The young man stood before him choking back words he longed to utter and twisting his hat out of recognition in the effort. Words! Of what use had they ever been with Joe Gilchrist? All his life he had used as few as possible himself and shown little patience with those who did otherwise—why should it be different now?
“Blamed sorry,” the colourless voice repeated. “I had no notion things were going this way or I’d have put ’em straight right away. It’ll hurt all the more now, I guess, but I can’t help it, Dode—you’re not the man, that’s all.”
“Why?” The other’s voice carried resentment. “What’s the matter with me, anyway?”
The grizzled head turned slowly, the keen, deep-set eyes, surrounded by a tracery of minute wrinkles from looking into long distances, rested on the young man’s troubled face in a level, emotionless scrutiny.
“Nothing,” said Joe Gilchrist. “As a man—nothing, or you wouldn’t have been my foreman the last ten years; but as a husband for Joyce——” He smiled faintly and shook his head.
At that moment Dode Sinclair could have killed this man whose life he had saved more than once. He knew the iron resolve behind that smile and shake of the head.
“I’m the man she chose,” he jerked out.
“At seventeen,” was the quiet rejoinder.
“She’s a woman.”
Joe Gilchrist tilted his head to one side and scratched his cheek. It was a habit of his when anything puzzled him.