"Oh, no, you don't," he contradicted, falling back into the half-jocular vein. "You're a pretty good spender, yourself, Madgie. If you didn't have plenty of money to eat and drink and wear and breathe——"
"I hate it!" she said coldly. Then she dragged the talk back to the channel it was leaving. "I ought to have broken in sooner; I might have known what you would do. You are responsible for this labor trouble they are having over at the iron works. Don't bother to deny it; I know. That was your 'heeler'—the man you had here when I came. You don't play fair with many people: don't you think you'd better make an exception of me?"
Grierson was mouthing his cigar again and the smoky nimbus was thickening to its customary density when he said: "You're nothing but a spoiled baby, Madge. If you'd cry for the moon, you'd think you ought to have it. I've said my say, and that's all there is to it. Trot along home and 'tend to your tea-parties: that's your part of the game. I can play my hand alone."
She slipped out of the window-seat and crossed the room quickly to stand before him.
"I'll go, when you have answered one question," she said, the suppressed passions finding their way into her voice. "I've asked for bread and you've given me a stone. I've said 'please' to you, and you slapped me for it. Do you think you can afford to shove me over to the other side?"
"I don't know what you're driving at, now," was the even-toned rejoinder.
"Don't you? Then I'll tell you. You have been pinching this town for the lion's share ever since we came here—shaking it down as you used to shake down the"—she broke off short, and again the indomitable will got the better of the seething passions. "We'll let the by-gones go, and come down to the present. What if some of the things you are doing here and now should get into print?"
"For instance?" he suggested, when she paused.
"This Raymer affair, for one thing. You don't own the Wahaskan—yet: supposing it should come out to-morrow morning with the true story of this disgraceful piece of buccaneering, telling how you tried first to squeeze him through the bank loan, and when that failed, how you bribed his workmen to make trouble?"
"You go to Randolph and try it," said the gray wolf, jeeringly. "In the first place, he wouldn't believe it—coming from you. He wouldn't forget that you're my daughter, however much you are trying to forget it. In the next place he'd want proof—damned good proof—if he was going to make a fight on me. He'd know that one of two things would happen; if he failed to get me, I'd get him."