“Don’t! Don’t go ter touch ’em. I’ll git every sweatin’ drop o’ pull outer them—I kin do it. Oh, darn ye! if they won’t do it fur me, d’yer think as you kin———”
At the thud of the iron on her flank the off-sider sprang, and staggered back, half-choked by the collar. Randal held Buck by the grip on his shoulder.
“You’ll get fired if you hammer your boss,” he said contemptuously. “Let him kill the brutes if he’s fool enough. They’re his own.”
“They’re mine,” sobbed Buck. “Mine! Aren’t I looked arter them—oh!”
It was the cry of a mother for her first-born. But the writhing shoulder was still under Randal’s hands.
“Don’t look then. Oh, by Jingo, he’ll muck things directly. Mogger———”
Mogger’s great body was stiff with a new sternness. He was weighing the chances of providing for his relatives on any new billet that might fall to him after he had slain Art Scannell with the fist. He glanced at Randal. Randal’s dark face was unmoving, and his eyes told nothing at all.
“He cud do it,” said Mogger in his throat. “He ain’t got a fambly same as I got. He cud do it. But he ain’t got the feelings o’ a dead black-beetle, Randal ain’t.”
Some passion unknown to the other held Art. He beat the team from end to end and
