In the bunk-house the men busied themselves in the polishing of
buck-horns for the fashioning of a wonderful chair in whose make-up
would be found neither nails nor glue, its parts being bound together
by means of sinews and untanned buckskin thongs.

The bateaux were set up and waiting at the head of the rollways. The
snow of the forest slumped lower and lower, and innumerable icy rills
found their way to the river over the surface of whose darkened,
honeycombed ice flowed a shallow, slushy stream.

Father Lapre arrived one morning, pink, smiling, and wet to the middle,
having blundered onto thin ice in the darkness. The following morning
Sheridan and Appleton appeared with mysteriously bulging packs, and
weary from their three nights' battle with the slippery, ice-crusted
tote-road.

CHAPTER XLVII

MONCROSSEN PAYS A VISIT

In the filthy office of the camp on the Lower Blood River, Buck
Moncrossen sat at his desk and glowered over his report sheets. The
ill-trimmed lamp smoked luridly, and the light that filtered through
its blackened chimney illumined dimly the interior of the little room.

The man pawed over his papers with bearlike clumsiness, pausing now and
then to wet a begrimed thumb and to curse his luck, his crew, his
employer, and any and everything that had to do with logs and logging.

It had been a bad season for Buck Moncrossen. The spring break-up was
at hand, and the best he could figure was a scant nine million feet,
where Appleton had expected the heavy end of a twenty-five-million-foot
cut.

Many of his best men had gone to the new camp to work, as they
supposed, under Fallon. The previous winter's bird's-eye cut was lost;
Creed was gone; Stromberg was gone, and he trusted none of his men
sufficiently to continue the game. The boss rose with a growl, and spat
copiously in the direction of the stove.

"Damn Appleton! And damn the crew! Nine million feet! At that, though,
I bet I've laid down half agin as much as the new camp. Fallon never
run a crew, an' he had his camp to build to boot."

He resumed his seat, and reaching to the top of the desk drew down a
quart bottle, from which he drank in long, deep gurgles. He stared a
long time at the bottle, drank again, and stooping, began to unlace his
boots.

"I'll start the clean-up in the mornin', an' then I'll find time to pay
a little visit I be'n aimin' to pay all winter. Creed said she was
somewheres below the foot of the rapids.