ight.

Minutes later he was lounging heavily against the rough planked counter
of Abe Risdon's store. He was talking to the suttler over a deep
"four-fingers" of neat Rye, while his searching eyes scanned the body of
the ill-lit room. The place was usually crowded with drinkers when the
daylight passed, but just now it was almost empty.

"Who's that guy in the tweed pea-jacket an' looks like a city man?" he
asked his host in an undertone, pointing at one of the tables where a
stranger sat surrounded by four of the forest men.

Abe's powerful arms were folded as he leant on the counter.

"Blew in about noon," he said. "Filled his belly with good hash an' sat
around since."

"He's a bunch o' the boys about him now, anyway. An' I guess he's
talking quite a lot, an' they're doing most o' the listening. Seems
like he's mostly enjoying hisself."

Abe shrugged. But the glance he flung at the man sitting at the far-off
table was without approval.

"It's mostly that way now," he said, with an air of indifference his
thoughtful eyes denied. "There's too many guys come along an' sell
truck, an' set around, an' talk, an' then pass along. Things are
changing around this lay out, an' I don't get its meanin'. Time was I
had a bunch of boys ready most all the time to hand me the news going
round. Time was you'd see a stranger once in a month come along in an'
buy our food. Time was they mostly had faces we knew by heart, and we
knew their business, and where they came from. Tain't that way now. You
couldn't open the boys' faces fer news of the forest with a can-opener.
These darn guys are always about now. They come, an' feed the boys'
drink, an' talk with 'em most all the time. An' they're mostly
strangers, an' the boys mostly sit around with their faces open like
fool men listenin' to fairy tales. How's the cut goin'?"

Porson laughed. There was no light in his hard eyes.

"At a gait you couldn't change with a trail whip."

The other nodded.

'"That's how 'nigger' Pilling said. He guessed the cut was down by
fifty. What is it? A buck? Wages?"

Porson's hand was fingering one of the guns in his pocket. His eyes were
snapping.

"Curse 'em," he cried at last. "I just don't get it. They're goin'
slow."

He pushed his empty glass at the suttler who promptly re-filled it.

"Young Pete Cust," Abe went on confidentially, "handed me a good guess
only this mornin'. He'd had his sixth Rye before startin' out to work.
Maybe h