MacGregor's mind had not caught up yet; and Halloran continued:
“I want to take you back to Wauchung with me. We will raise your salary five hundred dollars, and engage you for as long a time as you think right! You know Higginson & Company—and you know we keep our promises. Then you can tell Bigelow to go to hell if you want to. I know how Bigelow's men feel.” He looked at his watch. “We can get the 9:53 train down.”
“You don't mean to go this morning?” said MacGregor.
“Yes; right off. You surely have an assistant you can leave in charge of the engine.”
The fat man backed up against the opposite door and looked at Halloran.
“See here,” he said, “what does this mean?”
“Mean?”—Halloran's anger, that had been rising since six o'clock, began to boil over—“Mean? It means that Bigelow has come into the lumber business with the idea of running Higginson out. And if you know anything about Martin L. Higginson you know that old Bigelow has bitten off the biggest hunk he ever tried to get his mouth around. It means that G. Hyde Bigelow's going to get such a hob-nailed roost in the breeches that he'll be lucky to come down at all. He's going to have the whole damned zodiac buzzing around in his head before he gets through with Higginson—that's what it means! I've come up here this morning to tell you that we want an engineer, and that you're the man we want. And we want you to go on the 9:53 train—that's about forty minutes now.”
