"They're offering three a day in the Reserve camps." Fallon should not have gloated. "Three a day and a bonus for the high week cut. We're going back to the river."
"I see," again observed Steve. "Are they guaranteeing this wage for as long as you want to work."
Apparently they had decided, too, that there should be no bargaining.
"We want our time," Fallon reiterated. "This is going to be a man's year on the river!"
"You, also?" Steve inquired of Shayne.
That worthy gloated too.
"Yes, me also," he came back, "an' a hundred others, before the ice goes out."
Big Louie he had given up for lost long before that, and yet it was with Big Louie that Steve made a sincere effort.
"I'd like to have you stay, Louie," he faced the third man. "I need you, for you can do more with horses than any man I know. You are worth three a day to me. Do you care to think it over?"
Big Louie's eyes had been mournful when he stumbled in out of the cold. They were that now. He started to turn toward the window for a look at the stables, and then thought better of it. Resolutely, for him, he shook his head.