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His thoughts, deflected by Fanny Gilkan, left the immediate present of supper, and rested upon the fact that his his appreciation of her was becoming known at the Furnace; while Dan Hesa must be circulating it, with biting comments, among the charcoal burners.
Charcoal burners were lawless men, fugitive in character, often escaped from terms of indenture; Dan Hesa was, he knew, well liked by them; and the hazard created by his attraction to Fanny Gilkan drew Howat Penny irresistibly away from the superior merits of the Heydrick table.
She had said father, but Howat Penny determined that she was thinking of Dan Hesa; Dan was as strong as himself, if heavier; a personable young man. He would make a good husband. But that, he added, was in the future; Dan Hesa apparently didn't want to marry Fanny to-morrow, that week. Meanwhile a trip with him to the headwaters of a creek would not injure her in the least.
It meant, Howat told himself, literally nothing: what complex feeling Isabel Penny might have for her husband, Caroline's frank desire for David Forsythe, Myrtle's meagre emotion, Fanny Gilkan's sense of Hesa and life's necessary compromises, his own collapse all were alike called love. It was not only a useless word but a dangerous falsity.
Dan Hesa, although younger than Howat, was already contracting for charcoal, a forward young German; and, Fanny had said with a giggle, he was paying her serious attention. Howat Penny had lately seen a new moroseness among the charcoal burners that could only have come from the association of the son of Gilbert Penny and the potential owner of Myrtle Forge with the founderman's daughter.
In the stir of his rebellious self there was no pause for vicarious approximations. If he thought of her at all it was in the indirect opinion that she was better without such a noodle as Dan Hesa threatened to become. "I'd get two horses from the Forge," he continued, apparently to his mildly speculative self; "a few things, not much would be necessary.
Howat had seen symptoms of that last night. He would no longer complicate her existence with avenues of escape from a monotony which she patently elected. "Very well, Gilkan," he agreed shortly, choking on his wrath. He turned and tramped shortly from the interior. A sudden, lengthening sunlight bathed the open and a sullen group of charcoal burners about Dan Hesa.
It was the horn, calling the Furnace hands for the day; and he knew that it would continue for five minutes. Others had entered; a little group gathered about Thomas Gilkan's waning lantern. Far above them a window glimmered against the sooty wall. Howat saw that Dan Hesa was talking to Gilkan, driving in his words by a fist smiting a broad, hard palm.
He had, ordinarily, an unusual liking for the charcoal burners, and had spent many nights in their huts, built, like the charring stacks, of mud and branches. But, organized by Dan Hesa into an opposition, a criticism of his choice of way, they offered an epitome of the conditions he derided and assailed.
Hesa left the cast-house abruptly, followed by the charcoal burner; and Howat rose, the length of his rifle thrust forward under his arm, and walked deliberately forward. The daylight was increasing rapidly; and, as he approached, Thomas Gilkan extinguished the flame of the lantern.
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