She had not a city-bred woman’s self-poise, he thought. Her manner was that of the country belle, spoiled the least bit by flattery and attention. And yet, as he looked at her, he thought that he had never seen fairer skin to set off the flush of angry beauty. For others there was something alluring in the absolute whiteness of her teeth, peeping under the curve of her lip, in the nose (the least bit retroussé), in the looped locks of brown hair crossing her temples. Yet there was no admiration in his eyes.
“I hope you won’t hold me guilty of being the intruder,” he said, coldly.
“Not if you move your brogans over to some seat where there is more room for them,” she returned, with a click of her white teeth that showed mild savagery. This young man who was in love with some one else, and who had scowled at her, was decidedly not to her liking, she thought, in spite of his regular features, his firm chin, his clean-cut mouth unhidden by beard, and his brown eyes.
Wade flushed, rose, bowed with hat lifted to a rather ironical height, and took his seat alone, well to the front of the car. He saw MacLeod’s baleful face framed in the little window of the smoking-car’s door. For mile after mile, as the train jangled on, it remained there.
The menace of the expression, the challenge in the attitude, and this insolent espionage, all following the insults of his gossiping tongue, wrought upon the young man’s feelings like a file on metal. As his resentment gnawed, it was in his mind to go and smash his fist through the little window into the middle of that lowering countenance.
To him came the Honorable Pulaski, bristling and bustling.
“They’re telling me back there, young man, that you and Colin came near to having some sort of rumpus a little while ago. Now, I can’t have anything of that sort going on among my men. You mind your business. I’ll make him mind his. But what’s it all about, anyway? Why were you going to fight like roosters at sight?”
Wade looked at his pompous red face and into his eyes with their yellowish sclerotic, and choked back the recrimination he had intended. The thought of opening his heart’s poor secret by bandying words with this man made him quiver.
“As well to talk to a Durham bull,” he reflected.
“Why, you poor college dude,” went on his employer, scornfully, “Colin MacLeod would break you in two and use you to taller his boots, a piece in each hand. You’re hired to keep books and peddle wangan stuff according to the prices marked! Keep your place, where you belong. Don’t go to stacking muscle against the boss of the Busters.”