“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 subtlety.  Some nameless force loomed dark and sinister back of Glidden’s meaning, and it was not peril to the wheatlands of the Northwest alone.

Like a huge dog Kurt shook himself and launched into action.  There were sense and pleasure in muscular activity, and it lessened the habit of worry.  Soon he ascertained that only Morgan had returned to work in the fields.  Andrew and Jansen were nowhere to be seen.  Jansen had left four horses hitched to a harrow.  Kurt went out to take up the work thus abandoned.