O'Hara stared belligerently and reached for the bottle. Tesno beat him to it and kept it out of his reach. The superintendant seemed about to leap for Tesno's throat, then he was suddenly meek.
"Keef O'Hara a slave to the demon rum! 'Tis a sad end for a man."
"Keef, you've bossed tricky construction jobs all over the world. If your skill was ever needed, it's here and now. You know what Ben's up against. Now let's get out of here and sober up."
"Lad, why do you think I signed on with Ben Vickers?... For the same reason half the terriers came up here. We're a breed apart, lad—superintendant or shovel bum. We can't live with civilization. We're boozers or fighters or skirt-chasers or wife-beaters or all of those. Try to live in a town and we wind up in jail or sick or dead. So we seek out a camp where there's work and good air and no temptation, where a man can sweat off the blubber and save his pay and be at peace with himself. And what did they do to us here amidst the wildest mountains in the land? They built a town! A fine manner of town with all the temptations...."
Tesno stood up impatiently. "We've finished with the preliminaries, Keef. Now we're going back to camp."
O'Hara got to his feet, drawing himself up straight. His big frame teetered and he almost fell. "I'll fight ye another day, Bucko," he said. "When the spirits are better and I've not been the night on the job."
He allowed himself to be led away.
At the far end of the bar a nattily dressed little man drained his glass of buttermilk and dabbed at his beard with a silk handkerchief. Pinky Bronklin removed the empty glass.
"J. Keef O'Hara," Mr. Jay said, tucking the handkerchief into his breast pocket. "He's still the best engineer in the Northwest. I'll wager he's the only man here who's had experience with compressed air drills."
"Except you, Mr. Jay," Pinky said.