ew came to dinner, he had not returned. Nor was he
back when they went out again at one.

Near mid-afternoon, however, he strode into the kitchen, wearing the
look of a conqueror.

"I've got it fixed," he announced.

Stella looked up from a frothy mass of yellow stuff that she was
stirring in a pan.

"Got what fixed?" she asked.

"Why, this log business," he said. "Jack Fyfe is going to put in a crew
and a donkey, and we're going to everlastingly rip the innards out of
these woods. I'll make delivery after all."

"That's good," she remarked, but noticeably without enthusiasm. The
heat of that low-roofed shanty had taken all possible enthusiasm for
anything out of her for the time being. Always toward the close of each
day she was gripped by that feeling of deadly fatigue, in the face of
which nothing much mattered but to get through the last hours somehow
and drag herself wearily to bed.

Benton playfully tweaked Katy John's ear and went whistling up the
trail. It was plain sailing for him now, and he was correspondingly
elated.

He tried to talk to Stella that evening when she was through, all about
big things in the future, big contracts he could get, big money he could
see his way to make. It fell mostly on unappreciative ears. She was
tired, so tired that his egotistical chatter irritated her beyond
measure. What she would have welcomed with heartfelt gratitude was not
so much a prospect of future affluence in which she might or might not
share as a lightening of her present burden. So far as his conversation
ran, Benton's sole concern seemed to be more equipment, more men, so
that he might get out more logs. In the midst of this optimistic talk,
Stella walked abruptly into her room.

Noon of the next day brought the _Panther_ coughing into the bay,
flanked on the port side by a scow upon which rested a twin to the iron
monster that jerked logs into her brother's chute. To starboard was made
fast a like scow. That was housed over, a smoking stovepipe stuck
through the roof, and a capped and aproned cook rested his arms on the
window sill as they floated in. Men to the number of twenty or more
clustered about both scows and the _Panther's_ deck, busy with pipe and
cigarette and rude jest. The clatter of their voices uprose through the
noon meal. But when the donkey scow thrust its blunt nose against the
beach, the chaff and laughter died into silent, capable action.

"A Seattle yarder properly handled ca