d up their canvas when
they moved along, it had been patched up with more disreputable canvas,
now mouldy and torn, with bits of roof gone here, and windows and doors
missing there. The very dregs even of construction camps. Big Jim
Torrance himself had used it first on grade and had sold the portable
parts to a contractor with work further west. Then O'Connor, the first
contractor to tackle the trestle, had shoved his men into what was left
with orders to do their damnedest. And now Torrance again, having
taken over the task O'Connor had funked in a moment of panic.

Half a thousand bohunks[1] were existing there now, five hundred of the
wildest foreigners even Torrance had handled. But they were _his_
gang. And Mile 130 was _his_ camp. That thought had impelled him once
to punch the head of a leering engineer who rashly ventured to call it
"Torrance's pig-sty" in Torrance's hearing. The camp might go to
perdition so far as he was concerned, but he wasn't going to have any
rank outsider shoving it along.

With a determined little set to her lips, her only inheritance from her
father, Tressa Torrance passed through the living room and seized him
by the ear; and he returned to earth with a howl of mock pain.

"You little tyrant!" he protested, wrapping one arm about her and
hoisting her to his shoulder. "Your mother wasn't a patch to you."

She wriggled herself free and, still holding to the ear, led him into
the shack.

"At least you can empty the water," she ordered.

"Oh, I can do more than that. How about the pans?"

"They're done."

He was really contrite. "I guess I did forget, little girl."

"It's a habit you have."

He rubbed his moustached lips along her bare arm and swung her again to
his shoulder.

"Low bridge!"

She bent from her lofty perch until her cheek lay along his hair, and
they passed into the kitchen, where he set her down with elaborate care.

"I guess that trestle isn't through with me yet," he observed, a frown
marking his forehead. "It's dropped six inches in the last week." He
picked up a pan of dirty water and started for the door. "You won't be
beaten," she told him confidently. "It's sinking less every day.
You've put in half the country now--there must be bottom somewhere." He
disappeared without a word and tossed the water over the edge of the
chasm. "Anyway," she protested, as he returned, "looking at it isn't
going to stiffen its backbone. If it is, you ca