“Ain’t ould Mac th’ bully-boy? I’d ’a’ give a week’s pay to ’a’ seen it.”
“A jug of booze among fifty men!” sneered Rough Shan. “What’s that? Can’t ye let the boys have a drink if they want it? An’ if it was a bar’l ain’t ye man enough to be boss of yer own camp?”
“When I want your help to run it I’ll send for you,” rasped MacNutt. “There’s been booze comin’ over from your camp, an’ I’m goin’ to stop it; an’ the way I stop it is my business.”
“If you lay out a man of mine I’ll take you to pieces,” threatened Rough Shan. “I done it once, an’ I’ll do it again.”
MacNutt’s eyes blazed. He caught Regan’s axe and tossed it on the snow before McCane. Himself he seized Devlin’s.
“If you want a fight pick up that axe and go to it!” he cried.
McCane was rough and tough, but he had come to run a bluff rather than to look for serious trouble, and a fight with axes was too cold-blooded a proposition, even for him.
“I’ll go ye with fists an’ feet in a minute,” he offered.
“No,” MacNutt refused. “Take an axe. I want to kill ye!”
McCane was bluffed, to the huge delight of the Kent men.