all spring
driven them at top speed, the added straw broke the back of their
patience, and Stella heard some sharp interchanges of words. He quelled
one incipient mutiny through sheer dominance, but it left him more short
of temper, more crabbedly moody than ever. Eventually his ill-nature
broke out against Stella over some trifle, and she--being herself an
aggrieved party to his transactions--surprised her own sense of the
fitness of things by retaliating in kind.

"I'm slaving away in your old camp from daylight till dark at work I
despise, and you can't even speak decently to me," she flared up. "You
act like a perfect brute lately. What's the matter with you?"

Benton gnawed at a finger nail in silence.

"Hang it, I guess you're right," he admitted at last. "But I can't help
having a grouch. I'm going to fall behind on this contract, the best I
can do."

"Well," she replied tartly. "I'm not to blame for that. I'm not
responsible for your failure. Why take it out on me?"

"I don't, particularly," he answered. "Only--can't you _sabe_? A man
gets on edge when he works and sweats for months and sees it all about
to come to nothing."

"So does a woman," she made pointed retort.

Benton chose to ignore the inference.

"If I fall down on this, it'll just about finish me," he continued
glumly. "These people are not going to allow me an inch leeway. I'll
have to deliver on that contract to the last stipulated splinter before
they'll pay over a dollar. If I don't have a million feet for 'em three
weeks from to-day, it's all off, and maybe a suit for breach of contract
besides. That's the sort they are. If they can wiggle out of taking my
logs, they'll be to the good, because they've made other contracts down
the coast at fifty cents a thousand less. And the aggravating thing
about it is that if I could get by with this deal, I can close a
five-million-foot contract with the Abbey-Monohan outfit, for delivery
next spring. I must have the money for this before I can undertake the
bigger contract."

"Can't you sell your logs if these other people won't take them?" she
asked, somewhat alive now to his position--and, incidentally, her own
interest therein.

"In time, yes," he said. "But when you go into the open market with
logs, you don't always find a buyer right off the reel. I'd have to hire
'em towed from here to Vancouver, and there's some bad water to get
over. Time is money to me right now, Stell. If the thing