“I can’t be forced. They won’t drive me,” Obadiah maintained with his usual obstinacy.
“They’ll drive you into court fast enough, if you don’t obey that order,” Hezekiah warned him with a chuckle.
“That’s just where I want to be. It’s up to you to develop a plan to flim-flam that bunch of fool doctors. You’re losing your ‘pep’ or you’d have worked out something before this,” sneered Obadiah.
“Perhaps I am losing my ‘pep,’” Hezekiah mimicked, and his eyes flashed as he went on. “I have enough mental alertness left to advise you not to bite off your nose to spite your face.”
Obadiah flushed angrily but controlled his temper. “Listen,” he snarled, “while I tell you what I pay you to tell me. The Lame Moose is a navigable stream, isn’t it?”
Hezekiah nodded, his eyes dancing with amusement.
Obadiah frowned at his attorney and continued, “We’ll raise a federal question and get the case into the U. S. Courts and with dilatory pleas, continuances and appeals it will take years before a final decision is handed down. How’s that?”
Hezekiah laughed. “As your legal adviser, I can’t approve it. The waste from the dye-house at your mill is spoiling the water that some thousands of people have to drink. There is a simple remedy open to you but they have none. Common justice demands that you consider the rights of these beings.” The attorney turned loose his oratorical voice. “Common justice demands it, sir.”
The manufacturer flushed and shifted uneasily. Quarrelsome as he was, he could not afford a break with this man.
Hezekiah relapsed into a careful study of the metal cornice over the way.