Fallon shouldered the wolf and, accompanied by Bill, made toward the bunk-house, while the Frenchman turned the team toward the stable.
"Ag'in' we git washed up, supper'll be ready," announced Irish, as he deposited the wolf carcass beside the door and entered.
Inside the long, low room, lined on either side by a double row of bunks, were gathered upward of a hundred men waiting the supper call.
They were big men, for the most part, rough clad and unshaven. Many were seated upon the edges of the bunks smoking and talking, others grouped about the three big stoves, and the tobacco-reeking air was laden with the rumble of throaty conversation, broken here and there by the sharp scratch of a match, a loud laugh, or a deep-growled, good-natured curse.
Into this assembly stepped Irish Fallon, closely followed by Bill, the sight of whose blood-stained face attracted grinning attention. The two men passed the length of the room to the wash-bench, where a few loiterers still splashed noisily at their ablutions.
"I heard it plain, I'm tellin' you," some one was saying. "'Way off to the south it sounded."
"That ain't no lie," broke in another, "I hearn it myself—jest before dark, it was. An' I know! Didn't I hear it that night over on Ten Fork? The time she got Jack Kane's woman, four year ago, come Chris'mus. Yes, sir! I tell you the werwolf's nigh about this camp, an' it's me in off the edges afore dark!"
"They say she never laughs but she makes a kill," said one.
"God! I was at Skelly's when they brought old man Frontenelle in," added a big man, whose heavy beard was shot with gray, as he turned from the stove with a shudder.
"They's some Injuns trappin' below; she might of got one of them," opined a short, stockily built man who, catching sight of the newcomers, addressed Fallon: