At Maguire’s station Joe disembarked from the crawling, snow-smothered train, consisting of engine, baggage car, and day coach. The platform was covered with boxes, sacks, and bundles; and men were piling them on bobsleighs. These were shanty boys from the Wind River camp.
Haggarty, one eye blackened and almost closed, growled a hearty welcome to the young boss. The latter, looking around, observed other marks of combat. He asked the cause.
“It was like this, Mr. Kent,” Haggarty replied. “The camp was burnt at noon. Half a dozen men wid flour sacks over their heads ran in on the cook, the cookee bein’ out on the job. They took him out an’ fired the camp. Then they tied him, covered him wid blankets so he wouldn’t freeze, an’ lit out. The cookee come back an’ found him, an’ brought us word. MacNutt an’ what men he could hold hit for camp to see what could be done, but the rest of us was too mad, an’ we boiled across to do up McCane’s crew. It was a good fight, but they was too many for us.” He swore with deep feeling. “Just wait. The woods ain’t big enough to hold us both after this.”
“Are all the men at camp now?”
“All but what’s down wid the teams. There was tents an’ stoves went up yesterday. Before that she was a cold rig for sleepin’ and eatin’. Now it’s better.”
On the long sleigh drive Joe got details, but the main facts were as stated by Haggarty. None of the incendiaries had been recognized, but nobody doubted that they were of Rough Shan’s crew.
Joe found a dozen tents pitched around the clearing, well banked with snow and floored with boughs. New buildings were going up as fast as the logs could be hauled out of the woods and laid in place. The work of logging was temporarily suspended. MacNutt, grim and in a poisonous temper, drove the willing crew from streak of dawn till fall of dark.
“You’ll blame me, like enough,” said he. “I blame myself. I’ve seen the like before, and I knew McCane, curse him! If you say so I’m ready to quit, but I’ll get even with him for this.”
“I don’t blame you a bit,” Joe told him. “It can’t be helped. We must get the camp and the cutting going on again, and then we’ll square up with McCane when we have time.”
As the buildings neared completion new men began to arrive—strapping, aggressive-eyed fellows who viewed each other and the Wind River men very much after the manner of strange mastiffs. These were draughts from Tobin’s and Deever’s camps—the “hardest” men from each, picked by the foremen by Joe’s instructions and sent on to him. In return, Joe instructed some of his original crew to report to Deever and Tobin. Thus he found himself with a crew of “bully-boys” who feared nothing on earth and were simply spoiling for a fight.