“Mother of Moses!” muttered Stumpy, grimly observant. “He’s lookin’ for Gallagher. Now if Gallagher was home what a broth of a shindy there’d be! Saints be! but it’s good he’s took a sneak.”
Deviously, and with many pauses and new starts, Long Mike made his way toward Gallagher’s house. Arriving in front of it he paused, and cleared his throat with a yell, the like of which Brownsville had never heard, save from the exhaust-pipe of some steamboat.
Following this came a monstrous cataract of vituperation, Homeric in strength, Gargantuan in explicit epithets, shameless in profanity, and seemingly endless in continuance, but bibulously uncertain as to its exact purport. The general tenor of it seemed to indicate a strong desire for a personal encounter with one Gallagher.
When, after a long period of this, silence ensued, Long Mike waited for awhile, but no answer came. The door remained closed, and no sign of life came from within. Standing forward at length, he raised his foot, and Gallagher’s door flew in.
“Glory be!” muttered Stumpy again, “it’s little use he has for latches and locks the mornin’. And it’s little good Gallagher’ll get of his furniture from now.”
This last statement was undeniably true, for Long Mike, finding no living being in the house, seized a chair and painstakingly demolished everything destructible on the premises. Then he came out, and after whooping wildly a few times at the uttermost pitch of his powerful voice, made his way slowly and crookedly to the barroom. And after him, one by one, the heads of the households in Brownsville came slowly.
Now Gallagher, as all Brownsville knew, was Long Mike’s foreman, and Long Mike’s ownership of all the mules in Brownsville was hardly more absolute than his proprietorship in all the available human labour of the place, and, moreover, the imperious character that had enabled him to conquer his position in the community made him its autocrat.
The reflected glory of such a man, to be enjoyed by one fortunate enough to be his foreman, would be enough for any ordinary person, but Gallagher was not ordinary. Debarred by nature from the possibility of attaining the highest eminence, he was still covetous of distinction, and the satisfaction he derived from the hearty hatred of the men he tyrannized over, was poisoned by the reflection that the good-natured giant who tyrannized over him held him in contempt.
Because of these things there was frequent friction between the two. Gallagher could extract more work from a mule or a man than any one else, and Long Mike valued him accordingly. Nevertheless, there were times when the foreman’s unruly tongue would so stir up the temper of his employer as to secure his immediate discharge. Having little confidence in anything that Long Mike said, Gallagher would proceed with his work, serenely indifferent to his dismissal, and would collect his wages as usual at the close of the week.
It had happened, however, that ever since the night when the one-eyed man had suddenly perished in a controversy with one Wharton, which controversy touched on points of etiquette appertaining to the game of draw-poker, Long Mike had been unable to steady his nerves, despite his persistent efforts to do so by a liberal use of the one specific in which he had faith. Being unusually irritable, therefore, he had resented Gallagher’s latest impertinence more bitterly than usual, and, in addition to discharging him, had attempted also to kill him.