“So you think the North Star has the upper hand in this deal, Sandy?”
Macdougal fished out his black bottle and insisted on Hammond having a “nip” with him. “If they ain’t got the upper hand right now,” he replied, “they will have it when the shuffle’s over. There ain’t any outsider can come in here and put it over Acey Smith. . . . And believe me, whatever is his game, I’m one who wants to see the Big Boss win. Here’s to him!”
The deep underlying note in Sandy’s tones made Hammond gaze at him fixedly. “You used to say, Sandy, that he was the king of crooks,” he reminded. “You used to say, in fact, that Acey Smith was a devil in human form.”
“Crook he may be and devil too,” conceded the other. “But I’m with him because—” and Sandy smote a nearby bench with his fist,—“because he’s a man! He’s one of them kind of men that if the whole world was jumpin’ at his throat he’d put his back again’ a rock and fight it out without askin’ help or sob-stuff from any of ’em. And he’d go down grinnin’ that little devil-grin o’ his and tellin’ them all to go to hell and be damned to them—that’s the kind of a man the Big Boss is!”
Hammond did not smile at this unexpected outburst of hero-worship. The little Scotch-Canadian was so emotionally intense about it.
“Listen, Hammond,” he was saying. “The Big Boss likely is as black a rascal as they say he is, and that’s a whole lot; but he never fights the weak or the poor. Ain’t I seen what he’s done unbeknownst to most for unfortunates in this camp? Ain’t I been in the city when I seen him stop on the street to help a blind bum over a dangerous crossin’ when everybody else was hustlin’ by and lookin’ the other way so they wouldn’t see their duty? Don’t I know that in the hard times six years ago it was this same Acey Smith who bought up a row of shacks in the coal docks district where the landlords was dumpin’ whole families out because they had nothin’ to pay them with, and don’t I know that none of them has ever paid since when they was hard up? I know because it was one of my side jobs to look after them houses and see that the taxes was paid.
“Yes, and I could tell you lots of other things about the Big Boss that would be just as hard to believe,” the cook went on. “Suppose you never heard about the case of that Frompton girl?”
Other matters were uppermost in Hammond’s mind, but he knew there was no stopping Sandy when the talking mood was on him, so he said good-naturedly: “No, Sandy, tell us the story.”
III
“That all happened in the days before the war when the Big Boss was feelin’ a lot more cocky than he seems to be nowadays,” began the cook. “This Frompton girl, who was a waitress in one of the city eatin’ houses, was something of a good looker, but it seems that down east she’d had a nasty bit of past, mostly some low skunk’s fault who deceived her and skipped out leavin’ her to face it alone. After her baby, maybe lucky for its poor little self, died, her and her mother came up to Kam City where nobody knew them. But scandal like that, especially if it’s about a woman, will travel. One night a young blood, a son of one of the wealthy ginks in the town, being a little worse of bootleg, tried to get fresh with her, and the hot-tempered little thing hauls off and biffs him in the face. The poor prune wasn’t man enough to take his medicine, but bawls her out with some dirty remark about what she’d been in the town she’d come from. I guess she got seein’ red over that, for she picked up a catsup bottle and bashed him on the head with it. The rich man’s son came near kickin’ the bucket from that clout, and, as it was, he was a month or so in the hospital before they were sure he’d pull through. They didn’t pull the girl up for attackin’ him, because his family didn’t want the notoriety; but she was held in jail on a charge of disorderly conduct till they’d see what would happen to him. Then, if he lived, they intended to bring her before the magistrate and get her packed off to a reformatory as an example of what happens to bad girls who beat up rich men’s sons.