“So you are a thief—a low, sneaking, prowling night-robber?” Hoag gasped, taken aback by his son's unexpected attitude. “You—you!”
“Call it what you like!” Henry hurled at him. “I don't care. You are rollin' in money, makin' it hand over fist—goin' to your grave rich, and I haven't any way of living. Other fellows' daddies help them along, but you never give me a cent. I used to ask you, and you'd curse me and threaten to kick me out. I'm your son, and you are stinkin' rich. You can't bluff me. I'm reckless. I don't care a tinker's damn what I do. I need money—that's all—I need it.”
Hoag stood puffing. He was conscious of a fluttering about his heart, and he had the sudden fear that an outburst might mean his undoing on the spot, but he was too angry to control himself.
“So you are a thief!” he panted. “You eat at my table, sleep under my roof, an' come here with a wagon to steal my stuff. Do you know what I'm goin' to do with you?”
“Not knowing, I can't say,” Henry answered, with colloquial quotation. “I've known you to get weak-kneed, as you did the day Jeff Warren called you to taw at the Court House. Jeff saw through it and told how you ate the crow he shoved at you on the point of his gun.”
This angry taunt was the worst missile the desperate young man could have thrown. It drove splotches of pallor into the crimson of his father's face.
“You mean you think I'm a coward?” Hoag cried. “You—you dare—”
“I don't mean nothing about it; I know it,” Henry retorted, still with the furious smile on his lips, a reckless flare in his eyes.
“Well, I'll show you what I'm goin' to do to you, anyway,” Hoag said, fiercely. “I'm goin' to give you the best lickin' you ever had in all your bom days.”
“You say you are!” Henry laughed, almost with actual spontaneity.