othing; I was just wondering."

But behind his employer's back Kit caught the approving grin of Shorty,
who had already caught the whim of his metaphor.

Kit steered the length of Linderman, displaying an aptitude that
caused both young men of money and disinclination for work to name him
boat-steerer. Shorty was no less pleased, and volunteered to continue
cooking and leave the boat work to the other.

Between Linderman and Lake Bennett was a portage. The boat, lightly
loaded, was lined down the small but violent connecting stream, and here
Kit learned a vast deal more about boats and water. But when it came to
packing the outfit, Stine and Sprague disappeared, and their men spent
two days of back-breaking toil in getting the outfit across. And this
was the history of many miserable days of the trip--Kit and Shorty
working to exhaustion, while their masters toiled not and demanded to be
waited upon.

But the iron-bound arctic winter continued to close down, and they
were held back by numerous and unavoidable delays. 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.

"Huh!" said Shorty, when accused by Stine. "I can sure read and spell,
an' I know that chechako means tenderfoot, but my education never went
high enough to learn me to spell a jaw-breaker like that."

Both employers looked daggers at Kit, for the insult rankled; nor did he
mention that the night before, Shorty had besought him for the spelling
of that particular word.

"That's 'most as bad as your bear-meat slam at 'em," Shorty confided
later.

Kit chuckled. Along with the continuous discovery of his own powers had
come an ever-increasing disapproval of the two masters. It was not so
much irritation, which was always present, as disgust. He had got his
taste of the meat, and liked it; but they were teaching him how not to
eat it. Privily, he thanked God that he was not made as they. He came
to dislike them to a degree that bordered on hatred. Their malingering
bothered him less than their helpless inefficiency. Somewhere in him,
old Isaac Bellew and all the rest of the hardy Bellews were making good.

"Shorty," he said one day, in