"My partner's sister; I expect Davies told you, but don't see what this has to do with the thing."
"Sit down," said Martin, indicating a camp-chair, and then beckoned one of the men. "Bring some green bark and fix that smudge."
The man put fresh fuel on a smoldering fire and pungent blue smoke drifted about the tent.
"Better than mosquitoes; they're pretty fierce, evenings," Martin remarked. "Will you take a cigar?"
"No, thanks," said Jim. "I'll light my pipe."
He cut the tobacco slowly, because he did not know where to open his attack. Martin was not altogether the man he had thought and looked amused. He was a bushman; Jim knew the type, which was not, as a rule, marked by the use of small trickery. Yet Martin could handle money as well as he handled tools.
"Won't you state your business?" the contractor asked.
"I expect you and the Cartner people didn't like it when we got the telegraph job?"
"That is so. We thought the job was ours," Martin admitted.
"And you got to work to take it from us?"