With a curious uncertainty, a feeling of reluctance for the proceeding
almost, she examined the contents of her purse. For a little time she
stood gazing into it, a queer curl to her full red lips. Then she flung
it contemptuously on the bed and began to take down her hair.

"'A rich, rough, tough country, where it doesn't do to be finicky about
anything,'" she murmured, quoting a line from one of Charlie Benton's
letters. "It would appear to be rather unpleasantly true. Particularly
the last clause."

In her purse, which had contained one hundred and ten dollars, there now
reposed in solitary state a twenty-dollar bill.




CHAPTER V


THE TOLL OF BIG TIMBER

Day came again, in the natural sequence of events. Matt, the cook,
roused all the camp at six o'clock with a tremendous banging on a piece
of boiler plate hung by a wire. Long before that Stella heard her
brother astir. She wondered sleepily at his sprightliness, for as she
remembered him at home he had been a confirmed lie-abed. She herself
responded none too quickly to the breakfast gong, as a result of which
slowness the crew had filed away to the day's work, her brother striding
in the lead, when she entered the mess-house.