“I know I astonish you, Colonel,” he added. “I astonish myself. I'm not much on self-analysis. I don't know just what has come over me the last few weeks. But they do say the Deity picks out queer instruments when He wants things done. Man to man, now, forgetting you're a mighty man and I'm a small one, won't you say you'll give the people of this state pure water instead of poison?”
“You don't think you can stroll in here and coax me to build over the whole Consolidated system, do you?”
“That isn't the idea at all, sir. Treat me simply as a voice—a jog of your conscience—a reminder. I'll go away and you'll never see me again.”
“If you think the cranks in this state can influence me in the least item about running my own business you're the worst lunatic outside the state asylum,” declared the colonel, with passion.
“You mean that what I have asked on behalf of women and children hasn't had any effect on you?”
“Not the slightest. Get out!” In his present mood Colonel Dodd would not admit to this interloper that he planned reforms, and in that moment he unwittingly created his Frankenstein's monster.
Farr retreated a couple of steps and bowed. “Colonel Dodd, in my part of the West we fellows had a little code: help a woman, always, everywhere; tote a tired child in our arms; and, in the case of a man who announced himself an enemy, give him fair notice when it came time to pull guns. Better get your weapon loose on your hip.”
He bowed again and went out.
Briggs rose from his knees and his master snapped an angry stare from the door that the young man had closed softly behind himself.
“What kind of a resort is my office getting to be? Do you know who that devilish fool is, Briggs?”