“I don't know,” repeated the man. “I jest went over in th' bresh to kill a few pa'tridges, and when I come back I found her this way. I wasn't goin' to close down for three hours yet, and I thought they was no use a hangin' around here.”
“Were you hired to watch this dam, or weren't you?” demanded the tense voice of Thorpe. “Answer me, you fool.”
“Yes, I was,” returned the man, a shade of aggression creeping into his voice.
“Well, you've done it well. You've cost me my dam, and you've killed five men. If the crew finds out about you, you'll go over the falls, sure. You get out of here! Pike! Don't you ever let me see your face again!”
The man blanched as he thus learned of his comrades' deaths. Thorpe thrust his face at him, lashed by circumstances beyond his habitual self-control.
“It's men like you who make the trouble,” he stormed. “Damn fools who say they didn't mean to. It isn't enough not to mean to. They should MEAN NOT TO! I don't ask you to think. I just want you to do what I tell you, and you can't even do that.”
He threw his shoulder into a heavy blow that reached the dam watcher's face, and followed it immediately by another. Then Shearer caught his arm, motioning the dazed and bloody victim of the attack to get out of sight. Thorpe shook his foreman off with one impatient motion, and strode away up the river, his head erect, his eyes flashing, his nostrils distended.
“I reckon you'd better mosey,” Shearer dryly advised the dam watcher; and followed.
Late in the afternoon the two men reached Dam Three, or rather the spot on which Dam Three had stood. The same spectacle repeated itself here, except that Ellis, the dam watcher, was nowhere to be seen.
“The dirty whelps,” cried Thorpe, “they did a good job!”