About six o’clock in the evening of the next day, when the boys at “Fifteen-Two” were finding room for their legs under the long pine tables spread with an imposing array of cookies, doughnuts, hot biscuit, fried ham, potatoes, jam, and pies, Slocum, stumbling through the doorway, paused in the shadow cast by the lamps.

The log-jam down the river was being discussed in rich and glowing numbers. The talk was colored with fragmentary experiences of former days on the drive. Statistics were handled carelessly, to say the least, and disputed in pointed language, which, if not always logical, seemed convincing, especially to the speakers. The men rasped each other with barbed and prickly oaths that passed with them as slang. Every one was happy in a boisterous fashion, when Slocum, hitherto unnoticed, exclaimed,—

“They ain’t a bug-chasin’ son-of-a-duck what can find the tender spot in a jam quicker ’n ole Hoss Avery. He ain’t a lady’s man”—with a leer at Smeaton—“and he ain’t scared of nothin’ what walks, creeps, or flies.”

He raised an outstretched arm grandiloquently, to command the attention he thought due, and continued with drunken solemnity,—

“’Cept me.”

“Are you walkin’, creepin’, or flyin’ now, Andy?”

Slocum swayed a little and scowled. Then he drew himself up with questionable dignity.

“’Cept me,” he repeated.

The men laughed. “It’s a good thing Hoss ain’t here,” said the blacksmith, “’cause he’d be so scared he couldn’t eat nothin’.”

Slocum, vaguely realizing that he was being made sport of, with the illogical turn of a drunken mind, cursed the absent Hoss Avery rabidly.

“Thet’ll do, Andy,” said Joe Smeaton kindly. “You jest keep a few of them fancy trimmin’s against the next time you meet Hoss. Mebby he’ll like to hear ’em and mebby he won’t.”

“What’s it to you, you sneakin’, red-headed sliver—” He hesitated, then pursued his former line of argumentation. “I kin make him eat ’em raw,” he whispered melodramatically.

“Like to be thar when you’re feeding him,” said Smeaton good-naturedly.

The men laughed again. There was a bantering note in the laughter, especially from Harrigan’s end of the table.

“And you, too, you red-headed—!” said Slocum, shaking his fist at Smeaton.

The laughter died away. The men were unnaturally quiet.

Smeaton mastered himself with an effort. “You’ll be gettin’ pussonel next.”

He was apparently unruffled, although a red tinge, creeping slowly up the back of his neck, showed what the effort had cost him.

Slocum, dully conscious that he had assumed a false position, hunted more trouble to cover his irritation. As the cookee, a lad of sixteen, passed him, he snickered. Slocum turned, and, much quicker than his condition seemed to warrant, struck the lad with the flat of his hand. The cookee, taken by surprise, jumped backward, caught his heel on one of the benches and crashed to the floor, striking his head on the bench as he fell.

Joe Smeaton jumped and struck in one motion. Slocum took the floor like a sack of potatoes.

“Guess that settles it,” said Smeaton, as he stood over the quiet form, waiting for the next move.

The men shuffled to their feet, and gathered round, silent but sharp-eyed. If there was to be any more of it they were ready. Finally, one of them took a drinking-pail from one of the tables and poured a generous stream on the cookee.

Some one offered a like service to Slocum, but Harrigan interfered, shouldering his way through the group. “Leave him be! I’ll take care of him. They ain’t no one goin’ to raise hell in this here shanty long as I’m boss. Here you, Sweedie, give us a lift.”

They carried the limp, unconscious Andy to the stable and laid him in a clean stall. Harrigan paused to throw a blanket over him. When he returned to the shanty the cookee was seated on a bench crying.

“Here, you! Shut up and git back on th’ job, quick!”

The strain eased a bit when the boy resumed his occupation. Andy Slocum’s friends evidently thought their man deserved his “medicine.”

“Joe took more lip than I would ’a’,” remarked a disgruntled belligerent.

“That so?” asked another. “Well, they’s some here as would of used boots followin’ the punch, and been glad to git the chanct at Andy—not namin’ any names.”

Next morning Harrigan sent the cookee out to call Slocum to breakfast, but the young riverman had departed. “Prob’ly back on the job,” remarked one.

“Yes, and it’s where we’ll all be afore night. Things is tied up bad in the gorge. Then the wangan fur us—tentin’ on the ole camp-ground fer fair, but, oh, Lizzie, when we hit Tramworth—lights out, ladies.”

“Lucky if some of your lights ain’t out afore you hit there,” came from a distant corner of the shanty.

“Aw, say, deacon blue-belly, come off the roost. Say, fellus, let’s eat.”