Marchand was to
give these two toughs three hundred dollars each for doing it."
"Blown up with what?" Ingolby asked sharply.
"Dynamite."
"Where would they get it?"
"Some left from blasting below the mills."
"All right! Go on."
"There wasn't much more. Old Barbazon, the landlord, come in and they
quit talking about it; but they said enough to send 'em to gaol for ten
years."
Ingolby blinked at Jowett reflectively, and his mouth gave a twist that
lent to his face an almost droll look.
"What good would it do if they got ten years--or one year, if the bridge
was blown up? If they got skinned alive, and if Marchand was handed over
to a barnful of hungry rats to be gnawed to death, it wouldn't help. I've
heard and seen a lot of hellish things, but there's nothing to equal
that. To blow up the bridge--for what? To spite Lebanon, and to hurt me;
to knock the spokes out of my wheel. He's the dregs, is Marchand."
"I guess he's a shyster by nature, that fellow," interposed Jowett. "He
was boilin' hot when he was fifteen. He spoiled a girl I knew when he was
twenty-two, not fourteen she was--Lil Sarnia; and he got her away
before--well, he got her away East; and she's in a dive in Winnipeg now.
As nice a girl--as nice a little girl she was, and could ride any broncho
that ever bucked.
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