“I’ve got him. I’ve got him—like that!” he said transferring the cigarette to his mouth, and clenching his right hand as though it could not be loosed by an earthquake. “For sure, it’s a thing finished as the solder of a pannikin—like that.”
He caught up a tin quart-pot from the bar-counter and showed the soldered bottom of it.
He was alone in the bar of Barbazon’s Hotel except for one person—the youngest of the officials who had been retired from the offices of the railways when Ingolby had merged them. This was a man who had got his position originally by nepotism, and represented the worst elements of a national life where the spoils system is rooted in the popular mind. He had, however, a little residue of that discipline which, working in a great industrial organization, begets qualms as to extreme courses.
He looked reflectively at the leaden pot and said in reply: “I’d never believe in anything where that Ingolby is concerned till I had it in the palm of my hand. He’s as deep as a well, and when he’s quietest it’s good to look out. He takes a lot of skinning, that badger.”
“He’s skinned this time all right,” was Marchand’s reply. “To-morrow’ll be the biggest day Manitou’s had since the Indian lifted his wigwam and the white man put down his store. Listen—hear them! They’re coming!”
He raised a hand for silence, and a rumbling, ragged roar of voices could be heard without.
“The crowd have gone the rounds,” he continued. “They started at Barbazon’s and they’re winding up at Barbazon’s. They’re drunk enough to-night to want to do anything, and to-morrow when they’ve got sore heads they’ll do anything. They’ll make that funeral look like a squeezed orange; they’ll show Lebanon and Master Ingolby that we’re to be bosses of our own show. The strike’ll be on after the funeral, and after the strike’s begun there’ll be—eh, bien sur!”
He paused sharply, as though he had gone too far. “There’ll be what?” whispered the other; but Marchand made no reply, save to make a warning gesture, for Barbazon, the landlord, had entered behind the bar.
“They’re coming back, Barbazon,” Marchand said to the landlord, jerking his head towards the front door. The noise of the crowd was increasing, the raucous shouts were so loud that the three had to raise their voices. “You’ll do a land-office business to-night,” he declared.
Barbazon had an evil face. There were rumours that he had been in gaol in Quebec for robbery, and that after he had served his time he had dug up the money he had stolen and come West. He had started the first saloon at Manitou, and had grown with the place in more senses than one. He was heavy and thick-set, with huge shoulders, big hands, and beady eyes that looked out of a stolid face where long hours, greed and vices other than drink had left their mark. He never drank spirits, and was therefore ready to take advantage of those who did drink. More than one horse and canoe and cow and ox, and acre of land, in the days when land was cheap, had come to him across the bar-counter. He could be bought, could Barbazon, and he sold more than wine and spirits. He had a wife who had left him twice because of his misdemeanours, but had returned and straightened out his house and affairs once again; and even when she went off with Lick Baldwin, a cattle-dealer, she was welcomed back without reproaches by Barbazon, chiefly because he had no morals, and her abilities were of more value to him than her virtue. On the whole, Gros Barbazon was a bad lot.