“Half a day,” a laborer replied. “Half a day’s work, and the poor devil gets eighty cents for it!” “He gets eighty cents! He gets nothing, you’d better say. Dimond, there, is the man that gets it.” “That’s no matter. He lost it in fair play. But look at it--look at it!” The giant cook contemptuously turned the slip over in his hand. “That devil hounds you like niggers for five hours in the hot sun--he drives you near crazy with thirst--and then he hands you out this pretty piece of paper with ‘eighty cents’ wrote on it.” “That’s a dollar-sixty a day. We was only getting one-fifty the old way--on time.” “You was only getting one-fifty, was you?” There was infinite scorn in Flagg’s voice; his masterly eye swept the group. “You was getting one-fifty, and now you’re thankful to get ten cents more. Do you know what you are? You’re a pack of fools--that’s what you are!” [Illustration: “‘Eighty cents,’ he muttered, ‘and for how much work?’”] “But look here, Jack, what can we do?” “What can you do?” Flagg paused, glanced at his vis-à-vis. From the expression of dawning intelligence on Dimond’s face it was plain that he was waking to the suggestion. The slips that he had won to-night were worth four hundred dollars to Dimond. Why should not these same bits of paper fetch five hundred or six hundred? “What can you do?” Flagg repeated. “Oh, but you boys make me weary. It ain’t any of my business. I ain’t a laborer, and what I do gets well paid for. But when I look around at you poor fools, I can’t sit still here and let you go on like this. You ask me what you can do? Well, now, suppose we think it over a little. Here you are, four hundred of you. This man Carhart offers you one-fifty a day to come out here into the desert and dig your own graves. Why did he set that price on your lives? Because he knew you for the fools you are. Do you think for a minute he could get laborers up there in Chicago, where he comes from, for one-fifty? Not a bit of it! Do you think he could get men in Pennsylvania, in New York State, for one-fifty? Not a bit of it! If he was building this line in New York State, he’d be paying you two dollars, two-fifty, maybe three. And he’d be glad to get you at the price. And he’d meet your representative like a gentleman, and step around lively and walk Spanish for you, if you so much as winked.” Dimond’s eyes were flashing with excitement, though he kept them lowered to the cards. His face was flushed. Flagg saw that the seed he had planted was growing, and he swept on, working up the situation with considerable art.