McWha nodded indifferently.
“Well,” went on Johnson, “we can’t do nawthin’ but take her on to the camp now. Mebbe the Boss’ll decide she’s got to go back to the Settlement, along 115 o’ the fun’ral. But mebbe he’ll let the hands keep her, to kinder chipper up the camp when things gits dull. I reckon when the boys sees her sweet face they’ll all be wantin’ to be guardeens to her.”
McWha again spat accurately into the crack of the grate.
“I ain’t got no fancy for young ’uns in camp, but ye kin do ez ye like, Walley Johnson,” he answered grudgingly. “Only I want it understood, right now, I ain’t no guardeen, an’ won’t be, to nawthin’ that walks in petticoats! What I’m thinkin’ of is the old cow out yonder, an’ them hens o’ Joe’s what I seen a-roostin’ over the cowstall.”
“Them’s all Rosy-Lilly’s, an’ goes with us an’ her to camp to-morrer,” answered Johnson with decision. “We’ll tell the kid as how her daddy had to be took away in the night because he was so sick, an’ couldn’t speak to nobody, an’ we was goin’ to take keer o’ her till he gits back! An’ that’s the truth,” he added, with a sudden passion of tenderness and pity in his tone.
At this hint of emotion McWha laughed sarcastically. Then knocking out his pipe, he proceeded to fill the stove for the night, and spread his blanket on the floor beside it.
“If ye wants to make the camp a baby-farm,” he growled, “don’t mind me!” 116
II
Under the dominion of Rosy-Lilly fell Conroy’s camp at sight, capitulating unconditionally to the first appeal of her tearful blue eyes, and little, hurt red mouth. Dan Logan, the Boss, happened to know just how utterly alone the death of her father had left the child, and he was the first to propose that the camp should adopt her. Fully bearing out the faith which Walley Johnson had so confidently expressed back in the dead man’s cabin, Jimmy Brackett, the cook, on whom would necessarily devolve the chief care of this new member of his family, jumped to the proposal of the Boss with enthusiastic support.
“We’ll every mother’s son o’ us be guardeen to her!” he declared, with the finality appropriate to his office as autocrat second only to the Boss himself. Every man in camp assented noisily, saving only Red McWha; and he, as was expected of him, sat back and grinned.