It was something she could neither defend nor excuse. It was a
disgusting state of affairs, but nothing she could change. She kept
harking back to it, though, when she was in her own quarters, and Katy
John had vanished for the night into her little room off the kitchen.
Tired as she was, she remained wakeful, uneasy. Over in the bunkhouse
disturbing sounds welled now and then into the cold, still
night,--incoherent snatches of song, voices uproariously raised, bursts
of laughter. Once, as she looked out the door, thinking she heard
footsteps crunching in the snow, some one rapped out a coarse oath that
drove her back with burning face.
As the evening wore late, she began to grow uneasily curious to know in
what manner Charlie and Jack Fyfe were lending countenance to this minor
riot, if they were even participating in it. Eleven o'clock passed, and
still there rose in the bunkhouse that unabated hum of voices.
Suddenly there rose a brief clamor. In the dead silence that followed,
she heard a thud and the clinking smash of breaking glass, a panted
oath, sounds of struggle.
Stella slipped on a pair of her brother's gum boots and an overcoat, and
ran out on the path beaten from their cabin to the shore. It led past
the bunkhouse, and on that side opened two uncurtained windows, yellow
squares that struck gleaming on the snow. The panes of one were broken
now, sharp fragments standing like saw teeth in the wooden sash.
She stole warily near and looked in.
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