Neuman rumbled a curse. Amaze dominated him. "Anderson!… Well, I don't want to see him," he replied.
"I reckon you don't," was the cowboy's cool reply.
The rancher looked him up and down. However familiar his type was to Anderson, it was strange to Neuman. The cowboy breathed a potential force. The least significant thing about his appearance was that swinging gun. He seemed cool and easy, with hard, keen eyes. Neuman's face took a shade off color.
"But I'm going to harvest to-day," he said. "I'm late. I've a hundred hands coming."
"Nope. You haven't none comin'," asserted Jake.
"What!" ejaculated Neuman.
"Reckon it's near ten o'clock," said the cowboy. "We run over here powerful fast."
"Yes, it's near ten," bellowed Neuman, on the verge of a rage.… "I haven't harvest-hands coming!… What's this talk?"
"Wal, about nine-thirty I seen all your damned I.W.W.'s, except what was shot an' hanged, loaded in a cattlecar an' started out of the country."
A blow could not have hit harder than the cowboy's biting speech. Astonishment and fear shook Neuman before he recovered control of himself.