They come up here every summer for two or three months. Otherwise I
don't know of any lilies of the field, barring the hotel people, and
they, being purely transient, don't count. There's the Abbey-Monohan
outfit with two big logging camps, my outfit, Jack Fyfe's, some hand
loggers on the east shore, and the R.A.T. at the head of the lake.
That's the population--and Roaring Lake is forty-two miles long and
eight wide."
"Are there any nice girls around?" she asked.
Benton grinned widely.
"Girls?" said he. "Not so you could notice. Outside the Springs and the
hatchery over the way, there isn't a white woman on the lake except
Lefty Howe's wife,--Lefty's Jack Fyfe's foreman,--and she's fat and past
forty. I told you it was a God-forsaken hole as far as society is
concerned, Stell."
"I know," she said thoughtfully. "But one can scarcely realize such
a--such a social blankness, until one actually experiences it. Anyway, I
don't know but I'll appreciate utter quiet for awhile. But what do you
do with yourself when you're not working?"
"There's seldom any such time," he answered. "I tell you, Stella, I've
got a big job on my hands. I've got a definite mark to shoot at, and I'm
going to make a bull's-eye in spite of hell and high water. I have no
time to play, and there's no place to play if I had. I don't intend to
muddle along making a pittance like a hand logger. I want a stake; and
then it'll be time to make a splurge in a country where a man can get a
run for his money.
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