A Search for America / by Frederick Philip Grove, e-Ed.2000 -- BOOK IV, CHAPTER II.
BOOK FOUR. -- THE LEVEL

CHAPTER II.

I START WORK IN THE HARVEST.

T LAST there were unmistakable signs that we were approaching some great centre of hobodom, some world-capital of floating labour. For though the itinerant "bums" were ever increasing on the trains, the camping sites by the line were decreasing in number and finally disappeared.
One evening, when we rode on an empty flat car into a small town of the northern part of South Dakota, I caught sight of a camp that was of truly gigantic proportions; we began passing alongside of it at least five minutes before we reached the town, and it extended right up to the town limits. On the west-side it touched the track; on the east-side it stretched away as far as the eye would reach. Everywhere fires were burning; everywhere men were engaged in the task of cooking their suppers.
When we dropped off our car and walked back through the camp, Ivan apparently looked for some one whom he knew.
I was struck by the variety of devices adopted to provide shelter. There were tents; there were open flies; there were poles driven into the ground with wattled walls stretched between them; there were regular cabins built of a few pieces of lumber and covered with building paper; there were ropes fastened to the limb of a tree, running down to a peg in the ground, with coats of the most diverse descriptions hung over them, stretched sideways by cords, so that in the evening breeze they gave the odd impression of great flapping birds, as the sleeves or skirts were raised by the wind.
Right through the centre of the camp ran a pretty little creek with clear, slow-flowing water. And everywhere there was activity and evidence of the most varied

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household-industry. Here you came upon a group engaged in washing their clothes: huge iron kettles -- God only knew where they came from -- hanging over fires to boil them in; there a group was demonstrating some new culinary feat; here a man was sitting on the ground and plying the needle on the buttons or patches for coat or trousers; there one was squatting on a low box, his chin well lathered, while another stropped a razor preparatory to shaving him. Games were going on in various places, card games and quoits being those most in favour.

The assembly was truly polyglot; I heard most of the languages of eastern, central, and western Europe, though English seemed to predominate. But in spite of the fact that in the flood pouring north I had found a goodly number of groups of Swedes, the fact struck me that I found none of them here. Again the entire absence of Latin languages was a conspicuous feature.
Ivan and I joined one group composed of one Russian, one German, and two Americans. Greetings between him and these four were cordial; there was much shaking of hands, slapping of shoulders, laughter and shouting. To my astonishment Ivan showed that he spoke German as fluently as Russian or English. I was introduced; soon we were squatting on the ground, by the fire, and partaking of a good and substantial supper. I do not remember the talk that was going on, but it was lively enough.
After supper we smoked; for the first time it struck me that, although Ivan was a most persistent smoker, he never had any tobacco himself. The conversation turned upon crops and the chances for work. It appeared that the four whom we had joined had been at work for over a month. They had slowly come up through the wheat districts of Kansas and Nebraska. But in the southern part of South Dakota crops had been poor; the chances for work had been slight. I gathered that cutting was in full swing all over the state as indeed I had inferred from what I had seen. But the farmers were holding back in

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engaging help; they preferred to work on a cooperative plan.

North Dakota with its big "bonanza-farms" was the general goal. They had had the needful rainfall there, and wheat stood well. It seemed that the result of the camp-discussions had been something like a general consensus, amounting to, though not actually taking the form of, a resolution not to start work at stooking for less than two and a half dollars a day.
Ivan did not say much but seemed to ponder what he had heard.
I was, more than surprised by the independence these people displayed. They were not suffering from their mode of life. Nor were they, even now, in any hurry about securing work. They were going to hold out for high wages.
Our group had a wall tent, with all the paraphernalia of a complete outfit for a prolonged stay in the open. Ivan and I were offered a corner in this tent, but Ivan declined; and when the others betrayed the wish to retire, he nudged me with his elbow and rose.
I followed him.
"Where do all these people go?" I enquired, actually awed by the numbers I beheld and those I inferred from the innumerable fires that punctured the night.
Ivan laughed. "Not many here yet," he said; "still early in the season. They're just haying in North Dakota; haven't started cutting yet. These fellows won't work at haying, they wait for cutting and threshing -- there's not much work in South Dakota."
He picked a place for the night; and while we were unrolling our bundles, he told me that he had left his friends because he wanted to talk things over.
"I go north-west," he said, "if you come. Rather stay in one place, on a big farm, for haying, cutting, and threshing. More money in it in the long-run. No lay-offs hunting for a new place. Grub is better, too When the rush comes, better wages. I've tried it often enough. What do you say?"

