necessary for Hurley to call a halt, while the men chopped a log, or a thick mat of tops from the road. It was nearly midnight when the team swung into a wide clearing so overgrown that hardly more than the roofs of the low log buildings showed above the tops of the brambles and tall horseweed stalks.

"All right, boys!" called the boss. "We won't bother to unload only what we need for supper. Don't start no fire in the big range tonight. Here, you, Saginaw, you play cook. You can boil a batch of tea and fry some ham on the office stove—an' don't send no more sparks up the stovepipe than what you need to. If fire got started in these weeds we'd have two camps to build instead of one; Swede, you help Frenchy with the horses, an' yous other fellows fill them lanterns an' git what you need unloaded an' cover the wagon with a tarp."

"What can I do?" asked Connie. Hurley eyed him with a laugh. "Gosh sakes! Ain't you petered out yet? Well, go ahead and help Saginaw with the supper—the can stuff and dishes is on the hind end of the load."

The following days were busy ones for Connie. Men and teams laboured over the road, hauling supplies and equipment from the railway, while other men attacked the weed-choked clearing with brush-scythes and mattocks, and made necessary repairs about the camp. It was the boy's duty to check all incoming material whether of supplies or equipment, and between the arrival of teams he found time to make himself useful in the chinking of camp buildings and in numerous other ways.

"I'll show you about the books, now," said Hurley one evening as they sat in the office, or boss's camp, as the small building that stood off by itself was called. This room was provided with two rude pine desks with split log stools. A large air-tight stove occupied the centre of the floor, and two double-tier bunks were built against the wall. The wanagan chests were also ranged along the log wall into which pins had been inserted for the hanging of snow-shoes, rifles, and clothing.

The boss took from his desk several books. "This one," he began, "is the wanagan book. If a wanagan book is kep' right ye never have no trouble—if it ain't ye never have nawthin' else. Some outfits gouge the men on the wanagan—I don't. I don't even add haulin' cost to the price—they can git tobacker an' whatever they need jest as cheap here as what they could in town. But they've be'n cheated so much with wanagans that they expect to be. The best way to keep 'em from growlin' is to name over the thing an' the price to 'em after they've bought it, even if it's only a dime's worth of tobacker. Then jest name off the total that's ag'in' 'em—ye can do that by settin' it down to one side with a pencil each time. That don't never give them a chanct to kick, an' they soon find it out. I don't run no 'dollar you got, dollar you didn't get, an' dollar you ort to got' outfit. They earn what's comin' to 'em. Some augers they might as well gouge 'em 'cause they go an' blow it all in anyhow, soon as they get to town—but what's that any of my business? It's theirn.

"This here book is the time book. Git yer pen, now, an' I'll call ye off the names an' the wages an' you can set 'em down." When the task was completed the boss continued: "Ye know about the supply book, an' here's the log book—but ye won't need that fer a while yit. I've got to cruise around tomorrow an' find a location fer the new camp. I want to git it laid out as quick as I can so the men can git to cuttin' the road through. Then they can git to work on the buildin's while I go back an' fill me out a crew.

"Wish't you'd slip over to the men's camp an' tell Saginaw I want to see him. I'll make him straw boss while I am gone—the men like him, an' at the same time they know he won't stand for no monkey business."

"What's a straw boss?" asked the boy.

"He's the boss that's boss when the boss ain't around," explained Hurley, as Connie put on his cap and proceeded to the men's camp, a long log building from whose windows yellow lamplight shone. The moment he opened the door he was thankful indeed, that Hurley had invited him to share the boss's camp. Although the night was not cold, a fire roared in the huge box stove that occupied the centre of the long room. A fine drizzle had set in early in the afternoon, and the drying racks about the stove were ladened with the rain-dampened garments of the men. Steam from these, mingled with the smoke from thirty-odd pipes and the reek of drying rubbers and socks, rendered the air of the bunk house thick with an odorous fog that nearly stifled Connie as he stepped into the superheated interior.

Seated upon an upper bunk with his feet dangling over the edge, one of the men was playing vociferously upon a cheap harmonica, while others sat about upon rude benches or the edges of bunks listening or talking. The boy made his way over the uneven floor, stained with dark splotches of tobacco juice, toward the farther end of the room, where Saginaw Ed was helping Frenchy mend a piece of harness.

As he passed a bunk midway of the room, Steve rose to his feet and confronted him. "Ha! Here's the greener kid—the boss's pet that's too good to bunk in the men's camp! Whatchu doin' in here? Did Hurley send you after some strap oil?" As the two boys stood facing each other in the middle of the big room the men saw that the cookee was the taller and the heavier of the two. The harmonica stopped and the men glanced in grinning expectation at the two figures. Steve's sneering laugh sounded startingly loud in the sudden silence. "He made his brag he used to tame bear-cats over in Canady!" he said. "Well, I'm a bear-cat—come on an' tame me! I'm wild!" Reaching swiftly the boy jerked the cap from Connie's head and hurled it across the room where it lodged in an upper bunk. Some of the men laughed, but there were others who did not laugh—those who noted the slight paling of the smaller boy's face and the stiffening of his muscles. With hardly a glance at Steve, Connie stepped around him and walked to where Saginaw Ed sat, an interested spectator of the scene.