Bartley yawned a yawn of satisfied sleepiness, and rubbed his hand over his face. “I suppose,” he said, “if I'm going to write anything about Camp Kinney, I had better see all there is to see.”
“Well, yes, I presume you had,” said Kinney. “We'll go over to where they're cuttin', pretty soon, and you can see all there is in an hour. But I presume you'll want to see it so as to ring in some description, hey? Well, that's all right. But what you going to do with it, when you've done it, now you're out of the Free Press?”
“Oh, I shouldn't have printed it in the Free Press, anyway Coals to Newcastle, you know. I'll tell you what I think I'll do, Kinney: I'll get my outlines, and then you post me with a lot of facts,—queer characters, accidents, romantic incidents, snowings-up, threatened starvation, adventures with wild animals,—and I can make something worth while; get out two or three columns, so they can print it in their Sunday edition. And then I'll take it up to Boston with me, and seek my fortune with it.”
“Well, sir, I'll do it,” said Kinney, fired with the poetry of the idea. “I'll post you! Dumn 'f I don't wish I could write! Well, I did use to scribble once for an agricultural paper; but I don't call that writin'. I've set down, well, I guess as much as sixty times, to try to write out what I know about loggin'—”
“Hold on!” cried Bartley, whipping out his notebook. “That's first-rate. That'll do for the first line in the head,—What I Know About Logging,—large caps. Well!”
Kinney shut his magazine, and took his knee between his hands, closing one of his eyes in order to sharpen his recollection. He poured forth a stream of reminiscence, mingled observation, and personal experience. Bartley followed him with his pencil, jotting down points, striking in sub-head lines, and now and then interrupting him with cries of “Good!” “Capital!” “It's a perfect mine,—it's a mint! By Jove!” he exclaimed, “I'll make six columns of this! I'll offer it to one of the magazines, and it'll come out illustrated! Go on, Kinney.”
“Hark!” said Kinney, craning his neck forward to listen. “I thought I heard sleigh-bells. But I guess it wa'n't. Well, sir, as I was sayin', they fetched that fellow into camp with both feet frozen to the knees—Dumn 'f it wa'n't bells!”
He unlimbered himself, and hurried to the door at the other end of the cabin, which he opened, letting in a clear block of the afternoon sunshine, and a gush of sleigh-bell music, shot with men's voices, and the cries and laughter of women.
“Well, sir,” said Kinney, coming back and making haste to roll down his sleeves and put on his coat. “Here's a nuisance! A whole party of folks—two sleigh-loads—right on us. I don't know who they be, or where they're from. But I know where I wish they was. Well, of course, it's natural they should want to see a loggin'-camp,” added Kinney, taking himself to task for his inhospitable mind, “and there ain't any harm in it. But I wish they'd give a fellow a little notice!”
The voices and bells drew nearer, but Kinney seemed resolved to observe the decorum of not going to the door till some one knocked.