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"Anything," I replied. "You know best. How much do you think we can get just now?"
"A dollar and a half a day," Ivan answered; "a quarter a day more from week to week. Four dollars in threshing time. We'll try to beat it up to Walloh, then buy a ticket and strike west. Big farm there. Work for three months or longer. We'll average two and a half a day."
"Good," I said.
We remained in camp the next day. More than anything else the general prosperity struck me. There was no want of anything; the merchants of the little town were waxing rich by the purchases of this vast crowd.
I saw others this day, besides the group of four which we rejoined occasionally. Above all there was one man who looked more like a Bohemian of the Quartier Latin in Paris than like a labourer -- both in features and clothes. I heard him speak to several people; invariably his accent was that of authority; his vocabulary, that of an educated man. On his hand I saw a solitaire ring worth the year's income of a well-paid clerk.
"He doesn't work," Ivan explained; "He's rich. Son of a millionaire. He likes this life and travels about with the crowd. He spends his winters in California."
"What were you doing in Florida?" I asked irrelevantly.
Ivan shrugged his shoulders. "Picking fruit," he said, "for some time anyway. Resting, mostly."
There were still a good many things about Ivan which seemed mysterious to me; he was not given to talking beyond that which it was necessary to discuss.
On the evening of this second day we pulled out in an empty box-car, having for once voluntarily paid our contribution to an accommodating train-crew so they would leave the doors open for our convenience. I had told Ivan about my being railroaded in spring; and though he laughed and thought it a good thing that I had never reached my destination, it made him chary of open box-cars. But this night we had straw aplenty in our car and

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made up a comfortable bed; and while we were sleeping. we travelled at much greater ease and with about the same speed as the average passenger in the day-coach of a way-train. The first greying of the dawn found us at a tiny hamlet in the upper Red River valley where our car had been kicked off, forty-five miles from Walloh, our first objective.

It being a beautiful day and we well rested, we tramped it for a while. Here the waving grain on the Fields was still green, and Ivan seemed satisfied. By and by we boarded another freight-train which in the afternoon took us to Walloh.
On the outskirts of the town we had seen the usual hobo-camp, and as soon as we could drop off our car, we did so and footed it back. Ivan bade me wait for him and went down. He exchanged a few words, in Russian, with one of the men who was lying on his back, enjoying his idleness. Then he rejoined me.
"They're haying out west," he said, "on the big farm. It's only fifteen or sixteen miles. We might tramp it?"
"Suits me," I replied.
We set out at once, swinging along at a good gait in the freshening afternoon, walking now the track, now the road which skirted it and offered a smooth though dusty gumbo level.
We did not speak; I believe, for that very reason this vigourous evening march stands out in my memories. A soft and yet cool breeze was blowing; the prairie with its illimitable horizon stretched endlessly ahead; the grain on the Fields was waving; the farmhouses stood so still and foot-bound that I readily entered into that hobo-spirit of joy at being "on the go"; my chest expanded; the exertion of marching was grateful.
Odd combinations of words, idle plays of my brain, kept floating through my mind and sometimes wove themselves into disconnected lines of verse. Some of them recur to me even now, at this belated hour, as I try to revisualize myself, walking along those roads into the setting

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sun. Others merely peep up through the darkening oblivion which has settled like a cloak over the details of my life.

