“No.”
“Then yer a liar, Mr. McGuire, ye never saw Umaha—gimme that glim.”
Now, McGuire had never been called a liar. He was not a liar, and he knew it, but he gave the foreman the glim, just over the left eye.
“You dam farmer,” said Dick, and that was all he said. He put down his white light and put up his hands.
McGuire saw that he was about to have a fight with a man whom he had known less than ten minutes. He made his feet firm on the coarse gravel and waited. Dick wiped his bleeding eye on his jumper sleeve and looked for an opening. McGuire put up his hands awkwardly.
Dick smiled.
Scrappy Jim saw the men manœuvring in the twilight and signalled a switch-engine back with a rush signal, whirling his lamp furiously until the pony had stopped in front of the switch-shanty.
“Smatter?” demanded fighting John Jones, leaning from the cab. He did not like the signal. It seemed to him that it carried an unnecessary amount of “hurry up.” Without lifting his eyes to the cab, Jim stepped aboard, and, nodding down the yard, said, “Back up. Suicide’s touchin’ up the new guy.”
Jones opened the throttle and the yard engine slid down the track and stopped short where the trouble was. Dick heard the engine and was glad. He liked an audience. He remembered how the yardmaster had “touched him up” in the first hour of his first day’s work for the company, and recalled with pride that the good showing he had made with Jim had won promotion. McGuire had expected that the yardmaster on the engine and the engineer would stop the fight, but he heard no word from them. Only three suns had set since this pugilistic pair had shut themselves up in a box car and settled their own little differences, and they now leaned side by side from the cab window and looked with much interest upon the argument that was about to take place.
“Here they come,” said Dick, playfully, and he reached for McGuire’s face.