“Coming back,” Lawrence agreed. “All right, Bill, old boy,” he laughed. “We’ll keep your snug little camp ship-shape till you arrive.”
And for this bit of service, had they but known it, they were to receive a very unusual reward.
CHAPTER II
BLACKIE’S STORY
“Tell us how you got that game leg of yours, Blackie,” Joe Lawrence, the Palmer store-keeper, said to Blackie, as they all sat about the roaring steel-barrel stove three nights later.
“Oh, that—” Blackie did not reply at once.
Johnny and Lawrence were by the fire. They had walked in from the claim, a frosty three miles, with the thermometer at twenty-five degrees below. They were not the sort of boys who loaf about stores and pool halls, listening to cheap talk. Far from that. They had come to make a purchase or two and, in an hour, with the steel-blue stars above them would be on their way home. Just now the fire felt good.
“Sure, tell us,” Johnny encouraged.
“Hello! You here?” Blackie demanded, as if he had not seen them before. “What’d you come in for on a night like this?”
“Wedges,” said Johnny. “Steel wedges for splitting logs.”
“Wedges.” There came a hoarse laugh from the corner. It was Jack Mayhorn who spoke. “Who wants wedges in this country? Do like I do. Cut down the trees that split easy.”