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He invariably spent them in the same fashion. These were his only pleasures to eat, to smoke, to sleep, and to play upon his concertina. The six lugubrious airs that he knew, always carried him back to the time when he was a car-boy at the Big Dipper Mine in Placer County, ten years before.
Trina, more and more frightened at his huge hands the hands of the old-time car-boy his immense square-cut head and his enormous brute strength, cried out: "No, no," behind the rubber dam, shaking her head violently, holding out her hands, and shrinking down before him in the operating chair. McTeague came nearer to her, repeating the same question. "No, no," she cried, terrified.
"You don't know just how lucky it was." "Hey, youse!" shouted the car-boy. He brought his trundling, jolting, loose-jointed car to a halt by the face of the drift. "Hey, youse!" he shouted again. Bunt shut off the Burly air-drill and nodded. "Chaw," he remarked to me.
When the grease stopped dripping, he knew that it was done, and would devour it slowly and with tremendous relish, picking the bones clean, eating even the head. He remembered how often he used to do this sort of thing when he was a boy in the mountains of Placer County, before he became a car-boy at the mine. The dentist enjoyed himself hugely during these days.
"Stop!" he exclaimed. And Trina, watching fearfully, saw the palm suddenly contract into a fist, a fist that was hard as a wooden mallet, the fist of the old-time car-boy. And then her ancient terror of him, the intuitive fear of the male, leaped to life again. She was afraid of him. Every nerve of her quailed and shrank from him. She choked back her sobs, catching her breath.
He stripped his blanket from his bed and rolled up in it all these objects, together with the canvas sack, fastening the roll with a half hitch such as miners use, the instincts of the old-time car-boy coming back to him in his present confusion of mind. He changed his pipe and his knife a huge jackknife with a yellowed bone handle to the pockets of his overalls.
His only idea was to batter the life out of the man before him, to crush and annihilate him upon the instant. Gripping his enemy in his enormous hands, hard and knotted, and covered with a stiff fell of yellow hair the hands of the old-time car-boy he swung him wide, as a hammer-thrower swings his hammer.
On the top of the building there were three life-sized statues Wellington and Nelson, with the Greek slave between them a curious companionship. These statues reminded me of a certain Englishman riding through Dublin, for the first time, upon an Irish car. "What are the three figures yonder?" said he to the car-boy, pointing to the top of some public building.
At hiring day, he prevented me from going till he went himself and bid for me. On the last occasion, he was detained for a little while by other business; so I ran as quickly as I could, and got hired before he came up. Mr. George Furley was my next master; he employed me as a car-boy in the Dismal Swamp; I had to drive lumber, &c. I had plenty to eat and plenty of clothes.
A cousin of mine, Selina's brother, was drowned one Decoration Day. They never found his body. Can you swim, Doctor McTeague?" "I used to at the mine." "At the mine? Oh, yes, I remember, Marcus told me you were a miner once." "I was a car-boy; all the car-boys used to swim in the reservoir by the ditch every Thursday evening. One of them was bit by a rattlesnake once while he was dressing.
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