The Colonel sighed and brushed the dirt and leaves from his tweeds. “Thunder,” he continued philosophically, “it's all in the game, so why worry over it? And why continue to discuss an unpleasant topic, my dear?”
A groan from the Black Minorca challenged her attention. “I think that man is badly hurt, Uncle,” she suggested.
“Serves him right,” he returned coldly. “He tackled that cyclone full twenty feet in advance of the others; if they'd all closed in together, they would have pulled him down. I'll have that cholo and Rondeau sent down with the next trainload of logs to the company hospital. They're a poor lot and deserve manhandling—”
They paused, facing toward the timber, from which came a voice, powerful, sweetly resonant, raised in song. Shirley knew that half-trained baritone, for she had heard it the night before when Bryce Cardigan, faking his own accompaniment at the piano, had sung for her a number of carefully expurgated lumberjack ballads, the lunatic humour of which had delighted her exceedingly. She marvelled now at his choice of minstrelsy, for the melody was hauntingly plaintive—the words Eugene Field's poem of childhood, “Little Boy Blue.”
“The little toy dog is covered with dust,
But sturdy and stanch he stands;
And the little toy soldier is red with rust,
And his musket molds in his hands.
Time was when the little toy dog was new,
And the soldier was passing fair;
And that was the time when our little boy blue,
Kissed them and put them there.”
“Light-hearted devil, isn't he?” the Colonel commented approvingly. “And his voice isn't half bad. Just singing to be defiant, I suppose.”
Shirley did not answer. But a few minutes previously she had seen the singer a raging fury, brandishing an axe and driving men before him. She could not understand. And presently the song grew faint among the timber and died away entirely.
Her uncle took her gently by the arm and steered her toward the caboose. “Well, what do you think of your company now?” he demanded gayly.
“I think,” she answered soberly, “that you have gained an enemy worth while and that it behooves you not to underestimate him.”