A few minutes thereafter the two men who had gone with Sam Davis returned with the spring from Benton’s bed and a light mattress.  They laid the injured logger on this and covered him with a blanket.  Then four of them picked it up.  As they started, Stella heard one say to her brother: 

“Matt’s jagged.”

“What?” Benton exploded.  “Where’d it come from?”

“One uh them Hungry Bay shingle-bolt cutters’s in camp,” the logger answered.  “Maybe he brought a bottle.  I didn’t stop to see.  But Matt’s sure got a tank full.”

Benton ripped out an angry oath, passed his men, and strode away down the path.  Stella fell in behind him, wakened to a sudden uneasiness at the wrathful set of his features.  She barely kept in sight, so rapidly did he move.

Sam Davis had smoke pouring from the Chickamin’s stack, but the kitchen pipe lifted no blue column, though it was close to five o’clock.  Benton made straight for the cookhouse.  Stella followed, a trifle uncertainly.  A glimpse past Charlie as he came out showed her Matt staggering aimlessly about the kitchen, red-eyed, scowling, muttering to himself.  Benton hurried to the bunkhouse door, much as a hound might follow a scent, peered in, and went on to the corner.

On the side facing the lake he found the source of the cook’s intoxication.  A tall and swarthy lumberjack squatted on his haunches, gabbling in the Chinook jargon to a klootchman and a wizen-featured old Siwash.  The Indian woman was drunk beyond any mistaking, affably drunk.  She looked up at Benton out of vacuous eyes, grinned, and extended to him a square-faced bottle of Old Tim gin.  The logger rose to his feet.

“H’lo, Benton,” he greeted thickly.  “How’s every-thin’?”

Benton’s answer was a quick lurch of his body and a smashing jab of his clenched fist.  The blow stretched the logger on his back, with blood streaming from both nostrils.  But he was a hardy customer, for he bounced up like a rubber ball, only to be floored even more viciously before he was well set on his feet.  This time Benton snarled a curse and kicked him as he lay.

“Charlie, Charlie!” Stella screamed.

If he heard her, he gave no heed.

“Hit the trail, you,” he shouted at the logger.  “Hit it quick before I tramp your damned face into the ground.  I told you once not to come around here feeding booze to my cook.  I do all the whisky-drinking that’s done in this camp, and don’t you forget it.  Damn your eyes, I’ve got troubles enough without whisky.”

The man gathered himself up, badly shaken, and holding his hand to his bleeding nose, made off to his rowboat at the float.

“G’wan home,” Benton curtly ordered the Siwashes.  “Get drunk at your own camp, not in mine. Sabe? Beat it.”

They scuttled off, the wizened little old man steadying his fat klootch along her uncertain way.  Down on the lake the chastised logger stood out in his boat, resting once on his oars to shake a fist at Benton.  Then Charlie faced about on his shocked and outraged sister.