"If you hang my drive, damn you, you'll
catch it for damages! It's gettin' to a purty pass when any old
highbanker from anywheres can get out and play jackstraws holdin' up
every drive in the river! I tell you our mills need logs, and
what's more they're agoin' to GIT them!"
He departed in a rumble of vituperation.
Orde laughed humorously at his foreman.
"Johnson gets so mad sometimes, his skin cracks," he remarked.
"However," he went on more seriously, "there's a heap in what he
means, if there ain't so much in what he says. I'll go labour with
our old friend below."
He regained the bank, stopped to light his pipe, and sauntered, with
every appearance of leisure, down the bank, past the dam, to the
mill structure below.
Here he found the owner occupying a chair tilted back against the
wall of the building. His ruffled plug hat was thrust, as usual,
well away from his high and narrow forehead; the long broadcloth
coat fell back to reveal an unbuttoned waistcoat the flapping black
trousers were hitched up far enough to display woollen socks
wrinkled about bony shanks. He was whittling a pine stick, which he
held pointing down between his spread knees, and conversing
animatedly with a young fellow occupying another chair at his side.
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