“Can’t you give me a job of some sort?”
“Nothing doing; we’re full up. You might try the tank at Jardine. It’s ten miles west,” said the foreman and went off.
Kit frowned. In twenty-four hours all he had eaten was a small can of fruit and some crackers and cheese. He was young and his appetite was good; he did not see himself walking to Jardine and waiting for breakfast. Besides, he might not get breakfast. Then he began to smile. After all, he might earn his supper by fiddling, and he tuned his violin.
In two or three minutes a crowd of muscular workmen surrounded the spot. Kit played Mendelssohn’s “Wings of Song,” but he felt calm and stately music did not go, and since he did not know much ragtime, he experimented with Scottish airs. A ranting, clanging reel captured his audience, and Kit knew he was on the proper track, for he saw long boots beat the ground and brown hands mark the time. He tried a Strathspey, but Strathspeys are awkward music, unless one is a Scot, and he began a Highland chieftain’s march. Then a man came from the bunk-house and looked about.
“Wha’s playing?” he inquired.
The others indicated Kit, and the man signed him to advance.
“Yon reel was not bad; ye got the lilt and swing o’t,” he remarked. “Ye cannot play a Strathspey; I dinna ken about the march. In a dance tune a fiddle’s heartsome, but for real music ye need the pipes.”
“A fiddle has some limitations,” Kit agreed in a sober voice. “Its line is melody. Where you want volume, perhaps an organ——”
“An organ canna’ beat the pipes,” the other rejoined, and the workmen began to laugh.
“We like you, Jock, but we want our supper,” said one. “Quit talking and set up the hash.”