“Thunderation, you gents is sartinly slow to understand what’s before your eyes! Don’t you know why all these animiles is runnin’ away from down there?” He jerked a red thumb over his shoulder towards the south. “Ain’t ‘Stumpage John’ Barrett down there with Withee, lookin’ over that tract where we operated last season?”
Sly grins of appreciation appeared on the faces of the teamsters.
“Ain’t you got any notion of what particular kind of language ‘Stumpage John’ has been lettin’ out of himself for the last twenty-four hours?”
“Well, the idee is,” said the cook, “he is down there cussin’ to that extent that he’s cussed every animile off’n Square-hole township. Animiles is natcherally timid, delicate in the ears, and hates cussin’. The deer come first because they can run fastest. Bears left as soon as they could, and is hurryin’. Rabbits will come next, and the quill-pigs are on the way. Then I reckon Barnum Withee will fetch up the rear. Oh, it must be somethin’ awful down there!” He faced the south with grave mien. His listeners guffawed.
But a moment later “Push Charlie” stepped clear of the hovel and sniffed with canine eagerness. There was a subtle, elusive, acrid odor in the air. It seemed to billow up the valley, whose shoulders circumscribed their vision so narrowly.
“I reckon,” he stated, “that he’s throwed so much brimstone around him reckless that he’s set fire to the woods.”
“That’s the way with some of these big timber-owners,” remarked the cook, still in humorous mood. “They raise tophet with a sport because he throws down a cigar-butt, and they themselves will go out right in a dry time and spit cuss words that’s just so much blue flame. It’s dretful careless!” he sighed.
“But when you come to think of what he found there on that township,” said Charlie, “you have to make allowances. More’n a third of the board measure left right there on the ground as slash, and slash that’s propped on the branches of the tops like powder-houses on stilts. And the whole township only devilled over at that! Barn only took the stuff that would roll downhill into the water when it was joggled.”
“You ain’t blamin’ your own boss, be ye?” demanded the cook.