The others agreed with him, for they had seen that smear of smoke on the skyline since early morning. Then they turned to watch the engineer, who came out of a door close by, and glanced up to weather, blinking in the bitter wind. He was a big loosely-built man in dungarees, with the pallid face of one accustomed to the half-light and heat of the engine-room, but in his case it was also unhealthily puffy. Then he slouched right aft, and stood still again looking down at the dial of the taffrail log which records the distance run, while he fumbled in a curious aimless fashion with the blackened rag in his hand.
"That," said one of the miners, "is a man I'm no way stuck on. Now, you'll most times find hard grit in an engineer, but this one kind of strikes me as feeling that there was something after him he was scared of."
"Well," said one of the others reflectively, "it's not an uncommon thing. There was a man down on the flat where we struck it who had a kind of notion that there were three big timber wolves on his trail. Kept his rifle clean with the magazine ram full for them, but one night they got him. A sure thing. Tom was there."
The man at whom he glanced nodded. "Now and then I wish I hadn't been," he said. "Lister was sitting very sick beside his fire that night. Said he heard those wolves pattering in the bush—there were thick pines all round us—'most made me think I did."
"Well?" said one of his companions.
The miner made a little expressive grimace. "Longest night I ever put in. Sat there and kept them off him. Anyway, I tried, but he was dead at sun-up."
None of the others showed any astonishment, and the man who had asked the question glanced back toward the engineer.
"Guess the man who runs this steamboat should be getting rich by the way they strike you for a drink," he said. "I'm bringing down 'most two hundred ounces, but I wouldn't like to fill that engineer up at the tariff."
"Never saw him making a traverse, anyway. He walks quite straight," said a comrade.
"Well," said the other, "I've seen his eyes."