Katy John’s teeth shone white between her parted lips at some sally from the cook.  She stood by the door, swinging a straw hat in one hand.  Presently Matt handed her a parcel done up in newspaper, and she walked away with a nod to some of the loggers sitting with their backs against the bunkhouse wall.

“Why were you asking if I could cook?” Stella inquired, when the girl vanished in the brush.

“Why, your wail about being a man and putting on overalls and digging in reminded me that if you liked you may have a chance to get on your apron and show us what you can do,” he laughed.  “Matt’s about due to go on a tear.  He’s been on the water-wagon now about his limit.  The first man that comes along with a bottle of whisky, Matt will get it and quit and head for town.  I was wondering if you and Katy John could keep the gang from starving to death if that happened.  The last time I had to get in and cook for two weeks myself.  And I can’t run a logging crew from the cook shanty very well.”

“I daresay I could manage,” Stella returned dubiously.  “This seems to be a terrible place for drinking.  Is it the accepted thing to get drunk at all times and in public?”

“It’s about the only excitement there is,” Benton smiled tolerantly.  “I guess there is no more drinking out here than any other part of this North American continent.  Only a man here gets drunk openly and riotously without any effort to hide it, and without it being considered anything but a natural lapse.  That’s one thing you’ll have to get used to out here, Stell—­I mean, that what vices men have are all on the surface.  We don’t get drunk secretly at the club and sneak home in a taxi.  Oh, well, we’ll cross the bridge when we come to it.  Matt may not break out for weeks.”

He yawned openly.

“Sleepy?” Stella inquired.

“I get up every morning between four and five,” he replied.  “And I can go to sleep any time after supper.”

“I think I’ll take a walk along the beach,” she said abruptly.

“All right.  Don’t hike into the woods and get lost, though.”

She circled the segment of bay, climbed a low, rocky point, and found herself a seat on a fallen tree.  Outside the lake heaved uneasily, still dotted with whitecaps whipped up by the southerly gale.  At her feet surge after surge hammered the gravelly shore.  Far through the woods behind her the wind whistled and hummed among swaying tops of giant fir and cedar.  There was a heady freshness in that rollicking wind, an odor resinous and pungent mingled with that elusive smell of green growing stuff along the shore.  Beginning where she sat, tree trunks rose in immense brown pillars, running back in great forest naves, shadowy always, floored with green moss laid in a rich, soft carpet for the wood-sprites’ feet.  Far beyond the long gradual lower slope lifted a range of saw-backed mountains, the sanctuary of wild goat and bear, and across the rolling lake lifted other mountains sheer from the water’s edge, peaks rising above timber-line in majestic contour, their pinnacle crests grazing the clouds that scudded before the south wind.