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"Babe" turned upon him savagely: "And don't you go to takin' sides! I'm used to livin' good an' when I think what I give up to come down here to this hole " "I know 'taint what you're used to," Jennings agreed in a conciliatory tone. Smaltz took this occasion to ostentatiously inspect a confection the upper and lower crusts of which stuck together like two pieces of adhesive plaster.
"That looks like good lively 'quick'," Smaltz commented as he watched him at the task. "It should be; it was guaranteed never to have been used." He added with a smile: "Let's hope when we see it again it won't be quite so lively." "Looks like it orter be as thick as mush if you can run a few thousand yards of that there pay-streak over it."
His yellow-brown eyes widened until they looked round. He had not counted on anyone's being able to cross the river for fully half an hour. If Smaltz had been the villain of fiction, he would have been a coward as well. But Smaltz was not a coward. It is true he was startled so startled that his skin turned a curious yellow-green like a half-ripe pear but he was not afraid.
Then he turned and looked at the lolling tongues behind him that seemed still reaching for the boat and straightening up he shook his fist: "You didn't get me that time, dog-gone you, and what's more you won't!" All three boats were coming, rearing and plunging, disappearing and reappearing. Anxiously he watched Smaltz work until a bend of the river shut them all from sight.
"Yes," Banule answered irritably, "but don't yell so in my ear." Smaltz already had slammed the receiver back on the hook. With a swift movement he threw in the switch and jumped for the outside. He dropped from the high platform and fell among the rocks some ten feet below.
The wind from the round blur that represented the fly-wheel was a gale and in the semi-dusk, Smaltz had closed the double-doors the leaping flames and the screech of the red-hot bearings made the place an Inferno. For a moment the amazing, unexpected sight deprived Bruce of the power to move. Then he jumped for the lever and shut down. It was not until the machinery responded that Smaltz turned.
It had been a severe test of endurance and loyalty in which none had fallen short and no one among them had worked with more tireless energy than Smaltz, or his erstwhile friend but present enemy, Porcupine Jim.
The pumps had already started and the big head of water was coming with a rush down the steep grade, but Smaltz had done his evil work thoroughly for wherever the mercury laid thickest it glittered with iridescent drops of kerosene. He was thrusting the bottle back in his pocket, his tense expression relaxed, when he turned his head sharply at the sound of a crashing in the brush. "Toy!"
Bruce surmised that the Chinaman must share his own instinctive distrust, yet Smaltz, with his versatility, had proved himself more and more valuable as the work progressed. Banule's sanguine prophecy that they would be "throwin' dirt" within two weeks had failed of fulfilment because the pump motors had sparked when tried out.
Smaltz whispered he could barely speak "I'm tellin' the truth it was an accident. He jumped me I threw him off and he fell in the sluice-box backward I tried to save him I did that's straight." Smaltz kept rolling his head back and forth in an oil-soaked spot where a grease cup leaked. Bruce's knee was grinding into his ribs and chest and his fingers were tightening on his throat.
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