I also remember that to myself I seemed at the time very old, very experienced, very clear-sighted with regard to the ways of the world. I thought I saw through the futility of much, and that I perceived the high worth of much which was not highly valued by others. The phrase of a German Philosopher about the "recasting -- revaluation -- of values" was much in my mind. I seemed to be looking back upon millennia of thought and accumulated wisdom. I vaguely felt as if it were given to me to solve the problems of a world. It is characteristic of my essential youth at the time that I still believed a solution of the problems of the world to be possible of attainment through such a process as a recasting of values -- in other words, through theories and the erection of ideals. It is also characteristic of the eternal egotism of youth that I should have felt myself to be chosen as the one to effect this revaluation of the values of life. Ideals are the playthings of immature minds.
Another peculiar conception arose; that of an assembly of the days, all telling, of the errors into which they have fallen and of the truths they have found; and after many speeches and beautiful thoughts have been uttered, the Dean of the Days arises, the oldest Day, and solves the riddle in perfect simplicity.
When we rolled up for the night, in the shelter of a cluster of wild plum trees, by the side of the road, the elation persisted. I felt as if I were standing on the very heights of Life and looking down on the world below. I felt -- as well I might -- that I had solved at least one great problem for myself: He who asketh little enjoyeth much. With that thought patience came and hurry departed. I was no longer the "modern man" who has not Life.
Early the following morning Ivan and I set out again; as was usual with us, we swung along without words.

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Never in my life have I met with a companion who could so well keep silent. And he was a hobo!

We came to a place where a road ran up from the south and crossed the track. Just north of the line of steel stood a group of gigantic barns, by the side of which two or three small white houses looked singularly dwarfed. The road from the south was lined with poplars, tall, stately trees -- cotton-woods they must have been, from the picture in my memory. It seemed to spring out of a large compound of buildings half hidden in the cluster of its trees.
A low, open buggy, drawn by a team of swift-footed, rangy-looking horses, came rolling along the smooth, shady driveway.
"That's Nelson, the superintendent," said Ivan and stopped at the crossing.
"We are there, then?" I asked.
He nodded and we waited for the buggy.
As it approached, I saw its occupant, a rather small, good-natured and efficient-looking man who sat in the seat, relaxed and nonchalant, negligently and yet firmly holding the horses in with one hand.
At sight of Ivan he stopped and smiled. "Back again? I did not see you last year."
"No," said Ivan. "I went farther west. I have a partner this year. Have you any work yet?"
"Yes," said Nelson, "I can use you two. I can use more, in fact. I'm going to town to see whether I can get any men at our price. We're paying one fifty so far. They're holding out for the higher wages, as usual. But the smaller farmers don't hire help yet. They will have to wait."
"Haying?" asked Ivan.
"Yes."
"Which camps are open?"
"Three and eight," was Nelson's answer. "And headquarters, of course. But there we don't need any more help just now."

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"We'll go to eight," said Ivan.
"All right," Mr. Nelson assented. "Want to wait for a ride?"
Ivan looked at me. "We'll walk."
"Leave your names at the office. Tell them I sent you."
With that he clicked his tongue to the horses.
We turned south, into the nave of the poplar trees.
"Camp eight!" I thought, and I asked, "How large is this farm?"
"Don't know," Ivan replied; "twenty, thirty thousand acres."
I felt dazed. "Owned by some company?"
"No," said Ivan. "Man's name is Mackenzie."
I pondered that. A farm, many square miles in extent owned by a single man! Nothing was further from my thoughts than envy; had somebody offered me the place as a present, I should not have accepted it. But it struck me as incongruous. I was awed and felt as if I had run up against some barrier in a valley along which I had been travelling -- a barrier of forbidding aspect, insurmountable. This feeling did not leave me either when later on I learned the explanation of the fact. The present owner's father had invested the savings of a lifetime in this land which he had bought at ten cents an acre -- before there was a railroad, when nobody yet thought of making it the granary of a world. Now it was worth fifty dollars an acre -- hardly allowing for buildings and other improvements at figures which represented real values. Was that what was called "enterprise"?
The road to the great compound of buildings was not much more than a mile long. We passed a handsome white frame-house, surrounded by trees, to our left.
"Superintendent's house," Ivan commented.
Then we emerged into a yard of truly gigantic dimensions. Huge barns stretched out to the west, with horse-lots enclosed by high board-fences. Other buildings stood in front of them, one a blacksmith's shop as I inferred from the clanging noise that proceeded from it.

