The sheriff and his men tramped into the little clearing and gave the usual greeting of woods wayfarers—the nod and the almost voiceless grunt. The Honorable Pulaski was a little more talkative. He was also in excellent humor.
“Hear you and Rod Ide have hitched hosses, Wade!” he cried. “Sheriff here was tellin’ me. I’m mighty glad of it. That lets me out of thinkin’ I got you up here on a wild-goose chase. I was sorry to dump you, but it would take nine time-keepers to make a foreman like Colin MacLeod, and when he put it up to me you had to go. It was business, and business beats fun up this way.”
The young man did not reply. Words seemed useless just then.
The Honorable Pulaski turned from him briskly and ran an appraising eye over the miserable huddle of huts. With the true scent of primitive natures for impending trouble, the population of Misery edged around this group of new arrivals—the men in advance and wistful, the women behind and sullen.
“Well, boys,” said the Honorable Pulaski, “it’s just this way about it, and we can all be reasonable and do business like business men.” His air was that of a man dealing with children or savages. “As far as I’m personally concerned, I hate to bother you. But I represent the other owners of this township, and the other owners aren’t as reasonable about some things as I am.”
He paused to light a long cigar. No one spoke. He proffered one to Wade, who shook his head with a little unnecessary vigor.
Britt talked as he puffed.
“Now—pup—pup—now, boys—pup—you know as well as I do that you’ve squatted right in the middle of a lot of slash that we had to leave, and it lays in a bad way for fire. You ain’t so careful about fire as you ought to be.” He held up his cigar. “Here’s my style. I don’t smoke till I’m out of the trail. I—pup—pup—own land, and that makes a difference. You don’t own land. I don’t want to bring up old stories, but you know and I know that the prospects of six cents a quart for blueberries makes you forgetful about what’s been said to you. You’ve started some devilish big fires. Here’s the September big winds about due—and this one that’s just springing up to-day is a fair sample—and all is, the owners can’t afford to run chances of a fire that will stop God knows where if it gets running in this five thousand acres of dry tops and slash.