"Take him quietly to the cook-shed, and give him some whiskey. I've no doubt that in spite of my orders you have some. Lend him dry clothes, and bring him along to my shanty as soon as he's ready. Meantime, rouse the maintenance foreman, and, if any wedges have worked loose, let him drive them home."
"You're a nice man," commented Mattawa Tom, surveying the stranger disgustedly as the man stood with the water draining from him in the cook-shed. "Here, get into these things and keep them as a present. I wouldn't like the feel of them after they'd been on to you."
"That's all right!" was the cool answer. "I expect the game's up, and I'm quite ready to buy them of you. By the way, partner, you helped your boss to pull me out, didn't you? As I said before, I'm not great on swimming."
"I'm almost sorry I had to," said Mattawa Tom, who was a loyal partisan. "But don't call me 'partner,' or there'll be trouble."
The stranger laughed, as, after a glass of hot liquor, he arrayed himself beside the banked-up stove, and presently marched under escort towards Thurston's wood and bark winter dwelling. Mattawa Tom followed close behind him with a big ax on his shoulder.
"I might be a panther you'd corralled. How do you know I haven't a pistol in my pocket, if it was any use turning ugly?" the prisoner inquired.
"I'm quite certain about you, because your pistol is in my pocket," was the dry answer, and Tom chuckled. "You weren't quite smart enough when you slipped off your jacket."
From the door of his shanty, Thurston called them, and Mattawa, thrusting his prisoner in, proceeded to mount guard close outside until Thurston reappeared to ask angrily:
"What are you doing there?"
"I figured you might want me, sir. That man's not to be trusted," answered Tom, and Thurston laughed as he said: