“Gee up into the yoke, you crumpled-horn hyampus!” The teamster welted the goad across Kyle’s haunches and further encouraged the putative ox by a thrust of a full inch of the brad.
When the boss came onto his feet with a berserker howl of fury and started to attack, the ox expert yelled, “Dat rat ye, don’t ye try to hook your horns into me!” Then he flailed the stick once more across Kyle’s nose with a force that knocked the boss flat on his back.
Echford Flagg stepped forward and stood between the two men when Kyle struggled to his feet and started toward the teamster with the mania of blood lust in his red eyes. The master put forth a hand and thrust back the raging mate. Flagg said something, but for a time he could not be heard above the tempest of howling laughter.
It was riotous abandonment to mirth. Men hung helplessly to other men or flapped their hands and staggered about, choking with their merriment. The savageness of the punishment administered to the boastful Kyle might have shocked persons with squeamish dispositions; it was wildly humorous in the estimation of those men o’ the forest. They were used to having their jokes served raw.
The roar that fairly put into the background the riot of the falling waters of the Noda was what all the region recognized as the ruination of a man’s authority in the north country; it was the Big Laugh.
Flagg, when he could make himself heard by his boss, holding Kyle in his mighty grip, made mention of the Big Laugh, too. “Kyle, you’ve got it at last by your damn folly. You’re licked forever in these parts. I warned you. You went ahead against my word to you. You’re no good to me after this.” He yanked the list of names from Kyle’s jacket pocket.
“Let me loose! I’m going to kill that——”
“You’re going to walk out—and away! You’re done. You’re fired. You can’t boss men after this. A boss, are you?” he demanded, with bitter irony. “All up and down this river, if you tried to boss men, they’d give you the grin and call you ’Co Boss’. They’d moo after you. Look at ’em now. Listen to ’em. Get out of my sight. I don’t forgive any man who goes against my word to him and then gets into trouble.” He thrust Kyle away with a force that sent the man staggering. He turned to the bashful chap, who had resumed his former demeanor of deprecation. “You’re hired. You’ve showed that you can drive oxen and I reckon you can drive logs.”
The teamster was too thoroughly bulwarked by admirers to allow the rampant Kyle an opportunity to get at him. And there was Flagg to reckon with if violence should be attempted. The deposed first mate slunk away.
“That, my men,” proclaimed the master, “is what the Big Laugh can do to a boss. No man can be a boss for me after he gets that laugh. I reckon I’ve hired my crew,” he went on, looking them over critically. “Stand by to follow me north in the morning.”