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Johnson fixed him with his disconcerting eye, and retorted witheringly "Ye thinks ye knows a pile about women, Bird Pigeon. But the kind ye knows about ain't the kind Rosy-Lilly's agoin' to be!" Nearly a week went by before Rosy-Lilly saw another chance to assail McWha's forbidding defences.
"We'll every mother's son o' us be guardeen to her!" he declared, with the finality appropriate to his office as autocrat second only to the Boss himself. Every man in camp assented noisily, saving only Red McWha; and he, as was expected of him, sat back and grinned. From the first, Rosy-Lilly made herself at home in the camp.
And Rosy-Lilly, on her part, no longer strove to win his attention. She was content either with the victory she had won, or with the secret understanding which, perforce, now existed between them. And things went on smoothly in the camp, with every one now too occupied to do more than mind his own business.
They reached him somehow, and covered with bruises which they did not feel, succeeded in dragging him, with his precious burden, up from the grinding hell to safety. When his feet touched solid ground he sank unconscious, but with his arm so securely gripped about the child that they had difficulty in loosing his hold. Rosy-Lilly, when they picked her up, was quivering with terror, but unharmed.
This guest-bunk the Boss at once allotted to Rosy-Lilly, but on the strict condition that Johnson should continue to act as nurse and superintend Rosy-Lilly's nightly toilet. Rosy-Lilly had not been in the camp a week before McWha's "ugliness" to her had aroused even the Boss's resentment, and the Boss was a just man.
Then, with lighter hearts, they went back to the cabin fire, which seemed to burn more freely now that the grim presence of its former master had been removed. "Now what's to be done with the kid with Rosy-Lilly?" began Johnson. Red McWha took his pipe from his mouth, and spat accurately into the crack of the grate to signify that he had no opinion on that important subject.
A look of embarrassment passed over his face as he glanced at the men standing about him. Then he looked down at Rosy-Lilly, grinned with a shamefaced tenderness, and pulled her gently towards him. "I'm right glad ye " he began with painful effort. But before he could complete the sentence his eyes changed, and he fell back with a clicking gasp.
"We mus' let 'im sleep, Rosy-Lilly says," decreed Johnson, with an emphasis which penetrated McWha's unsympathetic consciousness, and elicited a non-committal grunt. When supper was ready, Rosy-Lilly hung around him for a minute or two before dragging her chair up to the table. She evidently purposed paying him the compliment of sitting close beside him and letting him cut her bacon for her.
McWha would reply with a grin, as if proud of having routed the little adventurer so easily. He had discovered that the name "Yaller Top" was an infallible weapon of rebuff, as Rosy-Lilly considered it a term of indignity. To his evil humour there was something amusing in abashing Rosy-Lilly with the title she most disliked.
Next day he wanted to go back to work, but the Boss was derisively inexorable, and for two days McWha was kept a prisoner. During this time Jimmy Brackett, with severe and detailed admonition, kept Rosy-Lilly from again obtruding upon the patient's leisure; and McWha had nothing to do but smoke and whittle. He whittled diligently, but let no one see what he was making.
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