought him to where, under the light of the lantern, lay his father, pale and still, with a strange softening of the iron cast of intolerance.

"Dead!" whispered Kurt, in awe and horror. "Father! Oh, he's gone!—without a word—"

Again Jerry plucked at Kurt's sleeve.

"I was with him," said Jerry. "I heard him fall an' groan.... I had the light. I bent over, lifted his head.... An' he said, speaking English, 'Tell my son—I was wrong!'... Then he died. An' thet was all."

Kurt staggered away from the whispering, sympathetic foreman, out into the darkness, where he lifted his face in the thankfulness of a breaking heart.

It had, indeed, taken the approach of death to change his hard old father. "Oh, he meant—that if he had his life to live over again—he would be different!" whispered Kurt. That was the one great word needed to reconcile Kurt to his father.

The night had grown still except for the murmuring of the men. Smoke veiled the horizon. Kurt felt an intense and terrible loneliness. He was indeed alone in the world. A hard, tight contraction of throat choked back a sob. If only he could have had a word with his father! But no grief, nothing could detract from the splendid truth of his father's last message. In the black hours soon to come Kurt would have that to sustain him.



CHAPTER XIII

The bright sun of morning disclosed that wide, rolling region of the Bend to be a dreary, blackened waste surrounding one great wheat-field, rich and mellow and golden.

Kurt Dorn's neighbor, Olsen, in his kind and matter-of-fact way, making obligation seem slight, took charge of Kurt's affairs, and made the necessary and difficult decisions. Nothing must delay the harvesting and transporting of the wheat. The women folk arranged for the burial of old Chris Dorn.

Kurt sat and moved about in a gloomy kind of trance for a day and a half, until his father was laid to rest beside his mother, in the little graveyard on the windy hill. After that his mind slowly cleared. He kept to himself the remainder of that day, avoiding the crowd of harvesters camping in the yard and adjacent field; and at sunset he went to a lonely spot on the verge of the valley, where with sad eyes he watched the last rays of sunlight fade over the blackened hills. All these hours had seemed consecrated to his father's memory, to remembered acts of kindness and of love, of the relation that had gone and would never be again. Reproach and remorse had abided with him until that sunset hour, when the load eased off his heart.

Next morning he went out to the wheat-field.

* * * * *

What a wonderful harvesting scene greeted Kurt Dorn! Never had its like been seen in the Northwest, nor perhaps in any other place. A huge pall of dust, chaff, and smoke hung over the vast wheat-field, and the air seemed charged with a roar. The glaring gold of the wheat-field appeared to be crisscrossed everywhere with bobbing black streaks of horses—bays, blacks, whites, and reds; by big, moving painted machines, lifting arms and puffing straw; by immense wagons piled high with sheaves of wheat, lumbering down to the smoking engines and the threshers that sent long streams of dust and chaff over the lifting straw-stacks; by wagons following the combines to pick up the plump brown sacks of wheat; and by a string of empty wagons coming in from the road.

Olsen was rushing thirty combine threshers, three engine threshing-machines, forty wagon-teams, and over a hundred men well known to him. There was a guard around the field. This unprecedented harvest had attracted many spectators from the little towns. They had come in cars and on horseback and on foot. Olsen trusted no man on that field except those he knew.

The wonderful wheat-field was cut into a thousand squares and angles and lanes and curves. The big whirring combines passed one another, stopped and waited and turned out of the way, leaving everywhere little patches and cubes of standing wheat, that soon fell before the onslaught of the smaller combines. This scene had no regularity. It was one of confusion; of awkward halts, delays, hurries; of accident. The wind blew clouds of dust and chaff, alternately clearing one space to cloud another. And a strange roar added the last heroic touch to this heroic field. It was indeed the roar of battle—men and horses governing the action of machinery, and all fighting time. For in delay was peril to the wheat.

Once Kurt ran across the tireless and implacable Olsen. He seemed a man of dust and sweat and fury.

"She's half cut an' over twenty thousand bushels gone to the railroad!" he exclaimed. "An' we're speedin' up."

"Olsen, I don't get what's going on," replied Kurt. "All this is like a dream."

"Wake up. You'll be out of debt an' a rich man in three days," added Olsen, and went his way.

In the afternoon Kurt set out to work as he had never worked in his life. There was need of his strong hands in many places, but he could not choose any one labor and stick by it for long. He wanted to do all. It was as if this was not a real and wonderful harvest of his father's greatest wheat yield, but something that embodied all years, all harvests, his father's death, the lifting of the old, hard debt, the days when he had trod the fields barefoot, and this day when, strangely enough, all seemed over for him. Peace dwelt with him, yet no hope. Behind his calm he could have found the old dread, had he cared to look deeply. He loved these heroic workers of the fields. It had been given to him—a great task—to be the means of creating a test for them, his neighbors under a ban of suspicion; and now he could swear they were as true as the gold of the waving wheat. More than a harvest was this most strenuous and colorful of all times ever known in the Bend; it had a significance that uplifted him. It was American.

