Page:GB Lancaster--law-bringer.djvu/24

22 "Mine! What d'yer take me for? It belongs to that tepee acrost the clearing. They're e-ternally crawlin' in here, the little—beasts like they was flies—or bugs. Chuck it down, an' let it crawl home."

Dick arranged the baby wth [sic] its nose in a direct line with the tepee; watched its progress for two yards towards the band of light, then followed into the shack. The shack was more crowded than most shacks; for, besides the inevitable black stove, narrow bunk, box with tin basin, boots, team-harness, gun, axes, and other necessaries, there was a telephone battery in the north wall and a counter behind which Randal had served the line-camp running east under the window. Outside were some thousand miles of sweeping forest and plain, of river and lonely ranges. Beyond lay big, glowing, noisy towns, where men hived, humming and throbbing with vivid life, and Randal held on to them by the little steel key of the battery. Through the winter he would guard his line-section from fallen trees and snow as best he might. Through spring and fall and summer he would be there; selling tinned foods and cereals and chewing-gum to the line-camps, and taking and transmitting messages concerning the on-going work. And in between he watched half-breed Indian babies crawl into his shack, suck his team-harness in the simple belief that it was moosemeat, and crawl out again. Besides, he chewed a great deal of gum, and passing freighters generally stopped to talk.

Dick kept his eyes from Tempest through the meal of beans and bacon helped out with Randal's sodden bannock. He knew that the man was suffering acutely, and he was glad of it. For hate still held, iron-hard, against the love that had been. Then Tempest got in a corner with his pipe, dropping out of the talk and out of the smudge of light from the dirty coal-oil lamp. Randal sat full in the gleam of it, chewing in slow content. He was like a cow in his great, awkward strength, and like a cow in his indifference to most subjects until Dick chanced on the one concerning which Randal was morbidly rabid. He sat up, thrusting his rugged face forward.

"Who lives in the tepee?" he said. "Who orter live in a tepee but a Injun an' his squaw? An' who do live there