CHAPTER IV—“HELL-CAMP” REIVERS
In the face of things there was nothing about the place to suggest that it deserved the title of Hell Camp. The Cameron Dam Camp, as Toppy saw it now, consisted of seven neat log buildings. Of these the first six were located on the road which led into the camp, three on each side. These buildings were twice as large as the ordinary log buildings which Toppy had seen in the woods; but they were thoroughly dwarfed and overshadowed by the seventh, which lay beyond them, and into the enormous doorway of which the road seemed to disappear. This building was larger than the other six combined—was built of huge logs, apparently fifteen feet high; and its wall, which stretched across the road, seemed to have no windows or openings of any kind save a great double door.
Toppy had no time for a careful scrutiny of the place, as the hunchback swiftly pulled up before the first building of the camp, a well-built double-log affair with large front windows and a small sign, “Office and Store.” Directly across the road from this building was one bearing the sign, “Blacksmith Shop,” and Toppy gazed with keen curiosity at a short man with white hair and broad shoulders who, with a blacksmith’s hammer in his hand, came to the door of the shop as they drove up. Probably this was the man for whom he was to work.
“Hey, Jerry,” greeted the blacksmith with a burr in his speech that labelled him unmistakably as a Scot.
“Hey, Scotty,” replied the hunchback.
“Did ye bring me a helper?”
“Yes,” grunted Jerry.
“Good!” said the blacksmith, and returned to his anvil.
The hunchback turned to the girl as soon as the team had come to a standstill.
“This is where you go,” he said, indicating the office with a nod. “You,” he grunted to Toppy, “sit right where you are till we go see the boss.”