First Kurt began to load bags of wheat, as they fell from the whirring combines, into the wagons. For his powerful arms a full bag, containing two bushels, was like a toy for a child. With a lift and a heave he threw a bag into a wagon. They were everywhere, these brown bags, dotting the stubble field, appearing as if by magic in the wake of the machines. They rolled off the platforms. This toil, because it was hard and heavy, held Kurt for an hour, but it could not satisfy his enormous hunger to make that whole harvest his own. He passed to pitching sheaves of wheat and then to driving in the wagons. From that he progressed to a seat on one of the immense combines, where he drove twenty-four horses. No driver there was any surer than Kurt of his aim with the little stones he threw to spur a lagging horse. Kurt had felt this when, as a boy, he had begged to be allowed to try his hand; he liked the shifty cloud of fragrant chaff, now and then blinding and choking him; and he liked the steady, rhythmic tramps of hooves and the roaring whir of the great complicated machine. It fascinated him to see the wide swath of nodding wheat tremble and sway and fall, and go sliding up into the inside of that grinding maw, and come out, straw and dust and chaff, and a slender stream of gold filling the bags.

This day Kurt Dorn was gripped by the unknown. Some far-off instinct of future drove him, set his spiritual need, and made him register with his senses all that was so beautiful and good and heroic in the scene about him.

Strangely, now and then a thought of Lenore Anderson entered his mind and made sudden havoc. It tended to retard action. He trembled and thrilled with a realization that every hour brought closer the meeting he could not avoid. And he discovered that it was whenever this memory recurred that he had to leave off his present task and rush to another. Only thus could he forget her.

The late afternoon found him feeding sheaves of wheat to one of the steam-threshers. He stood high upon a platform and pitched sheaves from the wagons upon the sliding track of the ponderous, rattling threshing-machine. The engine stood off fifty yards or more, connected by an endless driving-belt to the thresher. Here indeed were whistle and roar and whir, and the shout of laborers, and the smell of smoke, sweat, dust, and wheat. Kurt had arms of steel. If they tired he never knew it. He toiled, and he watched the long spout of chaff and straw as it streamed from the thresher to lift, magically, a glistening, ever-growing stack. And he felt, as a last and cumulative change, his physical effort, and the physical adjuncts of the scene, pass into something spiritual, into his heart and his memory.

The end of that harvest-time came as a surprise to Kurt. Obsessed with his own emotions, he had actually helped to cut the wheat and harvest it; he had seen it go swath by swath, he had watched the huge wagons lumber away and the huge straw-stacks rise without realizing that the hours of this wonderful harvest were numbered.

Sight of Olsen coming in from across the field, and the sudden cessation of roar and action, made Kurt aware of the end. It seemed a calamity. But Olsen was smiling through his dust-caked face. About him were relaxation, an air of finality, and a subtle pride.

"We're through," he said. "She tallies thirty-eight thousand, seven hundred an' forty-one bushels. It's too bad the old man couldn't live to hear that."

Olsen gripped Kurt's hand and wrung it.

"Boy, I reckon you ought to take that a little cheerfuller," he went on. "But—well it's been a hard time.... The men are leavin' now. In two hours the last wagons will unload at the railroad. The wheat will all be in the warehouse. An' our worry's ended."

"I—I hope so," responded Kurt. He seemed overcome with the passionate longing to show his gratitude to Olsen. But the words would not flow. "I—I don't know how to thank you.... All my life—"

"We beat the I.W.W.," interposed the farmer, heartily. "An' now what'll you do, Dorn?"

"Why, I'll hustle to Kilo, get my money, send you a check for yourself and men, pay off the debt to Anderson, and then—"

But Kurt did not conclude his speech. His last words were thought-provoking.

"It's turned out well," said Olsen, with satisfaction, and, shaking hands again with Kurt, he strode back to his horses.

At last the wide, sloping field was bare, except for the huge straw-stacks. A bright procession lumbered down the road, led by the long strings of wagons filled with brown bags. A strange silence had settled down over the farm. The wheat was gone. That waving stretch of gold had fallen to the thresher and the grain had been hauled away. The neighbors had gone, leaving Kurt rich in bushels of wheat, and richer for the hearty farewells and the grips of horny hands. Kurt's heart was full.

