Thomas Dixon
Comrades: A Story of Social Adventure in California
Tom grunted contemptuously.
Norman smiled and shook his head.
"Sorry, Comrade Bob," he replied. "We haven't men enough to organize the minstrels yet. We must rush the new building. We have thousands of new members clamouring to join. We have nowhere to house them."
"Yassah, an' I 'spec' dey'll be clamourin' ter unjine fo' long," old Bob muttered, as he passed on to be comforted by Catherine's soothing words.
Saka, the Indian, whom Colonel Worth had educated, had followed Norman. He demanded a return ticket to the Colonel's hunting lodge.
It was promptly refused. Catherine attempted to soothe his ruffled feelings. He snapped his fingers in her face and grunted.
The Brotherhood of Man saw Saka no more for many moons, but the crack of his rifle was heard on the mountain side and the smoke of his tepee curled defiantly from the neighbouring plains.
The chef appeared before the court in answer to numerous complaints about the table.
"I must have the law laid down for the tables, Comrade Judges," he demanded. "One man wants one thing and another refuses to eat at the table where such food is served. A dozen men and women ask only for bread, vegetables, and nuts. They refuse to eat meat. They refuse to allow me to cook it or any one else to eat it if they can help it. They make my life miserable. I want permission to kick them out of the kitchen. They demand the right to inspect my pots and pans to see if meat has touched them. They must go or I go. I will not be insulted by fools. If you do not give me permission to kick these people out of the kitchen I will do so without permission. You can take your choice."
The cook mopped his brow and sat down with a defiant wave of his arm.
A woman who had been a leader of the W.C.T.U. pressed forward before the cook's demand could be considered.
"And I demand in the name of truth, purity, righteousness, justice, faith, and God, that no more wine be allowed on the table. I demand that we burn the wine house and issue an order to the cook never again, under penalty of imprisonment for life, to use a drop of alcohol in the food he serves to the Brotherhood – "
"And I also demand, Comrade Judges," the cook interrupted, "the right to throw that woman out of the kitchen and have her fined and imprisoned the next time she dares to interfere with my business. She got into the pantry yesterday and destroyed five hundred mince pies because she smelled brandy in them."
"Yes, and I'll do it again if you dare to poison the bodies and souls of my comrades with that hellish stuff!" she cried, triumphantly.
"I'd like to know," the cook shouted, "how I'm to do my work if every fool in creation can butt into my business?"
"Softly! Softly!" Norman warned.
"I mean it!" thundered the chef. "This woman swears she will wreck the dining-room if I dare to place wine again on our bill of fare. I want to know if she's in command of this colony? If so, you can count me out!"
"And while we are on this point, Comrade Judges," spoke up a mild-looking little man, "I have summoned a neighbour of mine to appear before you and show cause why he should not cease to have sauerkraut served at breakfast. He sits at my table. I've begged him to stop it. I've begged the cook to stop cooking the stuff, but he bribes the cook – "
"That's a lie," shouted the chef.
"I saw him do it, your honours," the little man went on. "I'm a small-sized man or I'd lick him. I tried to move my seat but they wouldn't let me. I pledge you my word when he brings that big dish of steaming sauerkraut to our table it fogs the whole end of the dining-room. The odour is so strong it not only stops you from eating, you can't think. It knocks you out for the day."
"Is it possible," Norman inquired, "that there is a human being among us who eats sauerkraut for breakfast?"
"There's no doubt about it, comrade," promptly responded a tall, strapping-looking fellow, with a dark, scholarly face, as he stepped to the front.
"That's him!" cried the little accuser. "I made him come. Told him I'd organize a party to lynch him if he didn't. He won't dare deny it. I can prove it."
"I have no desire to deny that I eat sauerkraut, you little ape," he replied with scorn. "I come of German ancestry, comrades. My great-grandfather helped to create this nation. He was a pure-blooded German. I inherit from him my personal likes and dislikes. Sauerkraut is the best breakfast food ever served to man. It is a pure vegetable malt. It is wholesome, clean, healthful, and keeps the system of a brain worker in perfect order. I eat it with ham gravy and good hot wheat biscuits. It is some trouble for the cook to prepare this particular kind of soft tea-biscuit for me. I paid him a little extra for this bread – not the kraut. I suggest to your honours that you make sauerkraut a standard breakfast diet as a health measure. They may kick a little at first, but I assure you it will improve the health and character of the colony. If this little chap who accuses me were put on a diet of kraut for breakfast it might even now make a man of him. I not only have nothing to apologize for, I bring you good tidings. I proclaim sauerkraut the only perfect health food for breakfast, and I suggest its compulsory use. The man who sits next to me eats snails. I think the habit a filthy and dangerous one. If you are going into this question, do it thoroughly. Let us fix by law what is fit to eat, and stick to it. I'll back sauerkraut before any dietary commission ever organized on earth."
