"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.