* * * * *

It was evening. Kurt had finished his supper. Already he had packed a few things to take with him on the morrow. He went out to the front of the house. Stars were blinking. There was a low hum of insects from the fields. He missed the soft silken rustle of the wheat. And now it seemed he could sit there in the quiet darkness, in that spot which had been made sweet by Lenore Anderson's presence, and think of her, the meeting soon to come. The feeling abiding with him then must have been happiness, because he was not used to it. Without deserving anything, he had asked a great deal of fate, and, lo! it had been given him. All was well that ended well. He realized now the terrible depths of despair into which he had allowed himself to be plunged. He had been weak, wrong, selfish. There was something that guided events.

He needed to teach himself all this, with strong and repeated force, so that when he went to give Lenore Anderson the opportunity to express her gratitude, to see her sweet face again, and to meet the strange, warm glance of her blue eyes, so mysterious and somehow mocking, he could be a man of restraint, of pride, like any American, like any other college man she knew. This was no time for a man to leave a girl bearing a burden of his unsolicited love, haunted, perhaps, by a generous reproach that she might have been a little to blame. He had told her the truth, and so far he had been dignified. Now let him bid her good-by, leaving no sorrow for her, and, once out of her impelling presence, let come what might come. He could love her then; he could dare what he had never dared; he could surrender himself to the furious, insistent sweetness of a passion that was sheer bliss in its expression. He could imagine kisses on the red lips that were not for him.

A husky shout from somewhere in the rear of the house diverted Kurt's attention. He listened. It came again. His name! It seemed a strange call from out of the troubled past that had just ended. He hurried through the house to the kitchen. The woman stood holding a lamp, staring at Jerry.

Jerry appeared to have sunk against the wall. His face was pallid, with drops of sweat standing out, with distorted, quivering lower jaw. He could not look at Kurt. He could not speak. With shaking hand he pointed toward the back of the house.

Filled with nameless dread, Kurt rushed out. He saw nothing unusual, heard nothing. Rapidly he walked out through the yard, and suddenly he saw a glow in the sky above the barns. Then he ran, so that he could get an unobstructed view of the valley.

The instant he obtained this he halted as if turned to stone. The valley was a place of yellow light. He stared. With the wheat-fields all burned, what was the meaning of such a big light? That broad flare had a center, low down on the valley floor. As he gazed a monstrous flame leaped up, lighting colossal pillars of smoke that swirled upward, and showing plainer than in day the big warehouse and lines of freight-cars at the railroad station, eight miles distant.

"My God!" gasped Kurt. "The warehouse—my wheat—on fire!"

Clear and unmistakable was the horrible truth. Kurt heard the roar of the sinister flames. Transfixed, he stood there, at first hardly able to see and to comprehend. For miles the valley was as light as at noonday. An awful beauty attended the scene. How lurid and sinister the red heart of that fire? How weird and hellish and impressive of destruction those black, mountain-high clouds of smoke! He saw the freight-cars disappear under this fierce blazing and smoking pall. He watched for what seemed endless moments. He saw the changes of that fire, swift and terrible. And only then did Kurt Dorn awaken to the full sense of the calamity.

"All that work—Olsen's sacrifice—and the farmers'—my father's death—all for nothing!" whispered Kurt. "They only waited—those fiends—to fire the warehouse and the cars!"

The catastrophe had fallen. The wheat was burning. He was ruined. His wheatland must go to Anderson. Kurt thought first and most poignantly of the noble farmers who had sacrificed the little in their wheat-fields to save the much in his. Never could he repay them.

Then he became occupied with a horrible heat that seemed to have come from the burning warehouse to all his pulses and veins and to his heart and his soul.

This fiendish work, as had been forecast, was the work of the I.W.W. Behind it was Glidden and perhaps behind him was the grasping, black lust of German might. Kurt's loss was no longer abstract or problematical. It was a loss so real and terrible that it confounded him. He shook and gasped and reeled. He wrung his hands and beat his breast while the tumult swayed him, the physical hate at last yielding up its significance. What then, was his great loss? He could not tell. The thing was mighty, like the sense of terror and loneliness in the black night. Not the loss for his farmer neighbors, so true in his hour of trial! Not the loss of his father, nor the wheat, nor the land, nor his ruined future! But it must be a loss, incalculable and insupportable, to his soul. His great ordeal had been the need, a terrible and incomprehensible need, to kill something intangible in himself. He had meant to do it. And now the need was shifted, subject to a baser instinct. If there was German blood in him, poisoning the very wells of his heart he could have spilled it, and so, whether living or dead, have repudiated the taint. That was now clear in his consciousness. But a baser spark had ignited all the primitive passion of the forebears he felt burning and driving within him. He felt no noble fire. He longed to live, to have a hundredfold his strength and fury, to be gifted with a genius for time and place and bloody deed, to have the war-gods set him a thousand opportunities, to beat with iron mace and cut with sharp bayonet and rend with hard hand—to kill and kill and kill the hideous thing that was German.



