He stood waiting a moment in a black pause before he spoke again:
“You’re reflecting who it is plans the entrances while your cow-heads are butting at the wall. Who is it prepares the way, here and everywhere, I say, and supplies the brains without which you’d never finger a crown-piece of your own getting?”
A little patter of voices murmured up, “Ebenezer Brander!”
“Ah!” he said, “that’s proper scholars, and spoken to the word.”
He pocketed his discharged pistol.
“When you feel you can do without me—when you feel you can depend upon him there” (he turned fiercely and signified his captain, who stood with an infernal smile on his face) “for all that suits you best—then’ll be the time to question my methods and offer me my pass to hell.”
He kicked out his foot slightly in the direction of the dead rogue.
“We were a baker’s dozen. Take away Judas Iscariot and change the luck.”
Perhaps the suggestion, the appeal to superstition, operated as powerfully with the company as the man’s own sinister personality. With exclamations of approval they dragged away the fallen body. It left a torn wake of red behind it.
“Now, Mr. Fern,” said Brander, turning once more upon his chief—“in your own interests you’ll thank me, I know, for this exhibition of authority. It only remains to give this gentleman his last warning.”