ed--and what I've earned. God knows I _have_ earned it. I can't
stand this work, and I don't intend to. It isn't work; it's slavery."

"But what can you do in town?" he countered. "You haven't the least idea
what you'd be going up against, Stell. You've never been away from home,
and you've never had the least training at anything useful. You'd be on
your uppers in no time at all. You wouldn't have a ghost of a chance."

"I have such a splendid chance here," she retorted ironically. "If I
could get in any position where I'd be more likely to die of sheer
stagnation, to say nothing of dirty drudgery, than in this forsaken
hole, I'd like to know how. I don't think it's possible."

"You could be a whole lot worse off, if you only knew it," Benton
returned grumpily. "If you haven't got any sense about things, I have. I
know what a rotten hole Vancouver or any other seaport town is for a
girl alone. I won't let you make any foolish break like that. That's
flat."

From this position she failed to budge him. Once angered, partly by her
expressed intention and partly by the outspoken protest against the
mountain of work imposed on her, Charlie refused point-blank to give her
either the ninety dollars he had taken out of her purse or the three
months' wages due. Having made her request, and having met with this--to
her--amazing refusal, Stella sat dumb. There was too fine a streak in
her to break out in recrimination. She was too proud to cry.

So that she went to bed in a ferment of helpless rage. Virtually she was
a prisoner, as much so as if Charlie had kidnaped her and held her so by
brute force. The economic restraint was all potent. Without money she
could not even leave the camp. And when she contemplated the daily
treadmill before her, she shuddered.

At least she could go on strike. Her round cheek flushed with the
bitterest anger she had ever known, she sat with eyes burning into the
dark of her sordid room, and vowed that the thirty loggers should die of
slow starvation if they did not eat until she cooked another meal for
them.

CHAPTER IX

JACK FYFE'S CAMP

She was still hot with the spirit of mutiny when morning came, but she
cooked breakfast. It was not in her to act like a petulant child.
Morning also brought a different aspect to things, for Charlie told her
while he helped prepare breakfast that he was going to take his crew and
repay in labor the help Jack Fyfe had given him.

"While we're