"You called, m'lord?"
But not even old Hell-Fire Packard could get him any further.
"Yes, I called," grunted the old man. "I hollered my head off at you. I want to know what you foun' out. Let's have it."
Guy Little made his little butler-bow.
"Your word is law, m'lord," he said, once more rigid and unbending.
Although Packard knew this very well without being told and had known it a good many years before Guy Little had been born, and although Guy Little had repeated the phrase time without number, the old man accepted it peacefully as a necessary though utterly damnable introduction.
"It's like this," continued the mechanician. "Not knowin' what you thought an' not even knowin' what you wanted to think, an' figgerin' to play safe, I've picked up the dope all over. Which is sayin' I bought drinks on both sides the street, whiskey at Whitey Wimble's joint an' more of the same at Dan Hodges's. An' I foun' out several things, m'lord. If it is your wish——"
"Spit 'em out, Guy Little! What for a man is he?"
"Firs'," said Guy Little, shifting his feet the fraction of an inch so that his chin bore directly upon Packard, "he's a scrapper. He beat up Joe Woods, a bigger man than him; later he took part in some sort of a party durin' which, like is beknown to you, somebody gouged Blenham's eye out; after that, single-handed, he cleaned out your lumber-camp, fifteen men countin' Blenham. Tally one, he's a scrapper."
For an instant it seemed that all of the light there was in the swiftly darkening room had centred in the blue eyes under the old man's bushy white brows. He drew deeply upon his pipe.