“I’ve an idea, boys,” he announced.
His companions appeared dubious, but he nodded quietly.
“I’ve got one sure,” he said. “Now, in a general way, if there’s a store handy, I’ve no use for mending clothes; but you have to wash them now and then, and it never struck me as quite comfortable to put them on with half the stitching rubbed out of them. Well, washing’s a thing I’m not fond of either, and it’s kind of curious that when one man starts in at it everybody wants the coal-oil can.”
They murmured languid concurrence, for, as he said, clothes must be washed and mended now and then, and the man who has just finished a long day’s arduous toil seldom feels any great inclination for the task. It usually happens, however, that when one sets about it his companions do the same, and there is sometimes trouble as to who has the prior claim on the big kerosene can in which the garments are generally boiled.
“Well,” said the chopper, “I’ve a proposition to make. There are quite a few of us, and a levy of thirty or forty cents a week’s not going to hurt anybody while there’s a man round here who can’t chop or shovel. Guess he has to live, and it’s a blame hard country, boys, to that kind of man. Now, it’s my notion we make the fellow mender and washer to the camp.”
There was a murmur of applause, for, when they own any money, which, however, is not frequently the case, the free companions are usually open-handed men, and Weston was not astonished at their readiness to do what they could for his companion. He had been in that land long enough to learn that it is the hard-handed drillers and axmen from whom the wanderer and even the outcast beyond the pale is most likely to receive a kindness. Their wide generosity is exceeded only by the light-hearted valor with which they plunge into some tremendous struggle with flood and rock and snow.
“Make it half a dollar anyway,” said one of them.
Then Weston stood up, with a little flush on his face and a curious look in his eyes.
“Thank you, boys, but I have to move an objection,” he said. “This is a thing that concerns me.”
“Sit down,” commanded one of them sharply. “It’s a cold business proposition.”