The council appointed a commission to conduct hearings and make a rigid code of laws establishing the kind of foods for each meal.
Again Roland Adair, the Bard of Ramcat, rose, shook his long hair and cleared his throat.
Norman lifted his hand for silence.
"I anticipate the poet's words. You solemnly protest against the further establishment of a tyranny which shall dare prescribe your food from day to day. I grieve over the necessity of these laws and mingle my tears with yours in advance. But, in the language of a distinguished citizen of the old republic, 'we are confronted by a condition, not a theory.' The council stands adjourned."
The Bard poured his bitter protest into Catherine's patient ears and left with a growing conviction of her wisdom.
The woman with the drooping eyelids stood watching his retreating figure while a quiet smile of contempt played about her full, sensuous lips.
CHAPTER XX
THE UNCONVENTIONAL
Within a week it was necessary to appoint a commission to formulate an elaborate code of laws regulating various nuisances which had developed in the community.
A kitchen-boy insisted on playing a cornet in his room. He didn't know a musical from a promissory note but he swore he'd become a musician before he died. His efforts came near proving fatal to his neighbours before he was suppressed.
Several women had pet parrots. The people who lived near by strenuously objected. The parrots had to go.
A sailor had brought a monkey whose manners were not appreciated by any one except his master. The monkey had to go. Cats were arraigned for trial and a fierce battle raged over the question of allowing them in the building. The question was finally put to the popular vote in the assembly and the cats won by a good majority. But strict laws regulating the kind of cats, their number, and their care, were put into force.
Dogs won by a large majority when they were finally put on trial.
The commission on nuisances had finally to make a code of laws regulating table manners and the conduct of all social gatherings.
The one question which all but precipitated a civil war was the problem of dress. Inequality of wages meant, of necessity, inequality of dress.
A desperate effort was made by a large number to force the community to adopt a uniform for both men and women. It was fiercely opposed. Every woman who believed herself good looking refused to listen to any argument on the subject.
It was necessary at once, however, to formulate some sort of code. A number of men had been coming into the dining-room in their shirt sleeves. Some of them apparently never combed their hair or changed their linen. A number of women had gotten into the habit of coming into the dining-room in loose wrappers of variegated colors and without corsets.
The Bard of Ramcat was particularly severe in his public criticism of these women in the general assembly of the Brotherhood.
"In the name of beauty, I protest!" he cried. "Beauty is an attribute of God. It is woman's first duty to be beautiful, and if she isn't, at least to make man think she is. I insist that she shall have the widest liberty in the choice of dress. Only let her be careful that she is beautiful!"
The poet was heartily applauded, and a resolution was passed which embodied his ideas, approving the widest freedom of choice in dress, approving especially unconventional forms of dress, provided always the ideal of beauty was held inviolate.
In his speech advocating the immediate passage of the resolution the Bard urged every woman to outdo herself in the struggle for supreme beauty of appearance at the weekly ball on Friday evening.
His resolutions and speech bore surprising fruit.
When the festivities were at their height a crowd of fifteen pretty girls suddenly swept into the brilliantly lighted ball-room in tights! The sensation was so instantaneous and overwhelming the music stopped with a crash. The orchestra thought somebody had yelled fire.
The girls in their beautiful but unconventional dress tried to appear unconcerned. But even the Bard was appalled at the results.
The pretty young chorus-girls had taken him at his word. They had always cherished a secret desire to live in an unconventional real world, where they could have a chance to be themselves, without the hideous skirts of conventional society veiling their beauty. They had brought these costumes with them and joined the new moral world in the firm faith that their ideal would be realized. It had come very slowly, but it had come at last.
They donned their beautiful costumes with hearts fluttering in triumphant pride. But they had huddled into a corner of the ball-room in a panic of fright at the insane commotion their honest efforts to promote beauty had caused. One by one every woman in skirts save Barbara and Catherine left the room. The married ones seized their husbands and pushed them out ahead.
