"I've a clever scheme for starting trouble with them." He whispered a few words in his companion's ears, at which Ransom laughed with apparent enjoyment.
"You're a keen one, Duff," grinned the agent from Chicago.
"I've seen enough of life," boasted the gambler quietly, "to be able to judge most people at first sight.

You shall soon see whether I don't succeed in starting some hard feeling with Reade and Hazelton." The nearer edge of the treacherous Man-killer was something more than two miles west of the town of Paloma.

In the course of a quarter of an hour Tom and Harry drew rein near a portable wooden building that served as an office in the field.
Mr.Hawkins, a solid-looking, bearded man of fifty, with snapping eyes that contrasted with his drawling speech, stepped from the building.
"Hawkins," called Tom, as a Mexican boy led the horses away to the shade of a stable tent, "I see you have some men idle." "Nine-tenths of 'em are idle," replied the superintendent of construction.

"I warned you, Mr.Reade, that our gangs would soon eat up the little work that you left us.

Out there, by the last cave-in you'll see that Foreman Payson, has about fifty men going.