"No, Red didn't go to do that," the cook continued. "He moved. Red didn't mean it; did you, Red?"
After that one yell of pain the red teamster's eyes had glued to a handspike which lay near by. But the useless wrist checked the impulse, and he stood, sullenly noting changed opinion.
"Is this a Sunday-school?" he answered, sneering. "Or mebbe a Young Folks' Christian Endeavor? Sliver, what's the golden text?"
"Oh, shore, Red!" Sliver remonstrated.
"It's this." Carter looked round the group. "Any man who lays a hand on this poor lad again gets his time." His glance fixed on Michigan Red.
The red teamster shrugged. His chance had gone by, and he was acute enough to recognize the fact. Not that he lacked courage or strength to try it out, man for man—bite, gouge, kick, in the brutal fashion of the lumber woods. Taken by surprise, he had lost his vantage, and now saw that his adversary had cleverly ranged against him an adverse opinion.
"It's not him I'm laying for," he growled. "Some other day!"
The "other day" came a week later. Entering the stables at noon in search of Brady, the water-hauler, Carter saw the red teamster perched on the top rail of the black stallion's stall, in his hand the iron muzzle which he had unstrapped that the brute might feed with ease. As the beast snapped, rather than ate, his oats, he cast vicious, uneasy glances from the tail of his eye at Red; but, indifferent to the brute's mood and the anxious glances of his fellows, the teamster calmly chewed his tobacco.
It was by just such tricks that he had gained ascendency over his fellows. Whereas it was worth another man's life to step into their stall, the blacks would stand and sweat in rage and fear while Michigan slapped and poked their ribs. The devil in the beasts seemed to recognize a superior in the pale-green fiend in the man.
"Brady here?" Carter asked. "Oh, there you are!"