hing it a long time, but to date he seems innocent
enough. You don't need to care so long as he turns up to work every
morning."

"Innocent?" He snorted. "Them damn Poles can't be innocent. Ever
since them horses began to go-- If we could only do without the damn
heathen!"

"But you damn well can't."

"Tressa!" He stumbled back to her door with horrified eyes.

"My daddy's good enough to copy," she laughed.

"Your daddy, girl, is--is shocked. If I hear you--" He tossed his
hands up helplessly. "You're making your daddy so mealy-mouthed, the
first bohunk with a grouch will pull his nose. I've got to swear at
'em. If you don't let me tear loose a bit when I'm with you, the air's
going to be so blue next time I meet a bohunk that he'll think he's
gone to his last reward."

She came to the doorway of her room, coiling a loop of hair.

"Go and listen to the music, daddy. You need sweetening to-night."

The rough big fellow looked deep into her eyes. "I'd go plumb crazy in
this life without you, little girl."

"Sure you would," she agreed contentedly. "Now run along and do
Morani's orchestra justice. He deserves it."

He patted her cheek and returned to his favourite stand in the front
door.

The evening mysteries were deepening. Already the trunks of the trees
on the far bank of the river were merging into a dull mass. The play
of sunlight and shadow in the nearer forest was an etching of white and
black. The mellow sudden Western night was dropping glamorous mantle
over the familiar scene, softening the crudeness of the camp and
exalting the dying round of the forest's fight for solitude. The sand
of the grade gleamed with evening tint of ochre. The network of the
trestle was a maze of incised lines against the shaded bank opposite.
A solitary bird, astir beyond its bedtime, hovered against the sky,
cheeping to unseen brood below. Some swift-vanishing creature--wolf or
coyote--ran along the edge of the distant bank for a fearful, curious
glimpse of the persistent invasion of its venerable privacy. The sun,
like a mocking challenge, was painting with flaming hand its tremendous
but fleeting colour-picture on the northwest sky, where clouds unseen
by day hung ever ready for the evening-hour brush of the great artist.

The dirty canvas of the camp was laundered by the mysteries of
twilight. Living groups lay peacefully about the river bottom,
gambling, Torrance knew. For the moment the or