Tony lacked the nerve to do the deed alone.Then the awkward boat would swing out into a swift current and surely overturn against a rock there was below.
"Come on and do it," said Burney."If the back of ye aches from the lick he gave ye as the pit of me stomach does for the taste of a bit of smoke, we can't cut the ropes too quick.""All a-right," said Tony."But better wait 'bout-a ten minute more.
Give-a Corrigan plenty time get good-a sleep."They waited, sitting upon the stone.The rest of the men were at work out of sight around a bend in the road.Everything would have gone well --except, perhaps, with Corrigan, had not Tony been moved to decorate the plot with its conventional accompaniment.He was of dramatic blood, and perhaps he intuitively divined the appendage to villainous machinations as prescribed by the stage.He pulled from his shirt bosom a long, black, beautiful, venomous cigar, and handed it to Burney.
"You like-a smoke while we wait?" he asked.
Burney clutched it and snapped off the end as a terrier bites at a rat.
He laid it to his lips like a long-lost sweetheart.When the smoke began to draw he gave a long, deep sigh, and the bristles of his gray-red moustache curled down over the cigar like the talons of an eagle.Slowly the red faded from the whites of his eyes.He fixed his gaze dreamily upon the hills across the river.The minutes came and went.