They were standing at the door of the timekeeper’s shanty—­they had been the timekeeper’s guests for the noon meal—­and the big gang of Italians, with its inevitable Irish foreman, was already at work.  Out at the head of the great fill a dozen men were dumping the carts as they came in an endless stream from the cutting.  Suddenly there was a casting down of shovels, a shrill altercation, a clinch, a flash of steel in the August sunlight, and one of the disputants was down, his heels drumming on the soft earth in the death agony.

“Good God!” said Kenneth.  “It’s a murder!” and he would have rushed in if Ford and the timekeeper had not held him back.

The object lesson was sufficiently shocking, but its sequel was still more revolting.  Without one to kneel beside the dying man; indeed, without waiting until the drumming heels were still; the men callously put their shovels under the body, slid it over the lip of the dump and left it to be covered by the tumbling cataract of earth pouring from the tip-carts whose orderly procession had scarcely been interrupted by the tragedy.

Kenneth was silent for many minutes after they had left the camp of the Italians.  He was a Western man only by adoption; of Anglo-Saxon blood, and so unable to condone the Latin’s disregard for the sacredness of human life.

“That was simply terrible, Ford,” he said finally, and his voice was still in sympathy with the shaking hand that held the bridle-reins.  “Will nothing be done?”

“Nothing; unless the murdered man chances to have relatives or clansmen in one of the near-by camps—­in which case there’ll be another killing.”

“But the law,” said Kenneth.

“There is no law here higher than the caprice of Brian MacMorrogh.  Besides, it’s too common—­a mere episode; one of those which you said you couldn’t believe, a little while back.”

“But can’t you make the MacMorroghs do a little police work, for common decency’s sake?”

Ford shook his head.  “They are quite on the other side of the fence, as I told you in the beginning.  By winking at lawlessness of all kinds, their own particular brands of lawlessness, by which they and their backers make money, go unquestioned.  So far from helping, they’d make it exceedingly difficult for any sheriff who should have the temerity to come in here in the discharge of his duty.”

“You foresaw all this before the contract was awarded?”

“Not all—­though I had been told that the MacMorroghs ran ‘open camps’ where the work was far enough from civilization to take the curse off.  What you’ve seen, and what I’ve been telling you, is bad enough, God knows; but it will be worse before it is better.  After we’ve had a few pay-days, and the men begin to realize that they are here to toil and to be robbed ...  Kenneth, it will be hell on earth; and the company will pay for it—­the company always pays in the end.”