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Then it was that Moncrossen knew that something must be done and that something quickly. He shifted Stromberg and Fallon to the sawing crew, made a skidder out of a swamper, and filled his place with a grub-shack flunky. Then one afternoon he dropped in upon Bill in the bunk-house, where that young man sat fuming at his inaction with his foot propped up on the edge of a bunk.
"An' where is she now, Irish?" mocked one. "Did she jump off the sled an' make a get-away?" Over at the grub-shack the cook's half-breed helper beat lustily upon the discarded saw-blade that hung suspended by a wire, and the men crowded noisily out of the doors.
At eleven o'clock in the morning Bill Carmody ordered his teams to the stables. At twelve o'clock, when the men crowded into the grub-shack, the air was filled with fine particles of flinty snow, and the roar of the wind through the pine-tops was the mighty roar of the surf of a pounding sea.
For a long time he was silent, and the injured man responded to the hearty greetings and inquiries of the men returning from the grub-shack. When these later had disposed themselves for the evening, the Irishman hunched his chair closer to the bunk upon which Bill was sitting.
Blood River Jack halted suddenly in his journey from the bunk-house to the grub-shack and sniffed the air. He dropped the butt of his rifle to the hard-packed snow of the clearing and glanced upward, where a thin sprinkling of stars winked feebly in the first blush of morning.
Bright squares of light showed from the windows of the bunk-house, office, and grub-shack, with its adjoining cook-shack, from the iron stovepipe of which sparks shot skyward in a continuous shower. Fallon shouldered the wolf and, accompanied by Bill, made toward the bunk-house, while the Frenchman turned the team toward the stable.
"Ye've made a bad shtar-rt wid um," he said, shaking his head. "Ye eyed 'im down in th' grub-shack, an' he hates ye fer ut. How ye got by wid ut Oi don't know, fer he's a scr-rapper from away back, an' av he'd sailed into ye Oi'm thinkin' he'd knocked th' divil out av ye, fer he's had experience, which ye ain't. But he didn't dast to, an' he knows ut, an' he knows that the men knows ut.
Come out with it quick!" "It is that my rifle and belt have gone from under the bunk," Blood River Jack answered. "They were taken while I slept. The boy did not come to dinner in the grub-shack. Is it that he eats to-day with his people?" "Good Lord! I don't know! Haven't you seen him, Daddy?" "Not since mebbe it's noine o'clock in th' marnin', an' he wint to th' bunk-house.
The table, which extended the full length of the grub-shack, was scrubbed until it shone and was moved to one side to make room for the heavy benches arranged transversely, one behind the other.
Moncrossen's hatred of the greener rested primarily upon the fear that one day he would expose him to Appleton; added to this was a mighty jealousy of his rapid rise to proficiency and the rankling memory of the scene of their first meeting in the grub-shack.
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