be'n down so often." Then he peered about the
cabin. "Looks like none o' the boys was to home. Wish they was; they
might git us up a little dinner. It's jest twelve."

He went inside the open door, and I heard him foraging about, the
shanty echoing hollowly to the clumping of his big boots. By and by his
nasal note was resumed:

"Come in, pardner! Here's a great find: a big can o' green gages an' a
hunk o' jerk an' a lot o' cold biscuits."

Inside, with my legs under the greasy, coverless table, I chewed the
jerk like one who was determined to give his jaws the benefit of
strenuous physical culture, and listened while Oram rattled on, with his
mouth full of the sodden, half-baked biscuits.

"You mightn't think it," said he, "but three years ago this here was the
most scrumptious camp on the hull flume. Ol' man Hemenway lived here
then with his daughter Jess. She kep' house fer him. Jess was a great
gal. Every man along the flume, from Skyland to Mill Flat, was in love
with her. Shape? You couldn't beat that there gal for figger if yeh was
to round up every actress in the country. She had a pair o' big round
baby-blue eyes, an' was as pretty as any o' them there cigarette
picters. A little on the strawbary-blonde, but not too much red in her
hair, an' yet spunky as a badger when yeh teased her.

"The boys down this way didn't have much show. It looked like Jess had
hit it off with Jud Brusie, a big, husky, clean-lookin' chap up to the
h'ist. Jud used ter send her down notes stuck in sticks wedged inter the
clamps, an' he used ter sneak down this way on Sundays when he'd git a
chanst. She'd meet him up to the Riffles there by that big bunch o'
yaller pines we passed. He didn't dast come down here nary time till ol'
man Hemenway he got laid up with a busted laig from slippin' off the
trestle in the snow. That there was Jud's show ter git in his fine work.
Used ter bring down deer-meat for the ol' man, an' sody-water from that
there spoutin' spring up ter Crazy Canon; an' it begun to look like
Hemenway'd give in an' let him have her. But he seemed to hold off.

"The boys used ter nearly josh the life out o' Jud. One fellow--his name
was Phil Pettis--was skunkin' mean enough to read a note Jud sent down
oncet an' tell about it roun' Skyland; but that was the only time any of
'em ever done anything like that, fer Jud jest laid fer Phil an' went
through him like a buzz-saw an' chucked him inter the flume.

"No, it didn