“I did not hit him, sir. I said nothing more. And there was a lady present.”
Flagg choked and struggled with words before he could speak. “Do you mean to tell me you’re allowing any ladee”—he put exquisite inflection of sarcasm on the word—“to stand betwixt you and your duty, when that duty is plain? Latisan, they tell me that you’re a sapgag where women are concerned. I’m told that you have been down to the city and——”
“Mr. Flagg, we’ll stick to the subject of the dynamite!” broke in the young man, sharply.
“Women are the same thing and belong in the talk.”
“Then we’ll stick to the dynamite that comes in boxes.” Latisan was just as peremptory as the master and was hurrying his business; he felt the dog of the Latisan temperament slipping neck from the leash. “You may have been able to make ’em haul dynamite for you, in spite of the law. I can’t make ’em, it seems. I’m here merely to report, and to say that I’ll have the dynamite up from the junction just the same.” He started for the door.
“By tote team—three times the cost! My Gawd! why ain’t I out and around?” lamented the Adonia Jeremiah.
Latisan wanted to say that he would pay the extra cost of transportation out of his own pocket, if that would save argument, but he did not dare to trust himself. He hurried out of the big house and slammed the door.
On his way down the hill he was obliged to marshal a small host of reasons for hanging on to his job; the desire to quit then and there was looming large, potent, imperative.
He was still scowling when he tramped into the office of the tavern where many loafers were assembled. Through the haze of tobacco smoke he saw Martin Brophy beckoning, and went to the desk. Brophy ran his smutted finger along under a name; “Mrs. Dana Haines Everett, New York City.”
“She has been asking for you. Matter o’ business, she says. I’ve had to give her the front parlor for her room. Say, she’s the kind that gets what she goes after, I reckon. Is eating her supper served in there private. Never was done in my tavern before.”