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And it may be I'm undue curious. Who's that girl you go up on the pipe line to meet every mornin'?" His question was so abrupt that, for an instant, the younger man had a hot, childish anger; but he controlled himself, and wondered why he should have been annoyed by the frank interrogation. "Miss Presby, the lumberman's daughter," he said crisply. "But what interests me most is how you knew?"
"He makes his way over everything and everybody. He is ruthless in going after what he wants. He fears nothing above or below. I honestly believe that if the arch demon were to block him on the trail, Bully Presby would take a chance and try to throw him over a cliff. I don't suppose he ever had a vice or a human emotion. I believe I'd like him better if he had a little of both."
"Good-evening, Mister Presby," she saluted, and he slowly turned his head and stared at her. He did not shift his attitude in the least, and appeared granite-like in his rigid pose. "I suppose," she said, "that you have put something into the contribution." "I have not," he replied with his customary incisive, harsh voice. "Why should I? The contribution means nothing to me."
By easy stages indicating competent engineering and a lavish expenditure of money, the road led them downward to a barricade of logs, in an opening of which swung a gate barely wide enough to pass the tired burros and their packs. "You'll find Presby over there," said their unwilling guide, pointing at a group of red-painted mining structures nestled in a flat lap in the ragged mountains.
"In a way. He's the man we saw the mob tackle, back there at the road house." Bill gave a long whistle. "So that's the chap, eh? Bully Presby! Well, if we ever run foul of him, we've got our work cut out for us. Things are beginnin' to get interestin'. 'I like the place, as Daniel said when he went to sleep in the lion's den."
Grant and his friend Presby immediately set their heads at work to determine what should be done with the party which had just arrived at Woodville.
It served a double purpose, for had she not interrupted Dick might have answered with a heat that he would have regretted, and Bully Presby dropped back into his chair, and drummed with his fingers on the desk. "You took the ore. You must pay. You must!" went on the dull voice of his daughter.
Meredith who stood frowning with her eyes fixed on the floor. "I've known burros, and other contrary cusses, in my time," he said, slowly, "but this feller Presby has 'em all lookin' as simple, and plain, and understandable, as a cross-roads guide-post." And The Lily, contrite, agreed.
He had not appreciated how much the daily meeting of Miss Presby meant to him until, on the following morning, and acting on his hardly reached resolution of the night before, he went up for what might be the last time.
They think out things that men don't. Kids are always friends with me; you know that. I reckon, from what I gathered, that this Presby man is about as hard and grasping an old cuss as ever worked the last ounce of gold out of a waste dump. He makes the men save the fags of the candles and the drips, so's he can melt 'em over again.
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