“Oh, that's all right,” replied the walking-boss. “Marshall, come here!”
The peg-legged boarding-house keeper stumped in.
“What is it?” he trumpeted snufflingly.
“This boy wants a job till Friday. Then he's going up to Radway's with the supply team. Now quit your hollerin' for a chore-boy for a few days.”
“All right,” snorted Marshall, “take that ax and split some dry wood that you'll find behind the house.”
“I'm very much obliged to you,” began Thorpe to the walking-boss, “and—”
“That's all right,” interrupted the latter, “some day you can give me a job.”
Chapter V
For five days Thorpe cut wood, made fires, drew water, swept floors, and ran errands. Sometimes he would look across the broad stump-dotted plain to the distant forest. He had imagination. No business man succeeds without it. With him the great struggle to wrest from an impassive and aloof nature what she has so long held securely as her own, took on the proportions of a battle. The distant forest was the front. To it went the new bands of fighters. From it came the caissons for food, that ammunition of the frontier; messengers bringing tidings of defeat or victory; sometimes men groaning on their litters from the twisting and crushing and breaking inflicted on them by the calm, ruthless enemy; once a dead man bearing still on his chest the mark of the tree that had killed him. Here at headquarters sat the general, map in hand, issuing his orders, directing his forces.