the Desert Of Wheat (2001) Read Online Free PDF Page B

the room in high dudgeon, Kurt hurried out to catch the hired men near at hand and to order them back to work. They trudged off surlily toward the barn.
    Then Kurt went on to search for the I. W. W. men, and after looking up and down the road, and all around, he at length found them behind an old strawstack. They were comfortably sitting down, backs to the straw, eating a substantial lunch. Kurt was angry and did not care. His appearance, however, did not faze the strangers. One of them, an American, was a man of about thirty years, clean-shaven, square-jawed, with light, steely, secretive gray eyes, and a look of intelligence and assurance that did not harmonize with his motley garb. His companion was a foreigner, small of stature, with eyes like a ferret and deep pits in his sallow face.
    "Do you know you're trespassing?" demanded Kurt.
    "You grudge us a little shade, eh, even to eat a bite?" said the American. He wrapped a paper round his lunch and leisurely rose, to fasten penetrating eyes upon the young man. "That's what I heard about you rich farmers of the Bend."
    "What business have you coming here?" queried Kurt, with sharp heat.
    "You sneak out of sight of the farmers. You trespass to get at our men and with a lot of lies and guff you make them discontented with their jobs. I'll fire these men just for listening to you."
    "Mister Dorn, we want you to fire them. That's my business out here," replied the American.
    "Who are you, anyway?"
    "That's my business, too."
    Kurt passed from hot to cold. He could not miss the antagonism of this man, a bold and menacing attitude.
    "My foreman says your name's Glidden," went on Kurt, cooler this time, "and that you're talking I. W. W. as if you were one of its leaders; that you don't want a job; that you've got a wad of money; that you coax, then threaten; that you've intimidated three of our hands."
    "Your Jerry's a marked man," said Glidden, shortly.
    "You impudent scoundrel!" exclaimed Kurt. "Now you listen to this.
    You're the first I. W. W. man I've met. You look and talk like an American. But if you are American you're a traitor. We've a war to fight! War with a powerful country! Germany! And you come spreading discontent in the wheat-fields,... when wheat means life!... Get out of here before I--"
    "We'll mark you, too, Mister Dorn, and your wheat-fields," snapped Glidden.
    With one swift lunge Kurt knocked the man flat and then leaped to stand over him, watching for a move to draw a weapon. The little foreigner slunk back out of reach.
    "I'll start a little marking myself," grimly said Kurt. "Get up!"
    Slowly Glidden moved from elbow to knees, and then to his feet. His cheek was puffing out and his nose was bleeding. The light-gray eyes were lurid.
    "That's for your I. W. W.!" declared Kurt. "The first rule of your I. W. W. is to abolish capital, hey?"
    Kurt had not intended to say that. It slipped out in his fury. But the effect was striking. Glidden gave a violent start and his face turned white. Abruptly he hurried away. His companion shuffled after him. Kurt stared at them, thinking the while that if he had needed any proof of the crookedness of the I. W. W. he had seen it in Glidden's guilty face.
    The man had been suddenly frightened, and surprise, too, had been prominent in his countenance. Then Kurt remembered how Anderson had intimated that the secrets of the I. W. W. had been long hidden. Kurt, keen and quick in his sensibilities, divined that there was something powerful back of this Glidden's cunning and assurance. Could it be only the power of a new labor organization? That might well be great, but the idea did not convince Kurt. During a hurried and tremendous preparation by the government for war, any disorder such as menaced the country would be little short of a calamity. It might turn out a fatality. This so-called labor union intended to take advantage of a crisis to further its own ends. Yet even so, that fact did not wholly explain Glidden and his