"Steering! God love you, why do you want trouble between you and me? Don't you see that I have this thing here under my thumb? Don't you see that you mustn't go against me, my boy? Here's your chance back again. I'm handing it out to you. Stand by me. You won't be sorry. All my plans are made now. I have once or twice in my life thought the thing to do down here was to stir up a furore over some of the lakes and the springs and the scenery and make a health resort out of the region, but I have settled away from that now, settled straight at zinc. But Lord bless you! zinc or no zinc we can't fail to make a pile of money out of this. Why do you want to be a fool and hold back from me when I'm willing to pull you along? You ought to see by now that you can't do anything without me, or go against me. 'Tisn't everybody I'm willing to pull along, Steering. Why, boy, from the start, I've treated you on the square, let you know me on the inside--let--and, here and now, I'm still willing to pull you along, if you'll come along!--eh, what?" With Madeira's words, matching Madeira's excitement, blazing furiously and whitely, out leaped the slower, stronger fire of the younger man's personality. "See here!" shouted Steering, "twice now I've done my best to hope that somehow, somewhere you were going to throw me one line of commercial honesty and decency. I haven't asked you to measure up to very high standards, I'd have been satisfied with damned little; I've waited on you and hoped for you and let you try to bull-doze me, but by God! I'm done. You hear, I'm done!" He got up and the lean strength of his determination and the long reach of his body were all-powerful. "Don't you try this game with me again, Mr. Madeira! Don't you ever try any game with me again--No! Keep back! Not that either!" Madeira had gone crazy for the time. Possessed only by that desire to crush the thing that opposed him, he lifted his big clenched fists straight up over his head and came at Steering, fiery-eyed, perfervid with relish of the moment when he could close down on his enemy and make an end of him. He panted as he came, and as he came the veins in his temples stood out, purple and knotted. A little line of froth lay upon his lower lip. "Eh, God! You!--Wait there!--You!--You!----" Steering, with the old prowess that had made the boys on the gridiron stand aside and howl for him, reached up and brought Madeira's arms down with a circling, sweeping blow, then caught the bulky, staggering body and thrashed it into a chair, forgetful that it was Madeira, forgetful of Sally Madeira, forgetful of everything for one red instant save a savage masculine joy in his own strength.