“Then keep it for the right man. Don’t go to peddling it to Chucky Jack and all his friends,” said Polcher.
Glimpsing a stranger swinging down the brown trail that answered for the settlement’s one street, he motioned with his head for the men to pass inside. To mollify the bully he added—
“You understand, Lon, it’s yourself as much as it’s us you’ll be hurting by too much talk.”
“It’s that last drink of that——peach brandy,” mumbled Hester. “I’ll stick to rye after this. I can carry that.”
“Now you’re talking like a man of sense,” warmly approved Polcher, clapping him heartily on the shoulder. “Lord, what fools we all be at times when we git too much licker in. The boss combed me once till I thought he was going to kill me just because I got to speaking too free. Now let’s join the boys and try that rye.”
Outwardly amiable again, Hester followed him indoors; deep in his heart murder was sprouting. He knew Polcher wished to pacify him, and this knowledge only fanned his fury higher. And he knew Polcher had lied in confessing to babbling, for the tavern-keeper’s taciturnity, even when he drank, was that of his Indian ancestors.
The whisky was passed, Polcher jovially proclaiming it was his treat in honour of Hester’s return from somewhere after a month’s absence. Hester tossed off his portion without a word, now determined not to open his lips again except in monosyllables. Old Thatch sought to arouse him to a playful mood with a chuckling reminder of some deviltry he had played on a new settler over on the Holston. But even pride in his evil exploits could not induce Hester to emerge from his brooding meditations.
For the first time since he had won the right to wear the cock’s feather he had been backed down—and, at that, in the presence of the rough men he had domineered by his brutality. Of course it was the knife that had done it, he told himself, and yet he knew it was something besides the knife. If Old Thatch had held a knife at his throat, he would have laughed at him. No, it wasn’t that; it was the discovery that there dwelt in Polcher’s obsequious form a man he had never suspected. The knowledge enraged while subduing him. He recalled former insolences to the tavern-keeper, his treatment of him as if he were a humble servitor.
It was humiliating to know that, while he was sincere in his behaviour, Polcher had played a part, had tricked him. He knew that Polcher would gladly have him resume the rôle of bully, swear at him and treat him with disdain. He had no doubt but that Polcher would meekly submit to such browbeating. But never again could he play the bully with Polcher, and all this just because he understood how Polcher had fooled him by submitting in the past. This was gall to his little soul. The man he had looked down upon with contempt had been his master all along.
His smouldering rage was all the more acute because he had believed he had been the selected agent in mighty affairs; whereas, he had acted simply as a messenger. On entering the settlement early that morning he had smiled derisively at beholding the tavern and the usual group before the door. He had supposed himself miles above them in the secrets of the great game about to be played. Now his self-sufficiency was pricked and had deflated like a punctured bladder.