Adair tossed away the stump of his cigarette.
"You're quite sure that is what is needed?" he queried.
"To knock a grain av sinse into thot Wicklow man?" queried Gallagher. "Sure, it is." And then whispering: "But not for you, Misther Adair; he'd ate you in two bites. L'ave me have a thry wid him."
But Adair was off and fronting the surly MacMorrogh foreman.
"We need a dozen of your men and some tools," he said quietly. "Do we get them?"
"Not by a fistful!" retorted the surly one. "Maybe you think you're enough of a —— —— —— to take 'em."
"I am a better man than you are," was the even-toned rejoinder.
"Prove it, then."
Gallagher, leaning from his cab window, fully awake now, and chuckling and rubbing his hands together softly, saw the blow. It was clean-cut, swift as the lightning's flash, true to a finger's breadth, and the sound of it was as bone upon bone. At its impact the Wicklow man bounded into the air, arched his back like a bow, and pitched on his head in the ditch. When he rose up, roaring blasphemies and doubling his huge fists for the fray, the quiet voice was assailing him again. "Do we get the men and tools?"
"Not—"