Norman, who was dancing with Barbara, broke down and burst into a paroxysm of laughter.
Some of the girls began to cry, but others made a brave effort to face the crowd of eager, giggling boys who pressed nearer.
The Bard approached with a serious look on his noble brow, deliberately put on his glasses and surveyed the crowd.
"My dear girls," he began, "I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the sincerity and honesty of your efforts to express beauty in unconventional form, but really this is beyond my wildest expectation."
Catherine drove the rude boys out of the room and closed the windows, while Barbara kissed the tears away from the hysterical innovators and led them back to their rooms.
The next morning the general assembly held an unusually solemn meeting at which it was voted by a large majority to settle at once and forever the question of dress by adopting a Socialist uniform of scarlet and white for the women, and for the men a dull gray suit with scarlet bands on the sleeve, a scarlet stripe and belt for the trousers.
The discussion was brief and Roland Adair, the Bard of Ramcat, protested in vain.
CHAPTER XXI
A PAIR OF COLD GRAY EYES
From the night of the ball at which the group of chorus-girls made their sensational entrance in tights, Norman had his hands full. Disorder had rapidly grown in the Brotherhood. Two distinct parties began to line up for a desperate struggle for supremacy, the one standing for the widest liberty of the individual members of the community, the other demanding the stern enforcement of law and order and the formulation of a complete and strict code of rules for the government of daily conduct.
Among the men assigned to various tasks there gradually appeared a number who slighted their work. From carelessness they drifted into utter incompetency and downright laziness. Groups of these loafers began to hang around the house daily.
When they had spent the last penny of their credit at the general store of the community, they began to steal. Not a day or night passed but complaints of thefts were made from every department of the colony. One of the most serious of these burglaries was the robbery of the winery of an enormous quantity of the most valuable wines.
Drunkenness had already become one of the serious problems of the Brotherhood, and the right to buy of the steward had been denied a large number of men and several women. These people began at once to show signs of intoxication. It was plain that the thieves had hidden this wine and that they were carrying on a secret traffic with those to whom it had been forbidden.
With the increase of reckless drunkenness another evil grew with alarming rapidity, the carousing of boisterous men and women. One of them very quickly passed the limits of tolerance. She was in many respects the most beautiful girl in the colony, barely nineteen years old, with luxuriant blond hair, and big, wide, staring baby-blue eyes. She had with it all a smile so saucy, so winsome, so elfish, and yet so innocent, it was impossible for the average man or woman to think ill of her. To every appeal of Barbara she merely showed her pretty white teeth in a winsome smile, promised her anything she asked, and proceeded to do as she liked.
At last her room was declared an intolerable nuisance by a committee appointed to enter the complaint on behalf of her neighbours on the floor on which she lived. The night before this committee appealed to Barbara two boys had fought a desperate fist duel in this room. The noise had roused the neighbours, and the case could no longer be ignored by the executive council.
Barbara was sent to this room with full power to deal with the offender.
"Good heavens," cried the girl, her big blue eyes opening wide with injured innocence, "how could I help it? They're both in love with me. I don't care a rap for either one of them, but they got to fighting, and I couldn't stop them. I threw a pitcher of water on them, but they kept right on. I'd have called the police, but there was none to call. It wasn't my fault."
"But my dear Blanche," pleaded Barbara, "can't you see that you are bringing scandal and disgrace into the colony?"
"It's not me!" the pretty lips pouted. "It's these old women who are talking. Let them shut their mouths and attend to their own business. I'm not bothering them."
"You deny the accusations they bring against your good name?" Barbara said, with some surprise.
"Of course I deny them," she snapped. "I've got to have some fun, haven't I? I can't help it that a dozen boys come to see me and nobody ever sees the old tabbies who lie about me, can I? I can't help it that they are old and ugly, can I?"
Barbara had ceased to listen to the glib tongue, whose lying chatter tired her. She looked about the room with increasing amazement. It was stuffed with presents of every conceivable description. Costly rugs adorned the floor. Soft pillows filled the couch by the window. Dainty and expensive works of art adorned her mantel, and the richest and most beautiful underwear lay in a smoothly laundered pile on her luxuriant bed.
"And how did you get all these costly and beautiful things, my dear?" Barbara asked, with a touch of sarcasm.
