"Guess I've driven through hell an' damnation to git your darn report," he said, his wicked eyes beaming across the stove at his host on the far side of it.
"Lorson's blasted orders?"
"You mean blasted Lorson's orders!"
"Amen—or any other old chorus—to that," returned Nicol, with a gleam of brooding hate in his dark eyes. "Say, that swine has got all us fellers by the back o' the neck, and he twists us this way and that as he darn pleases, till we're well-nigh crazy. I'd give half a life to cut it—to make a break that would quit me of it all. But——"
"You're scared," Tough laughed, as he gulped at his spirit. "Guess we all are." Then he added as an after-thought: "I wonder. I don't know I would if—I dared. He's tough. He'd beat a dead man to pieces if he felt that way. He's plumb to the neck in work that 'ud shame a black, but he pays good for the doin' of it. And he reckons to pay you mighty well, if you put this thing through right. Best hand me your news. He don't want it wrote out."
Nicol leant back in his chair, and thrust his feet on the rail of the stove.
"No, he don't fancy a thing wrote out," he said. "And anyway I'm writin' out nothing for Lorson Harris. He's got one piece of my paper, and I guess that's mostly why I'm here."
"And your summer trip?"
Tough recalled his host to the business in hand. He did it amiably, almost pleasantly, but such things were entirely upon the surface. Tough Alroy was Lorson's most trusted agent.
Nicol shook his head.