"What'n the hell kind of a dump is this anyway?" he exploded.
I was hit as with a brickbat, but I tried not to show it.
"This is the Golden Crescent Trading Company," I answered quietly and, if anything, with an assumption of meekness which I was far from feeling;—just to see how much rope this big fellow would take to hang himself with.
I suppose my tone made him think that his verbal onslaught had been as effective as it had been short.
He turned his eyes on me for the first time. They fixed on mine, and never once flickered.
"You—don't—say!" he returned, in measured words.
Then he flared up again.
"Say!—who's the boss here?"
"I am," I retorted, getting warm.
He came over to the middle of the floor.