“He comes along to me as I was choppin',” related Miles to the Sunkhaze postmaster, “and he yowls, 'Git to goin' there, man, git to goin'!' 'An',' says I, 'sure, an' I'll not yank the ax back till it's done cuttin'.' An' then he” Miles put his finger carefully against the puffiness under his eye, “he hit me.”
“Was there a tall stranger come up on the tote-team two weeks or so ago?” asked the postmaster.
“There were,” Miles replied, listlessly, and intent on his own troubles.
“Hear anything special about his business?”
“No. The old man took the stranger into the wangun camp, where it was private, and they talked. None of us heard 'em.”
“And then the stranger went away, hey?” “Oh, well, at last we heard the old man howlin' and yowlin' in the wangun camp and then he comes a-pushing the tall stranger out with such awful language as you know he can. An' he says to the stranger, 'Talk about charters and condemning land till ye're black in the face, I say ye can't do it; and every rail ye lay I'll tie it into a bow-knot. An' I'll eat your charter, seals and all. An' I'll throw your engine into the lake. An' how do ye like the smell of those?' When he said it he cracked his old fists under the stranger's nose. An' the stranger gets into the team and goes away. So that's all of it, and none of us knowed what it meant at all.”
The postmaster darted significant glances round the circle of faces at the stove, and the loungers returned the stare with interest.
“What did I tell ye?” he demanded.
“Just as any one might ha' told that lawyer,” said a man, clicking his knife-blade.