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To the east a number of scattered buildings made a straggling group; these, with the exception of one huge red structure, were all painted white. One of them, occupying the centre of this east half of the yard, reminded me of the "cook-house" on that Ohio "company-farm" of nine months ago.
In this part of the compound a cement sidewalk ran along the northern edge of the yard; and as we proceeded across the open expanse, another view opened up on a cluster of buildings in the northeast corner. There was an unmistakably residential air about them. They were surrounded by a small park; well-kept lawns encircled them; and at the entrance of the central house in this group a carriage was waiting, with a team of magnificent, coal-black hackneys hitched to it. Just as we were nearing the building which Ivan was bound for, a young man of athletic build, clad in white flannels, walked briskly along the sidewalk, westward. Ivan saw my look, as I glanced back at him and the house.
"That's the boss," he said. "And that's the White House. He lives there with his mother."
This pleasant-faced boy was the owner of all these square-miles! And he lived with his mother! That seemed to imply that he was unmarried. The fact that his mother kept house for him made the whole thing somehow seem still more preposterous; it made the young man seem still younger; it made it a certainty that this farm was not earned. I felt as if some uncomfortable facts, some disquieting realities were obtruded upon me, at variance with my last night's mood.
Ivan and I registered, much as we should have done at an inn. A tall young Jew of dandified appearance looked indifferently and yet disdainfully down on these two more bums who henceforth would figure upon his books and time-sheets. I paid scant attention to him; in a few minutes we were on the road again, going south.
Far to the east we had a glimpse of another huge compound of buildings; and as soon as we swung out between

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the Fields, we caught sight, way ahead of us, to the south, of the camp for which we were bound.

"All this still the farm?" I asked at last, looking out over endless Fields of barley, oats, and wheat.
Ivan laughed. "Yes," he said and waved his arms through space; "as far as you can see; and also north of the track. There is another camp, way north, twenty or twenty-five miles from headquarters."
We came to a place where east of our road a summer-fallow, half a mile wide, seemed to stretch away to the southern horizon. Three steam-tractors travelled along the far edge, each drawing three disk-harrows spaced behind and beside each other. They travelled along at about our speed and kept abreast during the whole walk of four or five miles which we made to reach our camp.
"Big farm," said Ivan and smiled his enigmatical smile.
I nodded in silence; I could not shake off that feeling that something was fundamentally wrong with this world, even though I did not desire one single thing from among its wealth.
The camp which we reached at last made a less well cared-for impression than the one which we had passed through before. The buildings had, in their arrangement, something casual, as if they had been erected without a previous plan, or as if they had been dropped out of some giant's toy-box.
Close to the road, in the centre, stood the cook-house. To the east a towering, barn-like structure, painted red, had something sinister about it. It was the bunk-house, as I found. To the west, at an acute angle to the road, stretched the horsebarns with their accompaniment of high board-fences enclosing the paddocks.
It was there we went. By Ivan's watch it was nearly noon. We would wait for the foreman, he said; we squatted down against the wall of a barn. The only signs of activity were at the cookhouse. Otherwise the compound looked deserted.

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After a while a two-wheeled cart, drawn by a neglected looking bay nag came rattling in from the south.
A dirty, stunted little runt of a fellow got out of it in front of the barn and unhitched the horse while he greeted Ivan. We had risen and were walking towards him.
"Hello, ol'-timer," he sang out in a shrill, mocking, cynical voice. "Got a pardner this time, have you?"
"Yes," said Ivan; and for the first time his smile was embarrassed. I had the impression as if he felt the need of apologizing to me for the fact that this was the foreman of the camp at which we were going to work.
"Going out this afternoon?"
"Don't mind if we do," Ivan answered.
"Who's going to be the teamster?"
"We work together."
"All right, pal," the foreman acquiesced. "Suit yourself. Two miles south, one west, along the track; that's where I want you to work. Come on; I'll show you your team."
And he walked off, leading his horse into the barn.
We followed, taking our bundles along.
The foreman, in passing, pointed to a stall where two big Clydes were standing. "There," he said and walked on.
Ivan reached for my bundle, stepped in between the horses, and climbed up on the manger. He hid our belongings overhead, in a corner of the beams.
"We'll sleep in the hayloft," he whispered; "that's against the rules; but the bunk-house is alive with vermin.
I had learned to trust Ivan's leadership and nodded.
He started at once to harness the horses. I watched him and did as he did, thus taking my first lesson in harnessing up a draft-horse.
The men were beginning to come in with their teams, and a bell rang at the cook-house. I noticed with satisfaction that on the whole they seemed a decent lot. They were Swedes, for the most part, speaking a broken English.

