His brain was in tumult.

The free man of the mountain had come in contact with "the tyrant of labor," and it was well for the big beast that Harold was for the moment without his gun.
Going back to his room he took out his revolver and loaded every chamber.

In the set of his lips was menace to the next employer who dared to insult and degrade him.
In the days that followed he wandered over the city, with eyes that took note of every group of workmen.

He could not bring himself to go back to the stockyards, there was danger of his becoming a murderer if he did; and as he approached the various bosses of the gangs of men in the street, he found himself again and again without the resolution to touch his hat and ask for a job.

Once or twice he saw others quite as brutally rebuffed as he had been, and it was only by turning away that he kept himself from taking a hand in an encounter.