A HUNTING PARTY
H. D. Appleton, millionaire lumberman, sighed contentedly as he added cream to his after-dinner coffee. He glanced toward his wife, who was smiling at him across the table.
"Oh, you can drink yours black if you want to, little girl," he grinned; "but, remember 'way back when we were first married and I was bossing camps for old Jimmie Ferguson, and we lived in log shacks 'way up in the big woods, I used to say if we ever got where we could have cream for our coffee, I'd have nothing else to ask for?
"Well, to this day, drinking cream in my coffee is my idea of the height of luxury. This is all right, and I enjoy it, too, I suppose." He indicated with a wave of his black cigar the rich furnishings, the heavy plate and cut-glass that adorned the dining-room. "But, somehow, nothing makes me feel successful like pouring real cream into my coffee."
The gray-haired "little girl" laughed happily.
"You never have quite grown up, Hubert," she replied. "Did you have a hard trip, dear? The three weeks you have been away have seemed like three months to me."
"No, no! I had a good trip. It looked rather hopeless at first, trying to establish a new camp, with no one really capable of running it; but just at the last minute—You remember the man I told you about last fall—the young fellow who throttled that scoundrel after the wreck in the Chicago railroad yards, and who refused to tell me his name until after he had made good?"
"Yes—he was drowned last spring, wasn't he? Poor boy, I have often wondered who he was—a gentleman, you said?"
"By gad, he's more than a gentlemen—he's a man! And he wasn't drowned at all. Got rescued somehow by an old squaw and her daughter. His leg was broken, and when he got well he stayed in the woods and looked after the camp all summer; and not only that, he recovered fifty-two bird's-eye maple logs that had been stolen by some of my own men.
"He found me in Creighton, and I made him boss of the new camp. He's a winner, and the men will work for him till they drop."