The big blue eyes opened wide again with wonder.
"Why, the boys who are in love with me gave them. Why shouldn't they? I can't help it that they are foolish, can I? God made them so."
"And you accepted these rich and costly things in perfect innocence of the evil meaning others might put on them?"
"Of course! How can I keep their tongues from wagging? Life's too short. I have but one life to live. I can't waste it worrying over nothing."
For the first time in her career Barbara stood face to face with naked evil – with a liar to whom a lie was good – a radiantly beautiful girl to whom shame was sweet.
For a moment the thought was suffocating. She looked out of the window at the infinite blue sea until the tears slowly blinded her. The first doubt of her theory of life crept into her heart and threw its shadow over the ideal of the new world she had built.
She took the girl's hand, slipped her arm around her neck, kissed the soft, shining hair, and sobbed:
"Poor little foolish sister! I'm afraid you've broken my heart to-day."
"I haven't done a thing! Honestly, I haven't!" the lusty young liar rattled on and on, in a hundred silly, vain protests, which Barbara never heard.
She left the room at length with a sickening sense of defeat, though the girl had promised her on the honour of her soul never again to give the slightest cause for complaint.
Many a day she had trudged through the streets of the great city, after hours of nerve-racking struggles with sin and shame and despair in the old world, but she had always come home at night with a heart singing a battle-hymn of victory. She knew the cause of all the pain, and she had given her life to right the wrong. Nothing daunted her, nothing disconcerted her. In the end triumph was sure, and while she felt this there could be no such thing as failure.
She stood before the full meeting of the executive council, honestly reported the case, and for the first time tasted the bitterness of defeat, helpless, complete, and overwhelming. While she was talking a peculiar expression in Wolf's cold gray eyes suddenly caught her attention and fixed her gaze on him with a curious fascination and horror. Wolf was quick to note her look, recovered himself and smiled in his old fatherly, friendly way.
"Don't worry, comrade. We've got to meet and settle such questions. They are merely the inheritance of civilization. It will take a little time, that's all."
But as Barbara's gaze lingered on the heavy brutal lines of Wolf's massive figure and she caught again the gleam of his gray eyes a sickening sense of foreboding gripped her heart.
CHAPTER XXII
THE FIGHTING INSTINCT
As questions of discipline became more and more pressing old Tom refused to sit as an active judge in the executive council.
Norman protested in vain against his decision to retire for a while.
"I can't do no good settin' thar listenin' to them fools," the miner declared. "They make me sick. Besides, ye all vote me down when I tells ye what to do, and things keep on goin' from bad to worse. Jest let me git out and move around among the boys a little. I think I can do some good. You folks is all too chicken-hearted to run this Brotherhood. Love and fellowship is all right, but ye've got ter mix a little law and common sense before ye can straighten the kinks out of this here community."
Norman gave his consent reluctantly, and was amazed at the end of a week to observe a remarkable improvement in the spirit of the colony. Loafers disappeared, stealing all but ceased, drinking and fighting were on the decrease.
One by one old Tom had taken the loafers with him on a long walk up the beach. He was usually gone about an hour and always came back laughing and chatting with his friend in the best of humour. Invariably the loafer went to work.
In the same way he took a walk with each one of a crowd of wild, unmannerly boys, whose rudeness at the table and whose horse-play about the building had become unendurable. The effects of these walks seemed magical. Always the pair returned in a fine humour and the most marked revolution was immediately noted in the conduct of the offender.
Norman asked the old man again and again for the secret of his power.
He replied in the most casual way:
"Just had a plain heart-to-heart talk with 'em and told 'em what had to be – that's all."
The good work had continued for a week with uninterrupted success, when a bomb was suddenly exploded in the executive council by the appearance of an irate mother leading an insolent fourteen-year-old cub, who walked rather stiffly.
Amid a silence that was painful, the mother stripped the boy to the waist, thrust him before Norman and Barbara, and said:
"Now, tell them what you've just told me."
The boy glanced cautiously around to see if his enemy were near and poured forth a tale the like of which had never been heard before.
"Old Tom asked me to take a walk with him. He got me away off in a lonely place behind the big rocks on that little island up the beach and pulled up a plank drawbridge so I couldn't get back till he wanted to let me. He stripped me like this, tied me to a whipping-post and nearly beat the life out of me. He said he'd been appointed by the council to settle with me in private so nobody would know anything about it."
