The Treasure OfThe Sierra Madre

American boys he couldn’t catch so easily with these ideas. Americans knew this sort of Pat too well to fall for his cooperative contracts. He took on Americans only when he could procure no others. Most welcome were the newly arrived Hunks, Czechs, Poles, Germans, Italians, fellows who had heard back home the stories of men working in the Mexican oil-fields and earning from thirty to fifty dollars a day almost without bending a finger. Having arrived in the republic, they learned during the first week that such fantastic wages were as rare as are the wages a bricklayer gets in Chicago, according to the fairy-tales circulating in Europe. After these men are here two months or so they kneel down before any contractor who offers them five dollars a day, and if he offers them eight, they worship him as they never worship the Almighty, and the contractor may do with them what he likes. After six months without a job they are ready to accept whatever is offered.

Dobbs would not have fallen for the doctrines of Pat McCormick had he tried them on him. His economic condition left him no choice. He was in his way as glad at landing this job as were the Hunks.

The cooperative arrangement made it obligatory for all hands to work eighteen hours out of twenty—four, every day as long as the contract lasted. There was no extra pay. Eight dollars was the pay for the working-day, and the length of the working-day was decided by Pat. There was no rest on Sunday. The Mexican hands were protected by their law. They could not be worked a minute longer than eight hours or Pat would have landed in jail and been kept there until he paid ten thousand pesos for breaking the labor law.

A sort of road had been cut out of the jungle so that in very dry weather the trucks could come right on the lot where the camp was to be rigged up. Mexican peons, having been sent a few weeks ahead by Pat, had the camp-site cleared when the rigbuilders arrived.

Eight dollars a day looked like a lot of money when Dobbs had nothing in his stomach, but he learned that eight dollars a day may be meager pay for certain jobs. The heat was never less than one hundred degrees in the open, where all the work had to be done, surrounded by jungle. He was pestered by the ten thousand sorts of insects and reptiles the jungle breeds. He thought a hundred times a day that his eyes would burn away from the heat above and around him. No breeze could reach the men at work here. Carrying lumber, hoisting it high up for the derrick to be built, and hanging often for minutes like monkeys with only one hand on a beam, or holding on with one leg snake-fashion around a rope and grasping heavy boards swinging out that had to be hauled in to be riveted or bolted, he risked his life twenty times every day, and all for eight dollars.

Pat allowed no rest except for a few hours’ sleep. Until eleven at night they worked by the light of gas-lanterns, and at five in the morning they were already hard at work again. “We have to use the cool morning hours, boys,” Pat would say when he waked them. No sooner had they gulped down their coffee at meal-time and settled to pick their teeth leisurely than Pat would get restless and hustle them up: “Boys, sure it’s hot. I know. We’re in the tropics. It’s hot in Texas sometimes too. Hell knows it’s not my fault. I have to finish that goddamn contract. The sooner we’re through, the sooner we’ll be out of this hell here, and we’ll go back to town and have cold drinks. Hi, Harry, get the Mexicans, those damn lazy rascals, to unload the steamengine, and start to adjust the parts. Jump at it. And, Slick, you and Dobbs get the drum up the derrick and have it anchored. I’ll see after the cabins. Hurry, hurry up and get busy.”

Pat McCormick sure made a pile with these contracts. He was paid well by the companies for the rigging contracts. The companies allowed fair wages and decent working-hours for all, but the sooner Pat could finish the job, the more was left over to go into his pockets, for he had no other expenses than the wages he paid out. To drain the last ounce of work out of his men he promised them a bonus if inside of a certain number of days the job were finished. This promise of a bonus was his whip, since he knew that a real slave-driver’s whip would not do with workers today. He won; he won always. He rigged up two camps in the same time other contractors would have rigged barely one.

“All right, boys, put all your bones into that job. You’ll be with me again on my next contract. I’ve already got three almost for sure coming my way. Get going.” This was another whip he used, promising his slaves future jobs provided they worked the way he wanted them to.

When the camp was rigged, the gang went back to town. The Mexican peons returned to their near-by villages.

Said Dobbs: “Now what about the pay? I haven’t seen a buck yet from you, Pat.”