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Most of them greeted Ivan as an old acquaintance, some calling him "Old-timer," some by a name which made me look up at him. Again I saw that embarrassed smile on his face.

He laughed and said, "No use getting mad; they've always called me that. Why, I don't know."
The name was Jesus.
We went to the cook-house for dinner. The food was good, consisting of soup meat, vegetables, and pudding. Plenty of pies were scattered over the tables which were covered with white oil-cloth; there were large stacks of fresh bread, both white and brown, dishes of butter, pitchers with milk, and pots full of coffee and tea. As once before in similar surroundings I marvelled again at the capacity for eating which these workers of the soil displayed.
Nobody seemed to take notice of myself, though a few more greeted Ivan in a half friendly, half ironical way. There was a rough-and-ready, but healthy toleration about it all.
I found that the majority of these Swedes were not hobos, but young homesteaders from the north, from Canada or the northern edge of Dakota where crops were later -- men who were only just establishing themselves, who needed the ready cash to pay for farms or stock or equipment and who went out to this one place only, where they were working for monthly wages till threshing was over. They lost the advantage of higher pay when the price of labour rose; but they gained inasmuch as they were sure of their pay, rain or shine. When the harvest was finished, they left to attend to their own small holdings; and they returned again when winter had set in and when only the vast numbers of horses and other farm-animals had to be fed and looked after. The crew numbered no more than fifty men at present. Ivan and I were the advance-guard, here, of that vast army which had to march in to take care of the crest of the wave of work.
That afternoon I had reason to congratulate myself on

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the partnership I had formed with Ivan. This quiet and unassuming man with his intelligent delicate face was endowed with a body able to stand up under any strain. I did his driving and stood on the load which we gathered; Ivan pitched the hay. When he picked up with his fork what he intended to lift, I could only marvel at his strength and skill. Slowly, without hurry, but also without waste of time, he would force the fork with its tremendous load up, with a steady exertion, till he held the handle high overhead; and he would throw the load off with the slightest of jerks so that it fell just where he wanted it. His body seemed to shorten and to broaden when he did that; and never did I see a wrong move or a lost motion, never hurry, never delay. Meanwhile he would call out directions to me, instructing me in the art of building the load, and cautioning me against the mistakes which I made. He was patient, as if he had known that the work was new to me.

Whenever we pulled up to the stack, our load was wider and higher than any other; and it was certainly none of my doing.
In the evening, when we returned to the camp, Ivan looked a different man. He was streaming with sweat; on his bare arms powerful muscles played. He did not remind me of Sergei Ivanovitch in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina now, but of Levin himself -- the man who stands squarely upon the soil and who, from the soil, from his soil, reaches out with tentative mind into the great mysteries. This man was to me, on this evening, while we were rattling along the road, the personification of all that is fine and noble in bodily labour; of the joy of muscle and sinew that want to play in mere exertion. I envied him his strength.
From him was reflected into myself, into my own weary limbs and aching joints, an exhilaration, a quiet satisfaction with weariness honestly come by, with pain resulting from having used and called into action hidden reserves of bodily powers of whose very existence I had been in ignorance.

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Ivan glowed and smiled; to me it seemed that in his smile there were the infinite sympathy and tenderness which are the attributes of the strong in contact with those who are weak but whom they love.
From this afternoon dated a deeper friendship between us, a friendship still less in need of words than it had been before. I saw a deeper, truer, less obvious significance in the name by which most of the Swedish farmhands called him and which was meant as a mockery suggested by his physical resemblance to the type.
Never, during the month that followed, did Ivan and I discuss the slightest thing of any importance beyond the work in hand. Not once did we touch on anything wider, on our intellectual or emotional lives; and that was very much as it should be. Little was said, much done.
It did not take Ivan long to find out that I was hardly equal to the strain of the work; and since we were working in partnership, he invariably and unhesitatingly and without a word assumed the harder part. So long as the haying proceeded, he harnessed the horses in the morning; he unharnessed them at night; I drove the team; he pitched the hay. And I did nothing for him except that I supplied him with tobacco which he apparently craved but never bought.
Gradually, as the cutting began in the Fields of barley, the bunk-house filled, for wages rose. At first only a few stragglers came in; but when the daily pay had reached the two-and-a-half-dollar mark, hobos appeared by the dozen; soon our camp had its full complement of a hundred men. Even then more were hired every day and sent down; if there was no work for them with the field-crews, they were kept busy, drawing pay for every day which was fit for the work in the field, while they were splitting wood, drawing water, and doing similar chores; to be sent out behind the binders when others left unexpectedly.
For there was a constant coming and going; you could never be sure that you would see a face that had turned up to-day again on the morrow. I did not, as yet, take

