"I bane to like I tam plase," he muttered, slowly. "Yo bane go hell."
The big Englishman sprang back, swept up a broken pick-handle half buried in the sand, and leaped forward. As he leaped he swung the bit of heavy, hard wood above his head. The Swede dropped his reins and threw up his arms to guard himself, but the pick-handle, wielded in a great, sinewy right hand, beat down his arms and struck him a crashing blow across his forehead. Conniston heard the thud of it where he stood. The Swede's arms flew out and he went down like a steer in a slaughter-house.
"You bloody spoonbill!" cried the Englishman, standing over the prostrate body. "Wot are you laying down for? Get hup, hor Hi'll beat the bloody 'ead hoff your bloody shoulders! Get hup!"
Slowly, weakly, reeling as he got upon his knees, the Swede rose to his feet. A great, smoldering, cold-blooded wrath shone in his blue eyes, mingled with a surly fear. He made no motion toward the man who stood three feet from him threatening him. Nor did he stir toward his fallen reins. Instead he turned half about toward the camp.
"I bane quit," he muttered, thickly. "I bane get my time."
"Quit!" yelled Ben—"quit, will you!"
The Swede muttered something which Conniston did not catch. Ben took one short, quick step forward, swinging his pick-handle high above his head. For a moment the Swede paused, hesitating. And then, again muttering, he stooped, picked up his reins, and swung his team back into the cut.
The other men had all stopped to watch. Now Ben swung about upon them, his voice lifted in a string of cockney oaths, commanding them not to stand still all day, but to get to work. At almost his first word the teams began to move again, the men laughing, calling to one another, jeering at the defeated Swede, or merely shrugging their shoulders. And Greek Conniston, his face still white from what he had just witnessed, began to see, although still dimly, what it was he had taken into his two hands to do.
He glanced down at his hands. The middle finger of the right one, with which he had struck Brayley's heavy cheek-bone, was swollen to twice its natural size, stiff and sore. The nails were broken and blackened. There were a dozen scratches and little cuts. The palms were hard and calloused, with bits of loose skin along the base of the fingers where blisters had formed and broken and healed over.
He lifted his head, and his speculative eyes ran back along the ditch. The work was again running smoothly, quietly, save for the clanking of the scrapers and the men's voices calling to their horses and mules, each man intent upon his own duty, the face of the desert as peaceful as the hot, clear arch of the sky above.