“Boy, you need to be,” replied Anderson, earnestly.  “We’re all worried.  I’m goin’ to let you read over the laws of that I.W.W. organization.  You’re to keep mum now, mind you.  I belong to the Chamber of Commerce in Spokane.  Somebody got hold of these by-laws of this so-called labor union.  We’ve had copies made, an’ every honest farmer in the Northwest is goin’ to read them.  But carryin’ one around is dangerous, I reckon, these days.  Here.”

Anderson hesitated a moment, peered cautiously around, and then, slipping folded sheets of paper from his inside coat pocket, he evidently made ready to hand them to Kurt.

“Lenore, where’s the driver?” he asked.

“He’s under the car,” replied the girl

Kurt thrilled at the soft sound of her voice.  It was something to have been haunted by a girl’s face for a year and then suddenly hear her voice.

“He’s new to me—­that driver—­an’ I ain’t trustin’ any new men these days,” went on Anderson.  “Here now, Dorn.  Read that.  An’ if you don’t get red-headed—­”

Without finishing his last muttered remark, he opened the sheets of manuscript and spread them out to the young man.

Curiously, and with a little rush of excitement, Kurt began to read.  The very first rule of the I.W.W. aimed to abolish capital.  Kurt read on with slowly growing amaze, consternation, and anger.  When he had finished, his look, without speech, was a question Anderson hastened to answer.

“It’s straight goods,” he declared.  “Them’s the sure-enough rules of that gang.  We made certain before we acted.  Now how do they strike you?”

“Why, that’s no labor union!” replied Kurt, hotly.  “They’re outlaws, thieves, blackmailers, pirates.  I—­I don’t know what!”

“Dorn, we’re up against a bad outfit an’ the Northwest will see hell this summer.  There’s trouble in Montana and Idaho.  Strangers are driftin’ into Washington from all over.  We must organize to meet them—­to prevent them gettin’ a hold out here.  It’s a labor union, mostly aliens, with dishonest an’ unscrupulous leaders, some of them Americans.  They aim to take advantage of the war situation.  In the newspapers they rave about shorter hours, more pay, acknowledgment of the union.  But any fool would see, if he read them laws I showed you, that this I.W.W. is not straight.”

“Mr. Anderson, what steps have you taken down in your country?” queried Kurt.

“So far all I’ve done was to hire my hands for a year, give them high wages, an’ caution them when strangers come round to feed them an’ be civil an’ send them on.”

“But we can’t do that up here in the Bend,” said Dorn, seriously.  “We need, say, a hundred thousand men in harvest-time, and not ten thousand all the rest of the year.”

“Sure you can’t.  But you’ll have to organize somethin’.  Up here in this desert you could have a heap of trouble if that outfit got here strong enough.  You’d better tell every farmer you can trust about this I.W.W.”