“Look here,” Bill said, accepting the responsibility, “this ain’t right. You know it ain’t. We’re in another class altogether. You ought to put us, at present, under–––”
“It is right,” belligerently asserted the delegate. “I’ve looked it all over. You’ll agree to it, or I’ll declare the Croix d’Or unfair.”
He had arisen to his feet as if arbitrarily to end the argument. For a wonder, the veteran miner restrained himself, although there was a hard, glowing light in his eyes.
“We won’t stand for it,” he said, restraining Dick with his elbow. “When you’re ready to talk on a square basis, come back, and we’ll use the ink. Until then we won’t. We might as well shut down, first as last, as to lose money when we’re just breakin’ even as it is. Think it over a while, and see if we ain’t right.”
“Well, you’ll hear from me,” declared the delegate, as he put his hat on his head and turned out of the door without any parting courtesy. “Keep the card. My name’s Thompson, you know.”
For a full minute after he had gone, the partners stared at each other with troubled faces.
“Oh, he’s a bluff! That’s all there is to it,” asserted Mathews, reaching into the corner for his rubber boots, preparatory to going underground. “He knows it ain’t right, just as well as I do. If he can put this over, all right. If he can’t he’ll give us the other rating.”
He left Dick making up a time-roll, and turned down the hill; and they did not discuss it again until they were alone that night.