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much interest in these men; the reasons which sent them back on the road, away to the next place, seemed utterly trivial. "This eternal beef!" one would say. "This eternal pork!" or, "These eternal stewed prunes!" said the next ones; they asked for their "time", and went. It was mostly the food which served as pretext. By and by I saw more of them, and I shall give a glimpse at their lives as I proceed.

So long as Ivan and I were employed in haying, we saw very little of the foreman. True, he drove by in his cart when we were loading the rack; he stopped at the stack when we pitched the load off; but he never spoke to us. When cutting began, however, he always seemed to be on our heels.
I found that stooking sheaves was much harder work than haying. The twelve or fifteen binders which did the cutting for our crew were given, as a matter of course, to the Swedes who were in the steady employ of the farm. When I saw that, I was strongly inclined to leave, simply as a matter of fairness to the management. I felt that I was no longer doing a day's work for a day's wages. But, again without words, Ivan opposed such a plan. He worked harder and harder, fairly revelling in exertion; more and more frequently he would say, "Take it easy! Take it easy!" I hated, in leaving the work, to leave him.
Once, of a hot afternoon, we two being alone on one side of the field, I was suddenly taken sick.
Ivan looked at my face, pointed to a place on the ground, in the shade of a stook, and said, "Lie down."
There was no choice; I obeyed. While I lay there, I watched him with ever-increasing wonder, for he worked as if he were engaged in a contest of speed and endurance, fairly leaping from place to place and throwing the heavy sheaves which he picked up, never less than two, and sometimes three at a time, with infallible precision, lifting them shoulder-high and flinging them down so that they stood as if planted. He went on for an hour or longer. Then he called me; and when I reached him, he pointed

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across the field, where the barley was still standing on a shoulder of the ground. A black spot was moving along, just above the waving grain.

"Foreman coming," Ivan said. "Work till he's gone."
"Oh," I said, "I don't care. I shall have to report sick anyway."
"No," he exclaimed. "I've done enough, and more, for any two of them. You take your wages."
"All right," I said and made a pretence at working till the foreman had passed us.
"Lie down," said Ivan as soon as the man was out of sight; and again he started to work as he had done before.
Next morning I felt still weak, though somewhat better. Nelson, the superintendent, was down at our camp when we were ready to go to the field. But the foreman was not around. Since we all knew what had to be done, he had not been missed till Mr. Nelson enquired after him. There was a commotion, then; and several men went in search around the buildings. They found him at last in an empty stall of one of the stables, in a state of brutish intoxication. Our start was delayed. Mr. Nelson summarily dismissed the man and called one of the big Swedes aside. But after a short discussion the Swede rejoined the waiting men. He had declined to act as foreman. Mr. Nelson gave the necessary orders, and teams and crews went out to the field.
Not much later a new man made his appearance in the foreman's cart. As luck would have it, he came at once to where Ivan and I were working, I no doubt not doing a full man's share of the work. He stopped his horse and started his task of looking on. He was watching me. Had he spoken to me in a decent way, I should have explained. But he did not choose to do so; he merely looked on and scowled. He was a fat, florid man with an ugly-looking face. Ivan, too, was slackening in his usual speed. He did not want to outwork me under the eye of the "boss".
Suddenly, after having stopped there for twenty

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minutes or so, this boss drove up close to us, jumped out of his seat and started to swear and to shout, flinging out obscene words and profane language in such an amazing manner that both Ivan and I straightened up, each of us a sheaf in his hands, looked at each other, and burst out laughing.

