You'll get your share if you'll have a
little patience and put your shoulder to the wheel. Lord, I'm doing the
best I can."
"Yes--for yourself," she returned. "You don't seem to consider that I'm
entitled to as much fair play as you'd have to accord one of your men. I
don't want you to hand me an easy living on a silver salver. All I want
of you is what is mine, and the privilege of using my own judgment. I'm
quite capable of taking care of myself."
If there had been opportunity to enlarge on that theme, they might have
come to another verbal clash. But Benton never lost sight of his primary
object. The getting of breakfast and putting his men about their work
promptly was of more importance to him than Stella's grievance. So the
incipient storm dwindled to a sullen mood on her part. Breakfast over,
Benton loaded men and tools aboard a scow hitched beside the boat. He
repeated his invitation, and Stella refused, with a sarcastic reflection
on the company she would be compelled to keep there.
The _Chickamin_ with her tow drew off, and she was alone again.
"Marooned once more," Stella said to herself when the little steamboat
slipped behind the first jutting point. "Oh, if I could just be a man
for a while."
Marooned seemed to her the appropriate term. There were the two old
Siwashes and their dark-skinned brood. But they were little more to
Stella than the insentient boulders that strewed the beach. She could
not talk to them or they to her. Long since she had been surfeited with
Katy John.
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