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"This is mutiny," Stine broke in. "You were engaged to obey orders." Shorty turned on him. "Oh, you'll get yours as soon as I finish with your pardner, you little hog-wallopin' snooper, you." "Sprague," Kit said, "I'll give you just thirty seconds to put away that gun and get that oar out." Sprague hesitated, gave a short hysterical laugh, put the revolver away, and bent his back to the work.
Sprague nodded curtly and strolled away among the tents, to be followed by Doctor Stine, a slender, pallid young man. Shorty looked significantly at his companion. "Over a ton and a half of outfit, and they won't lend a hand. You'll see." "I guess it's because we're paid to do the work," Kit answered cheerfully, "and we might as well buck in."
What did they do when they hit Linderman? The carpenters was just putting in the last licks on a boat they'd contracted to a 'Frisco bunch for six hundred. Sprague and Stine slipped 'em an even thousand, and they jumped their contract. It's a good-lookin' boat, but it's jiggered the other bunch. They've got their outfit right here, but no boat. And they're stuck for next year.
Ah! thou didst tell me oft that our lonely pride was not high nor worthy fame. Stine, how didst do it?" "I did it not, dear husband; God did it for me. He gave the boys the loving, true tempers that worked out the rest! He shielded them and me in our days of peril."
You might be as interested in talking to her as I am. If what you told me is true, she could well be our key to the answer. She is Professor Lea Morees, and she is just out from Earth with degrees in exobiology and anthropology, and has a head stuffed with vital facts." "Wonderful!" Stine said. "I shall take care of the head, not only because it is so pretty but because of its knowledge.
Kit had learned how to throw his weight on an oar, but he noted that his employers made a seeming of throwing their weights and that they dipped their oars at a cheating angle. At the end of three hours, Sprague pulled his oar in and said they would run back into the mouth of the river for shelter. Stine seconded him, and the several hard-won miles were lost.
Simple as the idea was, he had been the first to evolve it; the first time it was applied it worked, and they hoisted a blanket to the mast and sped down the lake. Stine and Sprague immediately became cheerful. Shorty, despite his chronic pessimism, was always cheerful, and Kit was too interested to be otherwise.
"Oh, they are real hummers, your boss and mine, when it comes to sheddin' the mazuma an' never mindin' other folks' feelin's. What did they do when they hit Linderman? The carpenters was just putting in the last licks on a boat they'd contracted to a 'Frisco bunch for six hundred. Sprague and Stine slipped 'em an even thousand, and they jumped their contract.
They had not gone a hundred yards when they met Stine and Sprague coming down. "Where are you going?" the latter demanded. "To fetch that other boat through," Shorty answered. "No, you're not. It's getting dark. You two are going to pitch camp." So huge was Kit's disgust that he forebore to speak. "He's got his wife with him," Shorty said. "That's his lookout," Stine contributed.
At Windy Arm, Stine arbitrarily dispossessed Kit of the steering-sweep and within the hour wrecked the boat on a wave-beaten lee shore. Two days were lost here in making repairs, and the morning of the fresh start, as they came down to embark, on stern and bow, in large letters, was charcoaled "The Chechako." Kit grinned at the appropriateness of the invidious word.
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