But I found from the first that he was the surliest and coarsest man alive. During the afternoon, he scarcely uttered a word, but went on grumbling and muttering to himself. His face wore a perpetual scowl. He kicked viciously at the stones along the road as if they were actually his enemies. He complained of the long journey ahead of us.
“One man gets the money,” he said under his breath. “Another does the work.”
“You don’t have to go,” I said. “If you say the word, I’ll leave you.”
He shot a look at me that was enough to kill me.
“Try it,” he growled. And his jaws came together with a snap.
After that I shrank back into my shell. I knew I was in company with a savage. At the slightest sign of trifling, I was convinced, he would stick a dagger into my heart and leave me on the road to die.
At noon we halted in the shade of the trees along the side of the highway. He took from his shoulder a packet which he had brought from the inn. In it were a lump of cheese and a length of hard bread. With as much deliberation as he could show, he took a dagger from his coat and wiped the blade two or three times over the knees of his trousers. Then he cut the cheese into squares and tore the bread into pieces with his hands. As though I were only an animal to be fed, he tossed them to me through the air.
The first piece flew past me and fell into the dirt. The second landed at my feet. Another caught me in the chest and tumbled in between my folded hands. I was hungry, of course, but the manner of the man sickened me. So I sat there glaring into his face.
He fell to with the appetite of a bear. He stuffed one lump after another between his teeth and shoved them into his mouth with his thumb. He gulped to swallow and that so hard that I thought he would choke. When he had eaten twice as much as an ordinary man he rose and threw what remained into my lap.
“You should starve,” he said, “—you spy!”