This drove the man frantic, and he lifted his hand against me.
But Ivan was faster than he. Before he realized what was happening, Ivan had thrown him off his feet by merely pushing the sheaf he was holding into his face. The man tumbled over, and Ivan, still laughing, held him down.
It was characteristic of Ivan that he looked up at me before he jumped back and said, "We are through."
The newly appointed foreman must have had an inkling of the iron strength in those arms which had tumbled him over; for he simply got up, took a slip of paper from his pocket, scribbled a word or so with a pencil, and handed it to Ivan, saying, "All right."
He had given us our "time"; and we returned to camp to roll our bundles.
Before we left, a dozen or more of the hobos were coming back from the field. There had been no further provocation, we heard. But an example like ours sets the crowds of the hobos going. It works like revolt in a long oppressed country. Somewhere a clash occurs, and soon the whole people is up in arms. Before evening forty of them left this camp alone; yet nobody had had any personal cause for complaint. There is nothing that binds the hobo when he wants to go; he is always willing to leave the best of places.
Ivan and I went to headquarters to draw our pay. At the office there was a stampede. A number of the men who had quitted at our camp had called out their "pals" from other camps; the young Jew found himself swamped with the work of figuring wages and writing cheques. The men were crowding the office; some of them were in an ugly mood. They refused to take cheques and demanded

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cash. Before long the bookkeeper used the telephone and summoned help.

Soon after, the young man whom a few weeks ago I had seen on the cement sidewalk of the yard came in. He was not more than twenty-five years old; but he had an air of quiet assurance which strikingly lacked the Jew's particular shade of disdain. His mere appearance brought a hush.
He calmly sat down at a desk and turned about. "Who's next?" he asked?
The men held back. Then one of them approached, and he started the others going.
Suddenly Mr. Mackenzie turned again, "Listen here, you men. What's wrong? What are you quitting for?"
"Oh, I don't know," said one.
Others looked at each other.
Mr. Mackenzie picked out the one who bore himself most boldly. "Here, you, what are you quitting for?"
"I guess I have the right to quit if I want to," replied the man defiantly.
"Sure," said Mr. Mackenzie amiably; "sure. But what do you want to quit for?"
The man looked about; he saw me; with a nod of his head he said, "Ask him."
Mr. Mackenzie looked a question at me.
I could not help but admire his composure. "Well," I said, "I can't speak for these men. As for myself, I am sick. I was not doing my share of the work this morning. The foreman at number eight took the wrong tack, swore, and offered blows. My friend here bowled him over. We could hardly stay after that."
Mr. Mackenzie nodded. "Willing to work at another camp?"
I saw an opportunity here. "Certainly," I said; "but I am not very strong. I think it only fair to tell you that I cannot do what some of the men can do."
"That's all right," he replied; "some work is easier, some harder. We need a store-boss just now. How about

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your partner? Oh, it's Ivan, is it? Hello!" He nodded to him. "What do you say, Ivan? Willing to stay?"

Ivan nodded; he, too, was smiling.
"How about you?" Mr. Mackenzie asked the next one; in ten minutes more he had hired half the number back.
The rest had made up their minds to leave, and leave they did.
When a man refused to accept a cheque and demanded cash, Mr. Mackenzie told him to wait. "You don't expect me to carry as much loose cash about me as you men are getting these days," he said quite pleasantly. "I'll send to town after a while and have it brought out."
Before long the man stepped up again and declared himself willing to take a cheque.
"That's sense," said Mr. Mackenzie. "You are going to town anyway. They'll cash my cheque at any store."
Mr. Nelson, too, came in after a while. He had had word of the stampede.
He and Mr. Mackenzie held a brief, whispered consultation, in the course of which Mr. Mackenzie pointed me out.
When they had finished, Mr. Nelson came over.
"We need a store-boss," he said. "It's mostly driving. There is more honesty needed than strength. Want to try?"
I did; emphatically; but meanwhile it had occurred to me that to accept meant leaving Ivan. I hesitated; but Ivan nudged me with his elbow and nodded, without looking at me.
So I said, "If you think that I can do the work, I'll be glad to try. As for honesty, I can promise you that."
"You'll have to start right away," he went on, "we need some things from town."
"All right," I said.
Ivan drew his pay and told Mr. Nelson that he would not start before morning. He wanted to go to town; since I was going, he had a ride.

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