Not one of you? Who's
keeping your money in bank for you? Jim Duff and the sellers of
poisons? Will they ever hand your money back to you? Some of you men
have dear ones at home. If one of these dear ones sends a hurried,
frenzied appeal for money in time of sickness or death what will your
answer have to be? Just this: 'I have been working like a slave for a
year, but I can send you only my love. Jim Duff, who hasn't worked in
all his life, won't let me send you any money.' Friends, is that what
you're burning yourselves black on the desert for?"
While Tom Reade spoke Foreman Mendoza had marshaled his Mexicans and was
translating the young engineer's words into Spanish.
Nor was it long ere Tom's fine presentation of the matter caught the men
in the nobler part of their feelings.
"Don't blame Duff so much," Tom finally went on. "He may be a parasite,
a vulture, a feeder on blood, but you and men just like you have helped
to make the Duffs. You're not going to do so after this, are you, my
friends? You're not going to keep the breath of life in monsters who
drain you dry of life and manhood?"
"No!" came a thunderous shout, even though all of Reade's hearers did
not join in it.
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