“Sir!”
If Chadron had proposed treason the colonel could not have compressed more censure into that word.
“That’s all right,” Chadron assured him, comfortably; “I’ve got two senators and five congressmen back there in Washington that jigger when I jerk the gee-string. You can cut loose and come into this thing with a free hand, and go the limit, the department be damned if they don’t like it!”
Colonel Landcraft’s face was flaming angrily. He snapped his dry old eyelids like flints over the steel of his eyes, and stood as straight as the human body could be drawn, one hand on his sword hilt, the other pointing a trembling finger at Chadron’s face.
“You cattlemen run this state, and one or two others here in the Northwest, I’m aware of that, Chadron. But there’s one thing that you don’t run, 142 and that’s the United States army! I don’t care a damn how many congressmen dance to your tune, you’re not big enough to move even one trooper out of my barracks, sir! That’s all I’ve got to say to you.”
Chadron stood a little while, glowering at the colonel. It enraged him to be blocked in that manner by a small and inconsequential man. This he felt Colonel Landcraft to be, measured against his own strength and importance in that country. Himself and the other two big cattlemen in that section of the state lorded it over an area greater than two or three of the old states where the slipping heritage of individual liberty was born. Now here was a colonel in his way; one little old gray colonel!
“All right,” Chadron said at length, charging his words with what he doubtless meant to be a significant foreboding, measuring Colonel Landcraft with contemptuous eye. “I can call out an army of my own. I came to you because we pay you fellers to do what I’m askin’ of you, and because I thought it’d save me time. That’s all.”
“You came to me because you have magnified your importance in this country until you believe you’re the entire nation,” the colonel replied, very hot and red.
Chadron made no answer to that. He turned toward the military door, but Colonel Landcraft would not permit his unsanctified feet, great as they were and free to come and go as they liked in other 143 places, to pass that way. He frowned at Major King, who had stood by in silence all the time, like a good soldier, his eyes straight ahead. Major King touched Chadron’s arm.
“This way, sir, if you please,” he said.