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.

It was a long field, and if he had earned a dollar for every time he had
traversed its length, during the last ten years, he would have been a
rich man. He could have walked it blindfolded. It was fallow ground,
already plowed, disked, rolled, and now the last stage was to harrow it,
loosening the soil, conserving the moisture.

Morgan, far to the other side of this section, had the better of the
job, for his harrow was a new machine and he could ride while driving
the horses. But Kurt, using an old harrow, had to walk. The four big
horses plodded at a gait that made Kurt step out to keep up with them.
To keep up, to drive a straight line, to hold back on the reins, was
labor for a man. It spoke well for Kurt that he had followed that old