But it should be something to show them all that he could no longer be bossed and insulted and jeered at—all in that bumptious, braggadocio, bucko spirit of the woods!
Both platforms of the cars were swarming with men—men rigged in queer garb: wool leggings, wool jackets striped off in bizarre colors or checked like crazy horse-blankets. Each man in sight carried his heavy brogan shoes hung about his neck.
They were singing in fairly good time, and Wade listened to the words despite himself:
“Oh, here I come from the Kay-ni-beck,
With my old calk boots slung round my neck
Here we come—yas, a-here we come—
A hundred men and a jug of rum.
WHOOP-fa-dingo!
Old Prong Jones!”
The girl passed Wade, going down the aisle before he left his seat. He came behind her. But they were obliged to wait at the door. The men crowded close upon both platforms. Each man had a meal-sack stuffed with his possessions. They were all elbowing each other, and the result was a congestion that the kicks of the Honorable Pulaski and the cuffings of Colin MacLeod did little to break.
The boss of the Busters kept stealing glances at the girl, as though to challenge her notice, and perhaps her admiration, as she saw him thus a master of men.
It was then that the spirit of anger and rebellion seething in Dwight Wade—the cumulative poison of his many insults—stirred him to bitter provocation in his own turn.
The girl carried a heavy leather suit-case, and now, waiting for the press of men to escape from the car, she rested it against a seat, and sighed in weariness and vexation.
With quiet masterfulness Wade took it from her hand and smiled into the astonished gray eyes that flashed back over her shoulder at him. It was a smile that not even a maiden, offended as she had been, could resist.
“I will assist you to—to—I believe it is a stage-coach that takes us on,” he said. “Let me do this, so that you won’t remember me simply as a man whose own troubles made him a boor.”