The prediction amounted to prophecy in view of a conversation then proceeding in the bunk-house. As Michigan's table-mate had fully reported the scene at supper, the teamsters were ready with a fire of chaff when he stumbled over the dark threshold after delivering Carter's message.
"Been dinin' in fash'n'ble sassiety, Red?" a man questioned.
"Nope!" another laughed. "Voylent colors ain't considered tasty any more, so the boss fired him out 'cause his hair turned the chief's gal sick."
Hoarse chuckling accompanied the teamster's answering profanity, but when, after roundly cursing themselves, Carter, the surveyor, chief engineer, he began on Dorothy, laughter ceased and Big Hans called a stop.
"That's right." A voice seconded Hans's objection. "We ain't stuck on the boss any more'n you are, Red; but this gal isn't no kin of his'n. Leave her alone."
"Sure!" the first man chimed in. "An' if he's feeling his oats jes' now, he'll be hit the harder when we spring our deadfall. Did you sound the graders to-day? Will they—"
"Shet up!" Michigan hissed. "That big mouth o' yourn spits clean across the camp to the office." And thereafter the conversation continued in sinister whispers that soon merged in heavy snoring. Silence and darkness wrapped the camp.
Awaking while it was still dark, the camp rubbed sleepy eyes and looked out, shivering, on smouldering smudges. Outside, the air whined of mosquitoes. At the long hay-racks horses snorted and pawed frantically under the winged torture; patient oxen uttered mained lowings. Growling and grumbling, the camp distributed itself—teamsters to feed and rebuild smudges, choppers and sawyers to the grindstone and filing-benches. It was a cold, dank world. Pessimism prevailed to the extent that a man needed to walk straitly, minding his own business, if he would avoid quarrel. But optimism came with dawn—teamsters hissed cheerfully over their currying, saw-filers and grinders indulged in snatches of song—reaching a climax with the breakfast-call. When, half an hour later, Dorothy appeared in the cook-house doorway, the camp had spilled its freight of men and teams into the forest.
Warned by the shadow, the cook looked up and saw her in Stetson hat, short skirt, high-laced shoes, a sunlit vision with the freshness of the morning upon its cheeks. "God bless you! Come right in," he exclaimed. "Your daddy an' Mr. Hart hev' gone down line. Devil's Muskeg got hungry las' night an' swallered ten thousand yards of gradin'."
As yet she knew nothing of those treacherous sinks that gulp grades, trestles, and the reputations of their builders as a frog swallows flies, and he went on, answering her puzzled look: "Morass, you know, swamp with quicksand foundation that goes clean down to China. Nope, 'tain't Mr. Carter's loss. He ain't such a fool as to go an' load a muskeg down with clay and rock. An Easterner had it on a sub-contract, an' though Mr. Carter warned him, he reckoned he could make it bear a grade on brush hurdles. Crowed like a Shanghai rooster because it carried trains for a week.