"Gosh, Mr. Gourlay!" he cried protestingly, "have ye forgotten whatna day it is? Ye havena gi'en my men a ton o' stuff to gang on wi'."
To the farmer's dismay his fine sample of grain was scattered on the gravel by a convulsive movement of Gourlay's arm. As Gourlay turned on his enemy, his face was frightfully distorted; all his brow seemed gathered in a knot above his nose, and he gaped on his words, yet ground them out like a labouring mill, each word solid as plug shot.
"I'll see Wil-son ... and Gib-son ... and every other man's son ... frying in hell," he said slowly, "ere a horse o' mine draws a stane o' Wilson's property. Be damned to ye, but there's your answer!"
Gibson's cunning deserted him for once. He put his hand on Gourlay's shoulder in pretended friendly remonstrance.
"Take your hand off my shouther!" said Gourlay, in a voice the tense quietness of which should have warned Gibson to forbear.
But he actually shook Gourlay with a feigned playfulness.
Next instant he was high in air; for a moment the hobnails in the soles of his boots gleamed vivid to the sun; then Gourlay sent him flying through the big window of the Red Lion, right on to the middle of the great table where the market-folk were drinking.
For a minute he lay stunned and bleeding among the broken crockery, in a circle of white faces and startled cries.
Gourlay's face appeared at the jagged rent, his eyes narrowed to fiercely gleaming points, a hard, triumphant devilry playing round his black lips. "You damned treacherous rat!" he cried, "that's the game John Gourlay can play wi' a thing like you."
Gibson rose from the ruin on the table and came bleeding to the window, his grin a rictus of wrath, his green teeth wolfish with anger.