hack. He could hear faint
sounds from within, a footfall on the board floor, an indistinct word
or murmur. Behind him and farther down the street, in the big cook
tents where the crews ate, was the rattle of pans and an occasional
oath or burst of laughter. There the cooks were peeling potatoes and
mixing great pans of biscuit dough and exchanging jests, while here in
the shack a fight was going on for a life.

Bryant saw again that unshaven, heavy-faced workman, with the terribly
mangled arm, whom he had brought hither. Poor devil! Some oversight,
some carelessness, some mistake on the part of himself or another; and
if not a dead man, then one-armed for the rest of his days. He,
Bryant, could not consider these accidents with Pat Carrigan's
philosophic calm--a calm acquired from decades of camp tragedies and
disasters. They harrowed his spirit. Though they appeared inevitable
where men delved or builded or flung forth great spans, they made the
cost of constructive works seem too great. They took the glamor from
projects and left them hard, grim, uninspiring tasks.

Lee felt a weariness like that of age. The strain under which he
laboured, the sustained effort of driving this furrow through earth
that was like iron, his unavailing endeavours to reclaim Ruth,
afflictions such as this of the past hour, the uncertainty of
everything--all sapped his energy and shook his faith. Yet before him
there were weeks of the same, or worse. He had put his hand to the
plow; he could not turn back.

All at once the door of the shack opened. Louise Graham came out,
without hat, garbed in a great white surgical apron. Her knees seemed
about to give way. Her eyes were half shut. Her face was without
colour, drawn, dazed. With her from the interior came a reek of
chloroform.

She had been the girl in there! Bryant had guessed it, feared it. He
ran forward and put an arm about her shoulders and led her to the tin
oil canister on which he urged her to be seated.

"No, I won't faint," she said, weakly. He knelt beside her and
supported her form. "I just feel dizzy and a little sick," she went
on. "Better in a moment." Lee observed her shudder. Presently she
murmured, "Stuck it out, anyway. Dad says--dad says, 'Never be a
quitter.' And I wasn't one."

CHAPTER XVIII

Rymer, a sandy-haired, blue-eyed young fellow, one of Bryant's staff,
walked out of the shack, pulling on his coat. He had a cigarette in
the corner of his mout