"But I have explained to you men before this why I have not done what you ask," he went on, still in a reasonable tone of voice. "I told you that I did not feel certain that it was the best thing to do. We are by no means sure that there is enough gold below the present mine to make it worth while to go deeper. You men know what a lot of money the machinery for certain kinds of gold digging takes. It would probably eat up pretty much all the capital that the owners of the Rainbow Mine have. And I don't want to tell them to buy this machinery until I am a lot surer that the gold is down there waiting to be hauled out."
John Raines glanced about at the faces surrounding him. It was easy enough to take his tone from their expressions.
"Then there is no use wasting any more of our time and yours in talk, Merrit," the older man announced in a rougher manner than he had before employed. "Your sentiments was pretty well known to us before you spouted them forth. And that's just the point! You don't know what ought to be done about things and we do. And we want a man to boss us that knows same as we. Now, young man, you just get out pleasant and the quicker the better."
All over her body, to the very tips of her ears, Jean felt herself tingling with sudden, overpowering anger. Why had Ralph Merrit not said what he intended saying before now? To resign at this moment in the face of this other man's insolence, which represented the same feeling in his companions, was to behave like a small boy at school who had been stood up in a corner and soundly thrashed by his schoolmaster and then made to apologize for his pains. Jean felt that she would never care to look Ralph in the face again. But he was speaking now for the third time.
"She Had Heard That Masterful Tone Before"
"Have Miss Ralston and Mr. Colter told you that they wanted me to quit?" he inquired. "It seems like they would have mentioned the matter to me first. I have usually taken my orders from them and not from the men under me."
There was quite a different ring in Ralph Merrit's voice during this speech that made the girl behind the rock unexpectedly put up her cold hands to cool her hot cheeks. She had heard that masterful tone before, but not in some time.
"No, they ain't said nothing yet," Raines admitted. "But it don't matter; you got to quit just the same. You can't run a gold mine by yourself with all your 'book larnin,' and it's either you or us that gets out."
"Then it'll be you," Ralph replied in such a matter-of-fact and undisturbed fashion that Jean could hardly believe she had heard him aright, or else she must have been dreaming less than an hour before.