ment like a coward, or snarled and twisted impotently like the under dog he used to be when he hadn't it in his power to snap. The same situation confronted him with Kellogg, only that it was far more important, so important, indeed, that his entire future hinged on his actions in the next few minutes.
He might walk away into the dark and save his life, leaving his honor behind; walk away and admit that he was a natural-born under dog, and go on living the life of an under dog for evermore. It wasn't to be done that way. He had come to that country to lift up his face and be a man. If people would persist in picking him for the goat, they must learn to their own grief that they were trifling with a red-eyed bull.
Dark as the night might deepen, precarious as his chance against that confident, sneering, blood-hungry man might be, the biggest business of his life lay in staying there to meet him and prove himself a man who was not to be shoved with impunity out of anybody's way. Even if he must die in proving it, no doubt must be left standing to cloud his title.
"No, I'll not wait here," he said again, drawing a deep breath and letting it out with a sigh, as a man does when he has settled some question that he has balanced on in doubt and fear.
MacKinnon put the suitcase behind the counter with a sort of bustling air of finality, as if to say there the matter of Dunham's entertainment in that house was terminated for the present, and wouldn't he be going on about his dangerous affair and lift the peril from
