It was Dan O’Leary who pushed through the crowd finally and strode up the steps. The girls turned to watch him cross the hall and stop before the table where John Herrick sat unmoving.
“Well, boss,” the Irishman said simply, “how about it?”
John Herrick’s thin face relaxed into a smile.
“Why don’t your friends come in?” he asked.
“They’re a bit shy,” Dan admitted. “I hear them talking it over how you can shoot straighter than any other man in Broken Bow County.”
John Herrick’s smile grew broader and he got to his feet.
“Then I suppose I must go out to them,” he said, “if they won’t come in.”
He limped slowly across the hall and out upon the steps, while a great roar went up from the men as he appeared.
“The money of which there has been so much talk is in there on my table. Is there any man who cares to come in to count it?”
There was no answer, nor did any one come forward. Thorvik, hurrying from one to another, whispering, pointing, urging, seemed to have no influence at all. Dabney Mills, shrill and abusive, shouted something from the back of the crowd, but no one moved. Dan O’Leary burst into a great roar of laughter and slapped his knee.
“You should have heard them tell, on the way up the mountain, what they were going to do,” he declared to Beatrice at whose side he was standing. “Thorvik and Mills, why, they were breathing fire, and now look at them.” He stepped forward and stood by John Herrick. “Boys,” he said, “I’m through. I came up here with you to ask the boss a question, to find out if he had got away with any of the Irrigation Company’s funds. Well, I don’t care any more to ask it. I know he’s all right.”
Beatrice turned at a sound behind her and saw Olaf, followed by old Julia and Tim, come pushing through the door in the hall within. The man and the woman were both deaf and the boy slept in one of the outbuildings, so that they had only just now been awakened by the noise. Olaf’s eye was fixed unwaveringly upon Thorvik, and that worthy, suddenly becoming aware of the fact began to sidle away into the background and disappeared behind the bulk of a gigantic Slovak. Beatrice laid a restraining hand on Olaf’s arm, for John Herrick was speaking again.
“You shall have an explanation,” he began, “though I have been waiting for you to understand of yourselves. While you were talking up your strike, or rather while your leader was talking and you were listening, the Irrigation Company was coming to the end of its funds. Why? Because, after your valuable Thorvik came to this camp, construction dragged, no man did a full day’s work any more, time and material and money were being wasted until the whole enterprise was at the edge of disaster. Was it easy to raise more capital, do you think, when the whole place was seething with discontent and everybody knew that a strike was coming? No, the men who had put money into the project, far from being willing to subscribe more, were wishing they could withdraw. It came about that we moved first, and shut down the work the very night that you were ready to declare a strike. It was a good thing for both sides. We all needed a little time to think things over.”