ant-hook stock. A hint of reluctance or opposition
brought his fist to the mark with irresistible impact. Then he would
pluck his victim from the snow, and kick him to work with a savage jest
that raised a laugh from everybody--excepting the object of it.

At night he stormed back through the forest at the head of his band,
shrieking wild blasphemy at the silent night, irreverent, domineering,
bold, with a certain tang of Irish good-nature that made him the beloved
of Irishmen. And at the trail's end the unkempt, ribald crew swarmed
their dark and dirty camp as a band of pirates a galleon.

In the work was little system, but much efficacy. The men gambled,
drank, fought, without a word of protest from their leader. With an
ordinary crew such performances would have meant slight accomplishment,
but these wild Irishmen, with their bloodshot eyes, their ready jests,
their equally ready fists, plunged into the business of banking logs
with all the abandon of a carouse--and the work was done.

Law in that wilderness was not, saving that which the Rough Red chose to
administer. Except in one instance, penalty more severe than a beating
there was none, for the men could not equal their leader in breaking the
greater and lesser laws of morality. The one instance was that of young
Barney Mallan, who, while drunk, mishandled a horse so severely as to
lame it. Him the Rough Red called to formal account.

"Don't ye know that horses can't be had?" he demanded, singularly
enough without an oath. "Come here."

The man approached. With a single powerful blow of a starting-bar the
Rough Red broke one of the bones of his tibia.

"Try th' lameness yerself," said the Rough Red, grimly. He glared about
through the dimness at his silent men, then stalked through the door
into the cook-camp. Had he killed Barney Mallan outright, it would have
been the same. No one in the towns would have been a word the wiser.

On Thanksgiving Day the entire place went on a prolonged drunk. The
Rough Red distinguished himself by rolling the round stove through the
door into the snow. He was badly burned in accomplishing this delicate
jest, but minded the smart no more then he did the admiring cheers of
his maudlin but emulative mates. FitzPatrick extinguished a dozen little
fires that the coals had started, shifted the intoxicated Mallan's leg
out of the danger of someone's falling on it, and departed from that
roaring hell-hole to the fringe of the sol