Then Tom strode forward. After he had left young Drew there was an ominous flash in the young engineer's eyes. He strode into camp and went straight to the cook's shack.
"Leon," Tom demanded, "what have you been doing to that poor little shrimp of a helper?"
The cook turned around, grinning.
"I've been teaching him something about smoking," the man admitted.
"So I've heard," said Tom. "That's why I've dropped in here—-to tell you what I think about it."
"If you're going to get cranky," warned the cook, angrily, "you needn't take the trouble."
"Punishing Alf isn't your work, Leon," Tom went on quietly. "I'm one of the heads here, and the management of this camp has been left more or less in my hands. I gave you a weak, deluded, almost worthless little piece of humanity as a helper. I'll admit that he isn't much good, but yet he's a boy aged fourteen, at any rate, and therefore there may be in that boy the makings of a man. Your way of tackling the job is no good. It's a fool way, and, besides, it's a brutal, unmanly way."
"I guess you'd better stop, right where you are, Mister Reade!" snapped Leon, an ugly scowl coming to his face. "I don't have to take any such talk as that from you, even if you are the boss. You may be the boss here, but I'm older and I've seen more of the world. So you may pass on your way, Mister Reade, and I'll mind my own business while you mind yours."
"Good!" smiled Tom amiably. "That's just the arrangement I've been trying to get you to pledge yourself to. Mind your own business, after this, just as you've promised. Don't play the brute with small boys."
"You needn't think you can boss me, Mister Reade," sneered Leon, a dangerous look again coming into his eyes. "I've told you that I won't take that kind of talk from you."