“That’s it, Albert—jest it!”
Something in Milton’s tone seemed to annoy Albert even more than his confession of failure had done. He rose to his feet abruptly. “Don’t ‘Albert’ me!” he said, raising his voice out of its accustomed calm; “I don’t like it! You take too much upon yourself. But—I am to blame for it myself. I’ve let you run things with too free a hand, and trusted affairs to you that I ought to have kept to myself. It is always my way,” he went on, in petulant selfcriticism. “I never did trust anybody who was worth the powder to blow him up. I ought to be used to it by this time. But to encounter two such fools in one evening—and this evening of all others, too—by George! it’s enough to make a man strike his mother!”
“I ain’t no fool, Mister Fairchild”—the hired man was standing up too, and his harsh tones gave the title an elaborate, almost ridiculous emphasis—“’n’ I’ll thank yeh to keep yer tongue civil, tew! Ef yeh don’t like my style, yeh kin git sum’un else to do yer dirty work for yeh. I’ve no hankerin’ fer it. I’m hired to manage this farm, I am. Nothin’ was said ’baout my hevin’ to run a Congresshn’l campaign into th’ bargain. I ain’t sayin’ but what I kin do it’s well’s some other folks. I ain’t sayin’ that it’s beyon’ me. P’raps I’ve got my pull ’n’ this caounty, ’s well ’s some other people. P’raps ’f I was amine to, I could knock somebuddy’s game skyhigh, jis’ by liftin’ my little finger tomorrer. I ain’t sayin’ I’m goin’ to dew it. I ain’t findin’ no fault with yeh. All I say is I ain’t goin’ to take one ioty o’ slack from you, or anybody else, about this thing. You hear me!”
The hired man had spoken aggressively and loudly, with his thumbs in the arm-holes of his vest, and his shaggy head well up in the air. He knew his employer pretty well, and had estimated with some precision the amount of impudence he would bear. This full measure he was not disposed to abate one atom. He had failed to buy the Jay County boss, or even to satisfactorily gauge his intentions, it was true, but that was no reason why he should submit to being called a fool by Albert Fairchild, who couldn’t run his farm, let alone his Congressional campaign, without him. So the mean-figured, slouching countryman, with his cheap, ill-fitting clothes, frowzy beard, and rough, red hands truculently spread palm outward on his breast, stood his ground before the city lawyer and grinned defiance at him.
The lawyer did not immediately reply. He was not ordinarily at a loss for words or decisions in his dealings with men, but this rude, uncouth rustic, with his confident air and his fund of primordial cunning, puzzled him. There was some uneasiness in the feeling, too, for he could not remember the exact limits of his confidences with Milton. Moreover he could not afford, at any price, to quarrel with him now on the eve of the Convention. “After the election we’ll clip your wings, my fine fellow,” he thought to himself, but he gave the words upon which he finally decided a kindlier turn.
“Yes, I hear you. Almost anybody on the side-hill could, the way you are talking. There is no reason why you should lose your temper. If you couldn’t fix Beekman, why that’s all there is to it. We must go at it in a different way. I can see through him. He’s standing out for a cash payment. The old fox wants money down.”
“Well, you’ve got it fur him, hain’t yeh? Go ’n’ give it to him, straight aout!”
“But that’s it—I wanted you to bring back an idea of his figure.”
“His figger. How much hev yeh got?”
“Never mind that—it’s a d——d sight more than the office is worth; but when a man gets into a fight of this sort, he’s got to force his way through, cost or no cost.”