"To the railroad," said Damer. "Out of the country!"
"Without telling me? That was kind of foolish of you. Still, you haven't much sense, anyway. You had quite a well-paid job at Somasco."
"Well," said Damer dryly, "I haven't got it now."
Hallam laughed, though the glint in his eyes did not express good will. "You have got a temper that will be the ruin of you, and don't know when a man's too big for you, while, now I come to look at you, there's a lump on your forehead that makes the thing quite plain. You have been fooling with Alton, and he has 'most pounded the life out of you. Still, what do you want to leave the country for, anyway?"
Damer set his lips, and drummed with his fingers on the table. Then he made a little deprecatory gesture, and glanced at Hallam.
"You'll hear it all by and by, but there's one point where you're wrong," he said. "Now, I'm not scared too easily, but I kind of feel it in me I'll make nothing but trouble for myself by worrying Alton. Still, it's not the man himself I'm afraid of. I've met tougher ones, and come out ahead of them."
Hallam sat silent a moment, for he knew the prospectors and survey packers who passed their lives amidst the desolate ranges and in the shadowy bush and their superstitions.
"You have had trouble with him before?" he said.
"Yes," said Damer, "I have. He cut my partner down with an axe back there in Washington. It was in the big rush in the Baker foothills, and we had a hard crowd standing in with us; but I had to pull out, and Alton and another man made most of five thousand dollars out of the claim I left."
"The Bluebird?" said Hallam reflectively. "I remember that rush. Alton did himself well. Wasn't there a man called Nailer mixed up in the affair?"