He helped himself to a chew of tobacco and kicked a cuspidore within his reach.
"The fire-bugs are out," he said. "The last of 'em. I jest got word through. It's the seventh. An' it's the tally."
It was a sharp, matter-of-fact statement. He was telling of a human killing, and there was no softening.
Bull nodded. He glanced over his shoulder.
"You mean—?"
"They shot five of 'em to death. The last two they hanged." A grim set of the jaws, as Bat made the announcement, was his only expression of feeling.
"Makes you wonder," he went on, after a pause. "Makes you think of the days when locomotives didn't run. Makes you think of the days when life was just a pretty mean gamble with most of the odds dead against you. It don't sound like these Sunday School days when the world sits around, framed in a fancy-coloured halo, that couldn't stand for any wash-tub, talkin' brotherhood an' human sympathy. It's tough when you think of the bunch that sent those boys to fire our limits. They knew the full crime of it, and knew the thing it would mean if we got hands on 'em. Well, there it is. We got 'em. An' now ther' ain't a mother's son of 'em left alive to tell the yarn of it all. It's been just cold, bloody murder. An' the murder ain't on us. No, I guess the darn savage eatin' hashed missioner ain't as bad a proposition as the civilised guys who paid the price to get those toughs killed up in our forests. I can't feel no sort of regret. It won't hand me a half-hour nightmare. But it makes me wonder. It surely does."
He spat accurately into the cuspidore.
"Does the report hand you anything else?" Bull asked, without turning. The other noticed the complete lack of real interest. He shrugged.
"The camps are all in full cut. They're not a cord behind."