"Mister Bender"—he spat at the title—"is down at the grading-camp."
"I said for you to call him." Carter's tone, in its very gentleness, caused the girl to look quickly so she caught his queer expression. Compounded of curiosity, interest, expectation, his glance seemed to flicker above, below, around the red teamster, to enfold, wrap him with its subtle questioning. Impressed more than she could have been by threat or command, she waited—she knew not for what—oppressed by the loom of imminent danger.
But it was not in the teamster's book to disobey—just then. Lingering to pick another coal, he sauntered down the room under flow of that curious, flickering glance, and closed the door behind him with a bang. Sharp as the crack of a gun, Dorothy half expected to see smoke curling up to the massive roof-logs. But though her father and lover looked their surprise, Carter resumed his eating, and there was no comment until he excused himself a few minutes later.
Tugging his gray beard, the chief engineer then turned to the surveyor. "Why doesn't he fire that fellow?"
Shrugging, the young fellow passed the question up to the cook. "You've known them longest."
Thus tapped, the cook turned on a flow of information, appending his own theory of Carter's patience to a short and unflattering history of Michigan Red. "You see, Red thought he was the better man from the beginning, an' it was just up to the boss to give him fair chance to prove it. As for him, he likes the excitement. You've seen a cat play with a mouse? Well—an' when the cat does jump—"
"Good-bye mouse," the surveyor finished.
The cook's significant nod filled Dorothy with astonishment. From the social heights upon which the accident of birth had placed her, she had looked down upon the laboring-classes, deeming them rude, simple, unsophisticated. Yet here she found complex moods, a vendetta conducted with Machiavellian subtlety, a drastic code that compelled a man to cherish his enemy till he had had opportunity to strike.
The knowledge helped her to a conclusion which she stated as they walked back to her father's tent. "Such pride! I understand now why he left her. Just fancy his keeping on that man?"
"Damned nonsense, I call it," her father growled. "That fellow will make trouble for him yet."