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Updated: June 10, 2025
"'S if he thought I'd bite 'er!" mused McWha, somewhat inconsistently. For a long time he lay wondering confusedly. At last he opened his eyes wide, felt his bandaged head, and called for a drink of water in a voice which he vainly strove to make sound natural. To his surprise he was answered by Rosy-Lilly, so promptly that it was as if she had been listening for his voice.
He felt the child's tiny fingers brushing it again softly and tenderly. Then he felt her lips upon it, and the sensation was so novel that he quite forgot to reply to the Boss's pleasantry. That night McWha was so much better that when he insisted on being removed to his own bunk on the plea that he "didn't feel at home in a cupboard like," the Boss consented.
At the head of the first team, his broad jaw set and his small grey eyes angry with fatigue, trudged the big figure of Red McWha, choosing and breaking a way through the deep snow.
Bird Pigeon, who was something of a beau in the Settlements, understood this, and stirred the loyal wrath of Walley Johnson by saying so. "There ain't nawthin' about Red McWha to make Rosy-Lilly keer shucks fer 'im, savin' an' except that she can't git him!" said Bird. "She's that nigh bein' a woman a'ready, if she be but five year old!"
"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.
A sick man like he was, to've kept the kid alone here with him that way!" And he glanced down at the dead figure with severe reprobation. "Never was much good, that Joe Godding!" muttered McWha, always critical. As the two woodsmen discussed the situation, the child, a delicate-featured, blue-eyed girl, was gazing up from under her mop of bright hair, first at one, then at the other.
"They do say in the Settlements as how Joe Godding hain't kith nor kin in the world, savin' an' exceptin' the kid only," continued Johnson. McWha nodded indifferently. "Well," went on Johnson, "we can't do nawthin' but take her on to the camp now. Mebbe the Boss'll decide she's got to go back to the Settlement, along o' the fun'ral.
As for Rosy-Lilly, her feelings were this time so outraged that she would no longer look at McWha. The long backwoods winter was now drawing near its end, and the snow in the open spaces was getting so soft at midday as to slump heavily and hinder the work of the teams.
Then she would come closer, without a word from her usually nimble little tongue, lean against McWha's knee, and look up coaxingly into his face. If McWha chanced to be singing, for he was a "chanter" of some note, he would appear so utterly absorbed that Rosy-Lilly would at last slip away, with a look of hurt surprise in her face, to be comforted by one of her faithful.
Of course, it was generally recognized that McWha was not bound, by any law or obligation, to take any notice of the child, still less to "make a fuss over her," with the rest of the camp. But Jimmy Brackett expressed the popular sentiment when he growled, looking sourly at the back of McWha's unconscious red head bowed ravenously over his plate of beans
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