"Said that he had been appointed by the council to whip you?" Norman asked, in amazement.
"That's what he said, sir," the boy went on. "He gave me forty-nine lashes with a cowhide and then set down and talked to me a half hour."
"And what did he say?" Norman inquired, forcing back a smile by a desperate effort.
"He told me that he tried to get out of the work, but the council had forced it on him. Said there oughtn't to be no hard feelings, that it was a dirty, tiresome job, and he didn't have no pleasure in it, but it had to be done for the salvation of the people. He said it wasn't wise to talk about such things among the Brotherhood. I told him I'd tell my ma the minute I got home. He said that would be foolish, that none of the others had said a word, that they had all taken their medicine like little men."
"He told you he had whipped all the others who had taken that walk with him?" Norman gasped.
"That's what he said, sir," the boy insisted, "and I guess he had, for they'd pawed a hole in the sand 'round that whipping-post big enough to bury a horse in."
The boy paused and his mother shook him angrily.
"Tell what else he said to you!"
The cub glanced hastily toward the door and whispered:
"Said if I opened my mouth about what had happened he'd skin me alive."
The council sent the mother and son away with the assurance of immediate action.
The court adjourned and Norman started with Barbara at once to find Tom. Faithful to his new calling he had strolled up the beach with a man who once had been his partner as a prospector and miner. Joe Weatherby had been drinking heavily the week before and Tom had keenly felt the disgrace his old partner had brought on the Brotherhood by his rudeness in the dining-room.
Joe had thrown a plate of soup in the face of a boy who was making facetious remarks about his capacity for strong drink. When rebuked by his neighbours he had accentuated his displeasure by overturning the table and smashing every dish on it. He ended the affair by roundly cursing the Brotherhood for its rules and regulations interfering with his personal liberty, threw his pack on his back, and struck the trail for the mountains to prospect for gold.
He had just returned, after a week's absence, and Tom seized the opportunity to invite Joe to take a walk with him.
Knowing the character of the two men, Norman felt quite sure this walk could not possibly have the usual happy ending that attended so many of these performances.
He quickened his pace.
"Hurry, or we may have a funeral for our next function," he cried, with a laugh.
A quarter of a mile up the beach the sound of loud angry words suddenly struck their ears from behind a pile of huge boulders.
"Quick, we're just in time!" Barbara cried, "they've begun to quarrel."
They cautiously approached the boulders and climbed to the top of the larger one overlooking the scene Tom had evidently chosen for his debate with Joe.
"Hadn't you better part them now?" Barbara asked with some anxiety.
"No, I'll stop them in time. I want to get acquainted with Tom's methods of persuasion first."
Tom's voice was rising in accents of wrath. "Joe, I'm a man o' peace – I'm a member o' the Brotherhood and you're my brother, but I'll tell ye right now we've got to have law and order in this community – "
"And I say, Tom Mooney, there hain't no law exceptin' what's inside a man."
"Yes, but how kin ye git any law inside a man ef he's always chuck full er licker?"
"I don't drink to 'mount to nothin'," Joe protested. "Just a drop now an' then ter keep me in good health."
"Wall, ef you try any more capers in that dinin'-room, your health's goin' ter break clean down – yer hear me?"
Joe eyed Tom a moment and said with sharp emphasis:
"I reckon I can take care o' myself, partner, without you settin' up nights to worry about me."
"That's just the trouble, Joe, ye can't. You jined the Brotherhood, but yer faith's gettin' weak. I'm afeard you're onregenerate, conceived in sin an' brought forth in iniquity, an' ye ain't had no change er heart nohow."
"Look here, what are ye drivin' at?" Joe asked, beginning to back away cautiously.
"I just want ter strengthen yer faith, partner," Tom protested kindly as he advanced good-naturedly and laid his hand on Joe's arm.
Joe shook it off and turned to go. With a sudden spring Tom was on him. A brief, fierce struggle ensued marked by low, savage growls like two bull-dogs clinched and searching for each other's throats.
"Stop them! Stop them! They'll kill one another," pleaded Barbara.
"No. It'll do them good. Wait," he replied, watching them breathlessly.
"Here! Here, you old fool," growled Joe. "Do you call this the Brotherhood of Man?"
"Yes, my son, and specially the Fatherhood er God. The Lord chastens them he loveth!"
