Part 8 (1/2)

”Well,” went on Johnson, ”we can't do nawthin' but take her on to the cao back to the Settle o' the fun'ral But mebbe he'll let the hands keep her, to kinder chipper up the caits dull I reckon when the boys sees her sweet face they'll all be wantin' to be guardeens to her”

McWha again spat accurately into the crack of the grate

”I ain't got no fancy for young 'uns in carudgingly ”Only I want it understood, right now, I ain't no guardeen, an' won't be, to nawthin'

that walks in petticoats! What I'm thinkin' of is the old cow out yonder, an' them hens o' Joe's what I seen a-roostin' over the cowstall”

”Theoes with us an' her to camp to-morrer,”

answered Johnson with decision ”We'll tell the kid as how her daddy had to be took away in the night because he was so sick, an' couldn't speak to nobody, an' as goin' to take keer o' her till he gits back! An' that's the truth,” he added, with a sudden passion of tenderness and pity in his tone

At this hint of e out his pipe, he proceeded to fill the stove for the night, and spread his blanket on the floor beside it

”If ye wants to rowled, ”don't mind me!”

II

Under the do unconditionally to the first appeal of her tearful blue eyes, and little, hurt red an, the Boss, happened to know just how utterly alone the death of her father had left the child, and he was the first to propose that the ca out the faith which Walley Johnson had so confidently expressed back in the dead man's cabin, Jimmy Brackett, the cook, on ould necessarily devolve the chief care of this new member of his family, jumped to the proposal of the Boss with enthusiastic support

”We'll every uardeen to her!” he declared, with the finality appropriate to his office as autocrat second only to the Boss hi only Red McWha; and he, as was expected of hirinned

From the first, Rosy-Lilly made herself at home in the camp For a few days she fretted after her father, whenever she was left for a moment to her own devices; but Jimmy Brackett was ever on hand to divert herthe hours when the rest of the hands were away chopping and hauling Long after she had forgotten to fret, she would have little ”cryin' spells” at night, reht kiss But a baby's sorrow, happily, is shorter than its remembrance; and Rosy-Lilly soon learned to repeat her phrase: ”Poor Daddy had to go 'ay-off,” without the quivering lip and wistful look which hten so painfully beneath their ho cabin of ”chinked” logs, with a big stove in theone wall, and a plank table (rude, butthe other Built on at one end, beside the door, was the kitchen, or cookhouse, crowded, but clean and orderly, and bright with shi+ning tins At the inner end of the main rooer than a cupboard This was the Boss's private apartment It contained two narrow bunks--one for the Boss hiuest whom the camp ever expected to entertain, the devoted missionary-priest, who, on his snowshoes, ont to make the round of the widely scattered cauest-bunk the Boss at once allotted to Rosy-Lilly, but on the strict condition that Johnson should continue to act as nurse and superintend Rosy-Lilly's nightly toilet

Rosy-Lilly had not been in the caliness”

to her had aroused even the Boss's resentenerally recognized that McWha was not bound, by any law or obligation, to take any notice of the child, still less to ”make a fuss over her,” with the rest of the camp But Jirowled, looking sourly at the back of McWha's unconscious red head bowed ravenously over his plate of beans--

”If only he'd _do_ so, so's we c'ld _lick_ so to be done about it, however; for Red McWha was utterly within his rights

Rosy-Lilly, as we have seen, was not yet five years old; but certain of the characteristics of her sex were already well developed within her The adulation of the rest of the cah, but rather as a matter of course It was all her due But what she wanted was that that big, ugly, red-headed rey eyes and loud voice, should be nice to her She wanted _him_ to pick her up, and set her on his knee, and whittle wonderful wooden dogs and dolls and boats and boxes for her with his jack-knife, as Walley Johnson and the others did With Walley she would hardly condescend to coquet, so sure she was of his abject slavery to her whiiving was she in her heart toward his blank eye She ht a convenient and altogether doting but uninteresting grandmother To all the other arded with some awe--she would make baby-love impartially and carelessly But it was Red McWha whose notice she craved

When supper was over, and pipes filled and lighted, some one would strike up a ”chantey”--one of those inters which are peculiar to the lumber cas or their incidents, are always sung in a plaintive e-ers Soree, while others reek with an indecency of speech that would shroud the Tenderloin in blushes Both kinds are equally popular in the ca _navete_ Of the worst of them, even, the simple-minded woodsmen are not in the least ashamed They seem unconscious of their enormity

Nevertheless, it came about that, without a word said by any one, from the hour of Rosy-Lilly's arrival in camp, all the indecent ”chanteys”

were dropped, as if into oblivion, fros, the s woodslooht of the two oil-lamps Man after man would snatch her up to his knee, lay by his pipe, twist her silky, yellow curls about his great blunt fingers, and whisper wood-folk tales or baby nonsense into her pink little ear She would listen solele down andshe would be standing by the bench on which sat Red McWha, with one big knee usually hooked high above the other, and his broad back reclined against the edge of a bunk For a fewwith a perennial confidence, waiting to be noticed Then she would coue, lean against McWha's knee, and look up coaxingly into his face If McWha chanced to be singing, for he was a ”chanter” of some note, he would appear so utterly absorbed that Rosy-Lilly would at last slip aith a look of hurt surprise in her face, to be comforted by one of her faithful

But if McWha were not engrossed in song, it would soon beconore her He would suddenly look down at her with his fierce eyes, knit his shaggy red brows, and demand harshly: ”Well, Yaller Top, an' what d'_you_ want?”

Frory eye the child would retreat in haste, clear to the other end of the roo tear would track its way down either cheek After such an experiment she would usually seek Jimmy Brackett, ould console her with some sticky sweetlances McWha would reply with a grin, as if proud of having routed the little adventurer so easily He had discovered that the name ”Yaller Top” was an infallible weapon of rebuff, as Rosy-Lilly considered it a ter in abashi+ng Rosy-Lilly with the title she most disliked Moreover, it was an indirect rebuke to the ”saft” way the others acted about her

If Rosy-Lilly felt rebuffed for the et it the next tiht she would sidle up to his knee, and sue for his notice; and night after night she would retire discomfited But on one occasion the discoh demand--

”Well, Yaller Top, what d'_you_ want?”