"You're a wise guy sometimes, Koppy," smiled Conrad. "Now you and I remain here for five minutes, then fifty of them come with us--I won't need more. Tell them that in the lingo. I'm already holding the watch. . . . And, Koppy, hereafter you'll save yourself embarrassment by remembering I'm foreman; these men take orders from me--through you. I don't make a habit of showing a gun, but I prefer it to argument with you. . . . All ready, march. You and I'll go last, Koppy."
But outside, Adrian Conrad passed carelessly along the line of sullen men and led up the bank and through the woods to the standing train. And not a knife showed.
Torrance and Murphy and the train crew watched the line file from the cook-house and up the path.
"'Blimey!' as me friend, 'Uggins, o' Whitechapel, would say," exclaimed Murphy. "And then some!"
"So'll ye, me lad," said Murphy behind his hand to Tressa. "Faith, but ye've a way wid ye. Here I was hoping for a bang-up spree, wid me houlding the watch till me blood got riled; and all that rat of a kid does is to dr-rop a few hundred husky bohunks into his pocket and lug 'em up the bank to overtime on a foine night like this. It's dishear-rtening. A chap can't get up a recent foight out here. I'm going back to civilisation where they still bang each other about a bit in a friendly way, thank God! Where'd yeer father pick him up, Tressa?"
"He didn't 'pick him up'," replied Tressa indignantly.
The merry eyes of the engineer came round to her in a slow circle.
"I'm always making mistakes like that. I never can tell when a couple's married--not unless he's showing the mar-rks of it about the pate, or flir-rting wid another gir-rl. What I meant to ask was how did yeer benevolent paterfamilias contrive to induce him to direct his seductive manners to the uncongenial atmosphere o' construction." He peered more closely into the laughing eyes of the girl. "And good taste he has, too, bad cess to him! If I was younger now-- These whiskers hide me age; they've always been me fatal lure. The girls take to thim like ants to sugar. Me first wife took to thim so liberally I had to cut thim off in self-protection. I used to wear thim par-rted in the middle. Ah, a gay dog was I. That was before I saw 'Lord Dundreary.' Sure I changed thim so quick then the gir-rls didn't know they weren't flirting wid the same fellow. Next to being taken for an Englishman, an Irishman would prefer old Nick himself. So I let thim grow solid, the luxuriant and becoming gr-rowth ye're admiring this very minute. . . . Look at that now!"