With a sudden twist the writhing figures fell in the sand, Tom on top pinning Joe down.
Joe fought with fierce strength to rise but it was no use.
Tom clutched his throat and choked him steadily into submission.
"I'm er man o' peace, Joe," he repeated.
"Yes, you are!" the bottom one growled.
"But when I mingles with the unregenerate, my son, I trusts in God an' keeps my powder dry!"
"Let me up, you old fool!" Joe growled.
"Not yet, my son!" was the firm answer.
"You'll get my dander up in a minute and some body's goin' ter git hurt," warned the prostrate figure.
"Please make them quit," Barbara whispered tremblingly.
"Nonsense. They're enjoying themselves," Norman softly laughed.
"What are you tryin' ter do anyhow?" whined Joe.
"I'm callin' a lost sinner to repentance," was the prompt answer.
"Lemme up, I tell ye," Joe yelled, struggling with desperation.
Tom choked him again into silence and seated himself comfortably across Joe's stomach.
"Now, Joseph, my boy. I want you ter say over the catechism of the Brotherhood of Man. Hit'll freshen yer mind an' be good fer yer soul – "
Another grim struggle interrupted the teacher.
"Say it after me: I believe in the fatherhood er God – "
Joe squirmed.
"Say it!"
Still no sound. Tom firmly gripped his throat and Joe gurgled:
"Fatherhood er God!"
"And brotherhood o' man!"
"Brotherhood er man!"
"Yer believe it now?" Tom fiercely asked.
Joe feebly assented.
Tom gripped his throat.
"Say it strong!"
"Yes – I believe it!" Joe confessed.
Again the under man struggled desperately and the man on top fiercely choked him into a quieter frame of mind.
"Now again: No drunkard shall inherit the kingdom er God!"
Joe repeated, "No drunkard – shall – what?"
"Inherit – the – kingdom – er God – by golly you've forgot yer Bible too!"
"Inherit – the – kingdom er – God!"
"Who shall not inherit the kingdom of God?"
"No drunkard!" Joe answered.
"Let that soak into yer lost soul!" Tom growled, pausing a moment.
"Now once more! Bear – ye – one – another's burdens!"
Joe hesitated and the man on top bumped the words out of him one at a time:
"Bear – ye – one – another's – burdens!"
"An' ye're goin' ter help me bear mine?" the teacher asked.
"Ain't I a-doin' it now?" grumbled the man below.
"Well, once more then: Private property is theft!"
"That's a lie an' you know it," Joe sneered.
"The big chief says so and it goes – say it!"
"Private property is theft," Joe repeated.
"Well, then, once more: Love – one – another!"
"Love one another," came the feeble echo.
"Do ye love me?" Tom fiercely inquired.
Joe struggled.
"Say it!" commanded the teacher.
"I love ye," he groaned.
Norman suddenly appeared on the scene followed by Barbara and the two miners leaped to their feet.
"Tom, old boy," the young leader cried, "you mean well, but we are told by the preacher that the kingdom of God cometh not of observation – it must be from within."
"Just goin' over his Sunday-school lesson with him, Chief."
Joe made a hostile movement, and Norman stepped between them.
"Come! You two big kids – enough of this now, shake hands and make up!"
The men both hung back stubbornly.
Norman turned to Tom.
"Were you not partners and friends before you joined the Brotherhood?"
"Yes," the old miner replied grudgingly. "We bin tergether twelve years an' we worked an' played tergether, starved an' froze tergether, lived tergether, an' slept under the same blanket – he's the only partner I ever had – an' he's my best friend" – Tom paused and choked – "but I don't like 'im!"
"Shake hands and make up!" Barbara laughed.
They hung back a moment longer until Barbara's smile became resistless.
Joe extended his hand, exclaiming:
"Shake, you old coyote!"
Norman gave Joe a serious talk – got a pledge from him to quit drink and stand by him in his efforts to bring order out of the confusion and chaos in which the colony was floundering.
"You think I can do anything to help you?" Joe asked incredulously.
"Of course you can. You and Tom are two men I've known all my life. I know where to find you if I get into trouble."
"Is there goin' ter be any trouble?" Tom broke in, eagerly.
"Not yet, but it's coming. When it does we'll fight it out and win. I've set my life on the issue of this experiment."
Joe extended him his hand. "I'm sorry I got drunk. I won't do it again – we'll stand by ye!"
