Carter heard him in open-mouthed amazement, his astonishment changing first to amusement, then to indignation as he gathered the drift of Douglass's intent. Grace, suddenly comprehending many things previously only hinted at, looked genuinely distressed and tapped nervously on the carpet with her sandaled foot.
"Why, man, you're crazy!" shouted Carter. "Do you think for a moment that I will permit you to even contemplate such an absurdity?"
"Pardon me," said Douglass, suavely; "the question of your permit does not enter into the matter at all; and I've done all the thinking necessary. I have had it under contemplation for a long time. This business is going to be settled right here and now!" There was no mistaking his determination and Carter was dumb-foundered.
"But—" he stammered, protestingly, "the thing is utterly inconceivable! I could not even momentarily entertain such a preposterous proposal. Why, supposing for argument's sake, that Matlock's private animosity to you in person had brought this about, how does that inculpate you? And if it did, do you think I would stand for your only taking a paltry hundred dollars for a whole season's hard work, the best work ever done on this range? Nonsense, old fellow; you've got another think coming!"
"Well, I'm thinking that a hundred odd is just what's coming to me, and just what I'm going to get!" said Douglass, obstinately. "It'll be plenty for what I am going to do with it."
Carter sprang up, stormily: "Don't be any more of an ass than God intended you to be. Quixotism went out centuries ago. You're going to get what's actually due you!"
"And that is a hundred odd, I believe you make it, Mr. Douglass?" interrupted Grace, evenly, with a look of imperious warning at her brother. "Can't you see, dear, that he is right! Now no more petty bickering between you two foolish boys. Don't look so desolated, Bobbie; Mr. Douglass does not intend this as a preamble to his resignation; he is not going to leave us. There are no quitters on the C Bar."
"Let me write the check," she continued, in hasty trepidation, not daring to look at the man she had so audaciously preëmpted to their service. "Not a word, leave it to me!" she whispered tensely to her brother, whose lips were again opening in protest. "For heaven's sake, don't spoil it all!"
As she dipped the pen in the ink she hesitated: "Your given name, Mr. Douglass? I have never learned it in full."
"Kenneth—Kenneth Malcolm," he said shortly. She bit her lip as she wrote hurriedly; he was so deliciously pompous!