“It’s all right, boss,” he cried cheerfully, addressing himself to Bat.  “Guess the good Father’ll get away with it.  He’s out of his dope an’ smiling plenty.  I jerked that darn plug that holed him right out, an’ it’s a soft-nosed swine.  I left it back there for you to see.  The feller who dropped him deserves rat poison.  I hope to God they got him.  Anyway I got the wound cleaned up and fixed things.  Now we just got to keep it clean and open, and watch his temperature.  Then we don’t need to worry a thing.  I’ll do that.  But someone’ll have to sit around and nurse him.  I’ll have to get along down.  There’s nigh a hundred needin’ me.  Gee I An’ after all these years, too.  It makes me wonder.”

There was a smile of keen appreciation in the eyes that looked into those of the lumberman.  And the look deepened when Bat thrust out a large and dirty hand at him.

“Thanks, boy,” he said, in obvious relief.  “I’m goin’ to nurse that pore feller.  Maybe I ain’t much in that line.  But I’ll promise he don’t lack a thing I can hand him.  Here, shake.  You’ll be along to fix him again?”

“Right on time,” was the quick rejoinder.

Jason had readily enough gripped the outstretched hand.  Then he hurried away.  And neither of the men begrudged him the obvious vanity which his momentary importance had inflamed.

With the man’s going Bull passed a hand back over his ample hair.

“God!” he exclaimed wearily.  “It’s been a tough night.”

“Tough?”

Bat’s response spoke a whole world of feeling.  He moved from his window and flung himself into a chair.

“He saved us,” he went on.  “Father Adam.  He saved the whole of our darn outfit.  How he did it I don’t just know.  Maybe I’ll never know.  He don’t talk a lot.  I gathered something of it from the boys.  But there wasn’t time for talk.”  He shook his grizzled head.  “You see, I didn’t even know he was around.  And you never told me it was him brought you word from the camps.  He must have been at work around from the start.  He must have got hold of a bunch of the boys he knew.  And when he got ’em right, why—­Say, I’d have given a thousand dollars to have heard him fire his dope at that lousy gang.  It must have been pretty.  But they got him.  And I guess that was the craziest thing they did.  The fool man who could shoot up Father Adam in face of the forest-boys could only be fit for the bughouse.”

He sighed.  It was not for the man’s madness in shooting, but for the hurt inflicted.  Then a grim, vengeful smile lit his eyes.

“Why, I guess there ain’t a single agent of the Skandinavia down there left with a puff of wind in his rotten carcase.  The boys were plumb crazed for their blood an’ got right up to their necks in it.  I’m glad.  I’m—­”