w I couldn't handle the two of
them; but I'm hoping to meet him alone some day before I die."

McLean tugged at his mustache to hide the smile on his lips, but he
liked the boy all the better for this confession.

"I didn't even have to steal clothes to get rid of starting in me Home
ones," Freckles continued, "for they had already taken all me clean,
neat things for the boy and put me into his rags, and that went almost
as sore as the beatings, for where I was we were always kept tidy and
sweet-smelling, anyway. I hustled clear into this State before I learned
that man couldn't have kept me if he'd wanted to. When I thought I
was good and away from him, I commenced hunting work, but it is with
everybody else just as it is with you, sir. Big, strong, whole men are
the only ones for being wanted."

"I have been studying over this matter," answered McLean. "I am not so
sure but that a man no older than you and similar in every way could do
this work very well, if he were not a coward, and had it in him to be
trustworthy and industrious."

Freckles came forward a step.

"If you will give me a job where I can earn me food, clothes, and a
place to sleep," he said, "if I can have a Boss to work for like other
men, and a place I feel I've a right to, I will do precisely what you
tell me or die trying."

He spoke so convincingly that McLean believed, although in his heart he
knew that to employ a stranger would be wretched business for a man with
the interests he had involved.

"Very well," the Boss found himself answering, "I will enter you on my
pay rolls. We'll have supper, and then I will provide you with clean
clothing, wading-boots, the wire-mending apparatus, and a revolver.
The first thing in the morning, I will take you the length of the trail
myself and explain fully what I want done. All I ask of you is to come
to me at once at the south camp and tell me as a man if you find this
job too hard for you. It will not surprise me. It is work that few men
would perform faithfully. What name shall I put down?"

Freckles' gaze never left McLean's face, and the Boss saw the swift
spasm of pain that swept his lonely, sensitive features.

"I haven't any name," he said stubbornly, "no more than one somebody
clapped on to me when they put me on the Home books, with not the
thought or care they'd name a house cat. I've seen how they enter those
poor little abandoned devils often enough to know. What they called me
is no