Torrance's admiration showed in his grin. "That's thinking, Big Chief. Of course the Police don't give a cuss about the trestle, if they can get some one to hang." His face sobered. "Just the same, when this thing's off my hands and there's nothing to blow up but a pile of dirt, I'm going through the camp with an arsenal on me, and I'll splash blood over the ugly place till it looks like a Chicago beef-cannery. It would save transportation expenses, too. When the last shovel's dumped and the Police gone home to supper I'm going to boil over and roast a dozen bohunks alive—"
"Daddy!" chided Tressa. "He'll believe you."
"Think so?" asked Torrance delightedly. "Then here goes: Say, I'll eat my last breakfast of bohunk livers, seasoned with bohunk brains—if there are any—and as an appetiser, bohunk tongues steeped in—"
"Heap big talk," broke in the Indian wearily.
"And that," snorted Torrance, "just about puts the blinkers on that. Even strangers don't believe me. But you put before me bohunk hearts stuffed with bohunk sweetbreads—"
The Indian turned up his eyes in disgust. Torrance chuckled.
"He knows the belly-ache it would give a fellow, and I bet he's et more men for breakfast than I ever dreamed of murdering. If your appetite's up to it, Big Chief, take a mouthful of that thug living up on the bank above the camp. He's got all the pizen of Russia in him, flavoured with the rankest sauces of Europe."
The Indian waited.
"Shouldn't wonder," ventured the contractor, "if he's got something in his system."
"If you'll let him get in a word edgeways," laughed Tressa.