“Meaning by that you’re thinking of buying a wood-lot from Zebulon Kingsley?”
Secretly I was sort of laughing at myself. Here I was, inviting a lot of trouble by insisting on doing something which was a positive impossibility, so it seemed then as I jingled my coins in my pocket.
“I have my business the same as you have yours, sir. I didn’t know—”
“You did know!” he shouted. “And if you are such a renegade as to forget what has been done to your family by that skunk, you know now—for I’m telling you! You can’t do business with Zebulon Kingsley. I say it!” He pounded his fist on his breast.
I kept still. I was trying to work out in my mind some sensible idea as to what I really did intend to do in the matter of that wood-lot.
My uncle leaned toward me over the table in the town office, propping himself on one fist and pounding softly and slowly with the other. His lips were rolled back and he growled his words deep down in his throat, almost in a whisper.
“I know what he is, now. I’ve got the stuff on him. I’ve had to work slow. I’ve had to convince two devilish steers on the board of selectmen without telling ’em what I’m after. But I’ve got ’em. And he is headed for hell and I’m after him. And he knows it now and that’s the best of it! Because I’m taking my time while he is thinking it over! Oh, my gad! if only your father could have lived till now to see how the devilish old gouger and robber is getting his! And he is paying for your mother’s tears and sweat with drops of his blood. And he is paying me, too. I stay up nights to see that lamp in his office window. And you say, do you, that you have come here to hand over money to Zebulon Kingsley? To the man who filed your father’s heart in two with a mortgage?”
“It’s only in the way of ordinary trade,” I ventured. I was wondering why I was continuing to provoke my uncle. But I knew I needed to start considerable of a smoke to screen my real condition from him.
“There is to be no trade between you,” raged my uncle. “No money from you shall touch that scoundrel’s hands!” Just at that moment I was more sure of that than he was.
My uncle gave me a little opportunity to do some thinking, for he went to the office safe and pulled out a bottle and drank.