For, painfully acquired, with gouges, clawings, and scratches to show for it all, “Ladder” Lane had accumulated companions of his loneliness, to wit:
One bull moose, captured in calfhood in deep snow; two bear cubs; a raccoon; a three-legged bobcat, victim of an excited hunter; two horned owls; and a fisher cat.
On this menagerie, variously tethered or crated in sapling cages, the visitor with the disabled arm bestowed a contemptuous side glance while he blinked at the tall figure on the cabin’s flat roof.
Without haste Lane worked himself through the roof-scuttle like an angle-worm drawing into his hole; without cordiality he appeared at the cabin door, lounging out into the sunshine.
“I suppose you are still doing the second-hand swearing for Britt, MacLeod,” he suggested.
The young man grunted.
“How did ye hurt your arm? Britt chaw it?”
“Peavy-stick flipped on me,” growled the young man, willing to hide his humiliation from at least one person in the world—and the hermit of the Jerusalem station seemed to be the only one sufficiently isolated.
“Huh! I thought his name was Wade.” There was no spirit of jest in the tone. The old man surveyed him sourly. “That’s what the Attean helio said.”
“Is that what you use them things for—to pass gossip like an old maid’s quiltin’-bee?”