“He blew into Opaco with Halfaman Daisy,” replied Hunt Mangan. “That’s all I know about him—except that he’s not a stiff.”
Reynolds chuckled in his fat, rollicking way and held out his coffee cup toward Falcon the Flunky, who reached him promptly with his big copper coffeepot.
“What else, now?” asked the flunky, when the coffee was poured. “Better have another egg. No? And how about you, Mr. Mangan?”
“That ain’t so bad,” observed Reynolds, “and he ain’t handshakin’ either. He says the same thing to the stiffs. I like the feller’s face, Hunt. He savvies a lot, that bird.”
“I’ve got my eye on him,” Hunt Mangan said; “I like to see a man put his heart into what he doesn’t consider a very good job. That’s the boy I’m going to watch. Mangan & Hatton can usually find a place for men like that.”
“I’ll say so,” Steve agreed. “Where’d Halfaman blow from, did he say?”
“Yes, I was talking with him last night. He’s been over in Nebraska on the G. & N. M. job. Said he heard we were going to have a piece out here, and he hit the road west. He thinks I swallowed it, I suppose. Why should he leave the G. & N. M. job to come out here? There are some good old contractors on that job, and he knows all of them and can get about what he wants there. But he blew, and beat it all the way out here for the love of Mangan-Hatton. Huh!”
“Then why did he come. Hunt?”
“Remember when he was with us on the T. P. in Texas?”
“Yes.”