“What do you take me for?” Jim demanded indignantly. “Max Hess, eh? The fellow who treated you so badly back at that farm? I wanted to get him this morning, the hound! You go straight back into the mill yourself, and leave me to handle him.”
But he was too late. The wagon had crossed the bridge and halted in front of them so suddenly that the horse slid along for a pace upon his haunches.
“Got yer!” a thick voice announced triumphantly, as a burly figure wrapped the reins around the whip socket and lumbered to the ground. “Yah! I thought there was a feller in it, somewheres!”
He approached them with menacingly clenched fists, but Jim asked coldly:
37“Are you addressing this young woman?”
“Young thief, you mean! She’s gotter come─”
But Jim, too, had advanced a pace.
“Take that back and get in your wagon and beat it,” he announced distinctly, with a calmness which the other mistook for mildness. “If your name is Hess, this young woman is not going back with you, and I warn you now to be off.”
“So that’s it, is it?” the heavy voice sneered. “She’s my mother’s hired girl, an’ she stole a lot o’ food an’ ran away this mornin’. Comes o’ takin’ in an asylum brat─”
“Take that back, too, you blackguard!” Jim’s voice was beginning to shake.