The Rainy Day Railroad War | Page 2

agility, for he kept well ahead of the rout, leaped a low fence at the bottom of the hill, scurried across a little valley and came floundering up the soft soil of the railroad embankment, scrambling toward the little group of engineer.
"It's Dominick," said Searles. "There seems to be a little more work cut out for you in your side line of philanthropist."
"I do it whatta you say," screamed the man as his head came over the edge of the embankment. "Nice! Good! All good to eat. But they want mucha more--too mucha!"
He struck himself repeated blows on the breast with one fist and pointed with the other hand at the men who came swarming up the side of the graded road bed.
"You coma look--look to the nice br-read, meat all good, beer--plenty much to eat, dr-rink!" the padrone gasped in appeal, as he circled about Parker to put him between the rioters and himself.
The men who came after, screaming and cursing, jerking their arms above their heads, rolling back their lips from their yellow teeth, were apparently so many lunatics whose frenzy was not to be stayed. But undisciplined natures whose excesses spring from lack of self control are all the more ready to respond to the masterful control of others.
First of all the men recognized in Parker the champion who had won their first rights from the padrone.
They stopped their shrill vituperation and, crowding about him, began to bleat their explanations and appeals. But he threw out his arms, pushed them back a safe distance from the panting Dominick and roared them into silence, brandishing his fists, as he would have quelled a noisy school.
When they understood that he wished them to be quiet they were silent, all leaning forward, their eyes shining, their lips apart, their fists clinched as tho they were holding their tongues in leash by that means, their dark, brown faces alight with wistful, almost palpitating eagerness. The regard they fixed on his face was baleful in its intentness.
"Looka what they do," yelled Dominick rushing to his side. He had stripped his sleeve back from his arm. Blood was trickling from a knife gash.
Then the tumult broke out again from the crowd. Two men leaped forward shaking their hats in their hands and screaming assertions and pointing quivering fingers at bullet holes in the crowns.
"Shut up!" barked the young man. The presence of the satiric and unsympathetic old engineer nerved him to settle the dispute, if he might. The hint from the other that he had been meddling in what was outside his business gave him an uncomfortable sense of responsibility.
"About face and back to the camp," he shouted. "I will look at your dinner and we shall see!"
They hesitated a moment, but he went among them, pushing them down the bank.
He followed with the padrone behind the jabbering throng, and the two engineers came along at his earnest request.
"Mr. Searles," said Parker after a little while, as they walked side by side, "being an older and wiser man than I am you are probably right in suggesting that I did wrong in interfering in this affair at the outset. But," he half-chuckled, "I am going to lay the blame on my professor in sociology. He set me to thinking pretty hard in college and I guess I haven't been out from under his influence long enough to get hardened into the selfish views of my fellowman."
There was earnestness under his smile.
"My boy," said the elder, "I am not blaming you for what you have done for the poor devils. But I have been all for business in my life. Business hasn't seemed to mix well with philanthropy. I haven't dared to think of what I ought to do. I have thought only of what I had to do, to earn a living for my family."
"Well," said Parker, "if the P. K. & R. folks decide that I've been meddling in matters that are none of my business I have no family to suffer for my indiscretion--but I have prospects and I know that a discharged man is worse off than a man who has started."
The elder man patted Parker's arm.
"As it stands now--and I'm speaking as a friend, young man, and not as a captious critic--you have set this Italian camp all askew by giving them countenance in the first place. They haven't any regulators in their heads, you see! When you're feeding charity to that kind of ruck you've got to be careful Parker, that they don't trample you down when they rush for the trough."
The young man walked along up the hillside in silence. But just as they arrived in front of the long camp the scowl of puzzled hesitation disappeared from his forehead.
"As old Uncle Flanders used to say," he