The Honorable Pulaski tucked the end of a big cigar into the opening in his bristly gray beard where his mouth was hidden, and lighted it. As an after-thought he offered one to MacLeod. The young man, his elbows on his knees, his flushed face turned aside, shook his head sullenly.
“Well, you’re having a run of cuss-foolishness that even our champion fool, Tommy Eye himself, couldn’t match,” snorted the old man, rolling his tongue around his cigar.
Tommy, behind the rock, tipped one ear up out of the moss.
“Here you go pouncing into that car to-day, where my new time-keeper was, and go to picking a fuss with him, and—”
“He was the one that started it, Mr. Britt,” said the boss, in the dull monotone of one who has said the same thing many times before.
“Don’t bluff me!” snapped the Honorable Pulaski. “You were gossiping over a lot of his private business with that Ide girl—and bringing me into it, too. You can’t fool me! Old Jeff back in the car heard it all. The young feller had a right to put in an oar to stop you, and he did it, and I’ll back him in it.”
“Yes, and you went and introduced him to Miss Ide—that’s some more of your backin’,” said MacLeod, bitterly.
“Just common politeness—just common politeness!” cried Britt, waving his cigar impatiently. “That girl hasn’t said she’d marry you, has she? No! I knew she hadn’t. Well, she’s got a right to talk with nice young men that I introduce to her, and there’s nothing to it to make a fuss over, MacLeod—only common politeness. You’re making a fool of yourself, and setting the girl herself against you by acting jealous like that before the face and eyes of every one. That’s enough time and talk wasted on girls. Now, quit it, and get your mind on your work. You understand that I won’t have any more of this scrapping in my crew.”
With a blissful disregard of consistency, he gazed through smoke-clouds down at the men below, who were listlessly exchanging blows or rolling on the ground, locked in close embrace.