"First we'll tell the Police. I was going to fire them off the bat, but I'm too mad for that. I want to see them get a couple of years in jail. I want the law to take a hand now; I've taught them my law."
"What can the law do to them?"
The contractor eyed his foreman belligerently.
"What can it do? Don't you think coming up here and trying to rough-house me is worth a year or two? Say, you don't think it was a slapping match, or a pink tea sociable! Take a look about the room." The sarcasm of it was pleasing to his jangling nerves. "If you don't guess right the first time, take another. If you're off the track then, I'll get a doctor for you—or show you this arm of mine."
"Who started it?"
Torrance leaned forward and searched Conrad's face as if he considered him demented.
"O' course," he sneered, "you'd go into court and swear I went on the rampage and cornered them. You'd say I caught 'em at their evening devotions and smashed their crucifixes over their heads and tackled 'em with a cutlass in my teeth and two revolvers—"
"You might have a little on Morani for using a knife," Conrad agreed calmly, "but you'd have trouble finding a lawyer to take such a case. They made a request, without violence—"
"Yah, they knelt down on their marrow-bones and begged His Highness to grant them the small boon of letting them put their feet on his neck. They humbly petitioned me to kick over the trestle, pay them ten dollars a day, raise the allowance of pie, and then give them certificates of character. You'd have done it, I suppose. Only that isn't the way I've made a success of railway construction, my lad."
Conrad took it cheerfully. "Then imagine you take it to court. Have you time? It'll mean Battleford for the Police trial. And what would you win? They don't jail men even out here for defending themselves. And what would happen the trestle in the meantime?" He saw hesitation in Torrance's eyes. "Besides, I'd hate to be called to prove the sweetness of your temper and your unprovocative ways."