“Nope,” replied Avery. “Me and Smoke and Beelzebub’s middlin’ comf’table in the kitchen,—and it saves wood; but I’ll start the front-room stove and things’ll get het up in no time.”
“How’s the trapping?” asked his daughter, as she hung her cap and coat in the little bedroom.
“Middlin’. Ain’t did what I calc’lated to this season,” he replied, as he dumped an armful of wood on the floor.
“Fur scarce?”
“Not eggsackly scurse—but I’ve been findin’ my traps sprung reg’lar with nothin’ in ’em, and ’bout a week ago I noticed some snowshoe tracks nigh ’em what never was made by Hoss Avery. They is a new camp—Number Fifteen-Two, they calls it—where they commenced to cut this winter, right clus to Timberland. I ain’t sayin’ some of Fifteen-Two’s men’s been stealin’ my fur, but I’m watchin’ fur em. Fisty Harrigan’s boss of Fifteen-Two. Been set down a peg by the comp’ny ’count of his drinkin’ and carryin’-on.”
“Yes. I saw him in Tramworth, once,” replied Swickey.
“If Fisty’s up to pesterin’ me,” said the old man, “or thet brick-top Smeaton what’s with him,”—he struck a match viciously,—“they’ll be some pow’ful tall doin’s when I ketch ’em.”
“Now, Pop, you’re getting too old to think of doing anything like that. If anything happened to you, I don’t know what I’d do.”
“’Course not,” replied her father, smiling broadly, as she came and squatted, Indian fashion, in front of the stove. “’Course not. Don’t calc’late you be worryin’ ’bout anything happenin’ to Fisty or Red, be you?”
She laughed merrily. “Why should I? I don’t belong to either of them.”