“Take the combination of a candidate for governor, some fool women, crazy men, love-sick idiots, and”—his eyes swept the scene in vain search for Tommy Eye—“a pooch-mouthed blabber, and it’s enough to trig any decent, honest, sensible woods fight ever yarded down. Barrett, you’re right! You’d better get home and get on your long-tailed coat and plug hat as soon as you can. You and your private”—he sneered the word—“business don’t seem to fit in up here.”
He folded his arms and, with his men behind him, stood looking over the crew for the Enchanted, who, cheerfully and without question, stood blocking the way.
“It may not happen just now,” he grunted, “but it’s on my mind to say that some day these two gangs will get together when there isn’t a governor’s boom to step on, nor women to get mussed up.”
And the gaze of fury that he bent on Dwight Wade was returned with interest.
An imaginative man might have seen the new spirit of the woods facing the old.
But there was no imaginative man there—there were only men who chewed tobacco and wondered what it all meant.