CHAPTER XIV

Kurt rushed back to the house. Encountering Jerry, he ordered him to run and saddle a couple of horses. Then Kurt got his revolver and a box of shells, and, throwing on his coat, he hurried to the barn. Jerry was leading out the horses. It took but short work to saddle them. Jerry was excited and talkative. He asked Kurt many questions, which excited few replies.

When Kurt threw himself into the saddle Jerry yelled, "Which way?"

"Down the trail!" replied Kurt, and was off.

"Aw, we'll break our necks!" came Jerry's yell after him.

Kurt had no fear of the dark. He knew that trail almost as well by night as by day. His horse was a mettlesome colt that had not been worked during the harvest, and he plunged down the dim, winding trail as if, indeed, to verify Jerry's fears. Presently the thin, pale line that was the trail disappeared on the burned wheat-ground. Here Kurt was at fault as to direction, but he did not slacken the pace for that. He heard Jerry pounding along in the rear, trying to catch up. The way the colt jumped ditches and washes and other obstructions proved his keen sight. Kurt let him go. And then the ride became both perilous and thrilling.

Kurt could not see anything on the blackened earth. But he knew from the contour of the hills just about where to expect to reach the fence and the road. And he did not pull the horse too soon. When he found the gate he waited for Jerry, who could be heard calling from the darkness. Kurt answered him.

"Here's the gate!" yelled Kurt, as Jerry came galloping up. "Good road all the way now!"

"Lickity-cut then!" shouted Jerry to whom the pace had evidently communicated enthusiasm.

The ride then became a race, with Kurt drawing ahead. Kurt could see the road, a broad, pale belt, dividing the blackness on either side; and he urged the colt to a run. The wind cut short Kurt's breath, beat at his ears, and roared about them. Closer and closer drew the red flare of the dying fire, casting long rays of light into Kurt's eyes.

The colt was almost run out when he entered the circle of reddish flare. Kurt saw the glowing ruins of the elevators and a long, fiery line of box-cars burned to the wheels. Men were running and shouting round in front of the little railroad station, and several were on the roof with brooms and buckets. The freight-house had burned, and evidently the station itself had been on fire. Across the wide street of the little village the roof of a cottage was burning. Men were on top of it, beating the shingles. Hoarse yells greeted Kurt as he leaped out of the saddle. He heard screams of frightened women. On the other side of the burned box-cars a long, thin column of sparks rose straight upward. Over the ruins of the elevators hung a pall of heavy smoke. Just then Jerry came galloping up, his lean face red in the glow.

"Thet you, Kurt! Say, the sons of guns are burnin' down the town." He leaped off. "Lemme have your bridle. I'll tie the hosses up. Find out what we can do."

Kurt ran here and there, possessed by impotent rage. The wheat was gone! That fact gave him a hollow, sickening pang. He met farmers he knew. They all threw up their hands at sight of him. Not one could find a voice. Finally he met Olsen. The little wheat farmer was white with passion. He carried a gun.

"Hello, Dorn! Ain't this hell? They got your wheat!" he said hoarsely.

"Olsen! How'd it happen? Wasn't anybody set to guard the elevators?"

"Yes. But the I.W.W.'s drove all the guards off but Grimm, an' they beat him up bad. Nobody had nerve enough to shoot."

"Olsen, if I run into the Glidden I'll kill him," declared Kurt.

"So will I.... But, Dorn, they're a hard crowd. They're over there on the side, watchin' the fire. A gang of them! Soon as I can get the men together we'll drive them out of town. There'll be a fight, if I don't miss my guess."

"Hurry the men! Have all of them get their guns! Come on!"

"Not yet, Dorn. We're fightin' fire yet. You an' Jerry help all you can."

Indeed, it appeared there was danger of more than one cottage burning. The exceedingly dry weather of the past weeks had made shingles like tinder, and wherever a glowing spark fell on them there straightway was a smoldering fire. Water, a scarce necessity in that region, had been used until all wells and pumps became dry. It was fortunate that most of the roofs of the little village had been constructed of galvanized iron. Beating out blazes and glowing embers with brooms was not effective enough. When it appeared that the one cottage nearest the rain of sparks was sure to go, Kurt thought of the railroad watertank below the station. He led a number of men with buckets to the tank, and they soon drowned out the smoldering places.

Meanwhile the blazes from the box-cars died out, leaving only the dull glow from the red heap that had once been the elevators. However, this gave forth light enough for any one to be seen a few rods distant. Sparks had ceased to fall, and from that source no further danger need be apprehended. Olsen had been going from man to man, sending those who were not armed home for guns. So it came about that half an hour after Kurt's arrival a score of farmers, villagers, and a few railroaders were collected in a group, listening to the pale-faced Olsen.