“I don’t want no beef,” he said. “I hev been cheated ’mongst ye. I won the fust ch’ice, an’ I won’t put up with the second.”
Price was nonplused for a moment; then he evolved a solution. “I’ll sell it, Mink,” he cried, “an’ bring ye the money! An’ don’t ye furgit old Tobias Winkeye,” he added beguilingly.
“Who’s old Tobias Winkeye?” asked the miller tartly.
Price laughed, sticking his hands in the pockets of his jeans trousers, and looked around, winking at the others with a jocosity enfeebled somewhat by his light sparse lashes. “Jes’ a man ez hev got a job fur Mink,” he said, enigmatically.
The old miller, baffled, and apprehending the mockery, laughed loud and aggressively, his white beard shaking, his bushy eyebrows overhanging his twinkling eyes.
“Hedn’t ye better bust the mill down, Mink?” he said floutingly.
“I will,—see ef I don’t!” Mink retorted, as he wheeled his mare.
Only idle wrath, an idle threat, void of even the vaguest intention. They all knew that at the time. But the significance of the scene was altered in the light of after events.
Mink’s fate had mounted with him, and the mare carried double as he rode out of Piomingo Cove.