sharp, matter-of-fact statement. He was telling of a human
killing, and there was no softening.

Bull nodded. He glanced over his shoulder.

"You mean--?"

"They shot five of 'em to death. The last two they hanged." A grim set
of the jaws, as Bat made the announcement, was his only expression of
feeling.

"Makes you wonder," he went on, after a pause. "Makes you think of the
days when locomotives didn't run. Makes you think of the days when life
was just a pretty mean gamble with most of the odds dead against you. It
don't sound like these Sunday School days when the world sits around,
framed in a fancy-coloured halo, that couldn't stand for any wash-tub,
talkin' brotherhood an' human sympathy. It's tough when you think of the
bunch that sent those boys to fire our limits. They knew the full crime
of it, and knew the thing it would mean if we got hands on 'em. Well,
there it is. We got 'em. An' now ther' ain't a mother's son of 'em left
alive to tell the yarn of it all. It's been just cold, bloody murder.
An' the murder ain't on us. No, I guess the darn savage eatin' hashed
missioner ain't as bad a proposition as the civilised guys who paid the
price to get those toughs killed up in our forests. I can't feel no sort
of regret. It won't hand me a half-hour nightmare. But it makes me
wonder. It surely does."

He spat accurately into the cuspidore.

"Does the report hand you anything else?" Bull asked, without turning.
The other noticed the complete lack of real interest. He shrugged.

"The camps are all in full cut. They're not a cord behind."

Bat looked for a word, the lighting of an eye. There was none. And he
stirred in his chair, and exasperation drove him.

"Don't it make you feel good?" he demanded sharply. "It's the last guess
answered, unless there's a guess when that boy, Birchall, comes along.
Anyway, you don't figger ther's much guess to that, with the mill
runnin' full, an' every boom crashed full of logs. No. Here, Bull!" he
cried, with sudden vehemence. "Turn around, man. Turn right around an'
get a grip on it all. The game's won to the last detail. Can't you feel
good? Can't you feel like a feller gettin' out into the light after
years of the darkest hell? Don't it make you want to holler? Ain't
there a thing I can say to boost you? The boys down at the mill are
hoggin' work. The groundwood's on the quays like mountains. The mills
are roaring like blast furnaces. Can you beat it? Spring. The fli