' about a broken
block? Them ragged pieces of flyin' iron sure mess a man up. They'll
bring a bed spring, an' pack him down to the boat, an' get him to a
doctor quick as they can. That's all. You couldn't do nothin'."

Nevertheless she went. Renfrew was the rigging slinger working with
Charlie, a big, blond man who blushed like a schoolboy when Benton
introduced him to her. Twenty minutes before he had gone trotting after
the haul-back, sound and hearty, laughing at some sally of her
brother's. It seemed a trifle incredible that he should lie mangled and
bleeding among the green forest growth, while his fellows hurried for a
stretcher.

Two hundred yards at right angles from where Charlie had stood giving
signals she found a little group under a branchy cedar. Renfrew lay on
his back, mercifully unconscious. Benton squatted beside him, twisting a
silk handkerchief with a stick tightly above the wound. His hands and
Renfrew's clothing and the mossy ground was smeared with blood. Stella
looked over his shoulder. The overalls were cut away. In the thick of
the man's thigh stood a ragged gash she could have laid both hands in.
She drew back.

Benton looked up.

"Better keep away," he advised shortly. "We've done all that can be
done."

She retreated a little and sat down on a root, half-sickened. The other
two men stood up. Benton sat back, his first-aid work done, and rolled a
cigarette with fingers that shook a little. Off to one side she saw the
fallers climb up on their springboards. Presently arose the ringing
whine of the thin steel blade, the chuck of axes where the swampers
attacked a fallen tree. No matter, she thought, that injury came to one,
that death might hover near, the work went on apace, like action on a
battlefield.

A few minutes thereafter the two men who had gone with Sam Davis
returned with the spring from Benton's bed and a light mattress. They
laid the injured logger on this and covered him with a blanket. Then
four of them picked it up. As they started, Stella heard one say to her
brother:

"Matt's jagged."

"What?" Benton exploded. "Where'd it come from?"

"One uh them Hungry Bay shingle-bolt cutters's in camp," the logger
answered. "Maybe he brought a bottle. I didn't stop to see. But Matt's
sure got a tank full."

Benton ripped out an angry oath, passed his men, and strode away down
the path. Stella fell in behind him, wakened to a sudden uneasiness at
the wrathful set of his feat