f
Rosy-Lilly, he growled: "Well, not as I knows of!" and rose to his
feet, thrusting her brusquely aside.

"Ain't he uglier'n hell?" murmured Bird Pigeon to Walley Johnson,
spitting indignantly on the stove-leg. "He'd 'a' cuffed the kid ef he
da'st, he glared at her that ugly!"

"Like to see 'im try it!" responded Johnson through his teeth, with a
look to which his blank eye lent mysterious menace.

The time soon came, however, when McWha resumed his old seat and his
old attitude on the bench. Rosy-Lilly avoided him for two evenings,
but on the third the old fascination got the better of her pique.
McWha saw her coming, and, growing self-conscious, he hurriedly
started up a song with the full strength of his big voice.

The song was a well-known one, and nothing in it to redden the ear of
a maiden; but it was profane with that rich, ingenious amplitude of
profanity which seems almost instinctive among the lumbermen--a sort
of second mother-tongue to them. Had it been any one but McWha who
started it, nothing would have been said; but, as it was, Walley
Johnson took alarm on the instant. To his supersensitive watchfulness,
McWha was singing that song "jest a purpose to be ugly to the kid."
The fact that "the kid" would hardly understand a word of it, did not
occur to him. Rising up from his bench behind the stove he shouted out
across the smoky room: "Shet up that, Red!"

The song stopped. Every one looked inquiringly at Johnson. For several
moments there was silence, broken only by an uneasy shuffling of feet.
Then McWha got up slowly, his eyebrows bristling, his angry eyes
little pin-points. First he addressed himself to Johnson.

"What the ---- business is't o' yourn what I sing?" he demanded,
opening and shutting his big fingers.

"I'll show ye what," began Johnson, in a tense voice. But the Boss
interrupted. Dave Logan was a quiet man, but he ruled his camp.
Moreover, he was a just man, and Johnson had begun the dispute.

"Chuck that, Walley!" he snapped, sharp as a whip. "If there's to be
any row in this here camp, I'll make it myself, an' don't none o' you
boys forgit it!"

McWha turned upon him in angry appeal.

"You're Boss, Dave Logan, an' what you sez goes, fer's I'm
concerned," said he. "But I ax you, _as_ Boss, be this here camp a
_camp_, er a camp-meetin'? Walley Johnson kin go straight to hell; but
ef _you_ sez we 'ain't to sing nawthin' but hymns, why, o' course,
it's hymns for me--till I kin