The Mena weekly star., 1917-10-04

Neloped moods of sourness periods of scowling thought. He tried to speed up his gang. and, having all spring driven them at top speed, the added straw broke the back of their patience, and Stella heard some sharp inter- changes of words. He quelled one in- cipient mutiny through sheer domi- mace. but it left him more short of temper. more crabbedly moody than ever. Eventually his i'll nature broke out against Stella over some trifis, and she, being herself an aggrieyed party to his transactions, surprised her own sense of the fitness of things by re- taliating in kind
 I'm slaving away in your old camp from daylight till dark at work l de- spise, and you cant even speak de- gently to me" she fared HR You act like perfecr brute lately. Whats the matter with you?"
 Benton gnawed at finger nail in si- lence
 Hang it, guess you're right" he admitted at last. But I can't help having groueh. I'm going to fall be- hind on this contract. the best can do."
 Well" she replied tartly. I'm not to blame for that. I'm not responsible for your failure. Why take it out on me2'
 T don't particularly" he answered "Only--can't you sabe? A man gets on edge when he works and sweats for months and sees it all about to come to nothing"
 "So does woman" she made point ed retort
 Benton chose to ignore the inference.
 He sat minute or two longer, again preoccupied with his problems
 Well" he said at last, I've got to get action somehow. If I could get about thirty men and another donkey for three weeks I'd make It."
 He went outside. Up in the near woods the whine of the saws and the sounds of chopping kept measured beat It was late in the forenoon, and Stella was hard about her dinner prepara- Ny or no money. men must eat. That fact loomed biggest on her daily sched- ule, left her no room to think overlong of other things. Her huff over. she felt rather sorry for Charlie, a feeling accentuated by sight of him bumped on log in the sun. too engrossed in his perplexities to be where he normal ly was at that hour. in the thick of the logging. working harder than any of his men
 A little later she saw him put off from the float in the Chickamin's dinghy. When the crew came to din ner he had not returned. Nor was he back when they went out again at l.
 Near midafternoon. however he strode into the kitchen wearing the look of conqueror
 I've got it fixed" he announced
 Stella looked up from a frothy mass of yellow stuff that she was stirring in a pan.
 "Got what fixedT' she asked.
 Why. this log business" he said Jack Fyfe is going to put In a crew md donkey and we're going to ever lastingly rip the innards out of these woods. m make delivery after all"
 That's good" she remarked, but mo- ticeably without enthusiasm. The heat of that low roofed shanty had taken all possible enthusiasm for anything out of her for the time being Always toward the close or each day she was gripped by that feeling of deadly fa- tigue, in the face of which nothing much mattered but to get through the last hours somehow and drag herself wearily to bed
 Noon of the next day brought the Panther coughing into the bay, fianked on the port side by a scow upon which rested a twin to the iron monster that jerked logs into her brothers chute To starboard was made fast a like scow. That was housed over. a smok ing stoyeTepe stuck through the roof. and a capped and aproned cook rested his arms on the window sill as they floated in. Men 10 the number of twenty or more clustered about both scows and the Panther's deck, busy with pipe and cigarette and rude jest The chatter of their voices uprose through the noon meal. But when the donkey scow thrust its blunt nose against the beach the chaff and laugh ter died into silent, capable action.
 "A Seattle yarder properly handled can do anything but climb a tree" Charlie had once boasted to her in reference to his own machine.
 It seemed quite possible to Stella, watching Jack Fyfe's crew at work Steam was up in the donkey. They carried line from it's drum through a snatch block ashore and jerked half a dozen logs crosswise before the scow in matter of minutes. Then the same cable was made fast to sturdy fir, the engineer stood by, and the ponder ous machine slid forward on its own skids, like an up ended barrel on a sled, down off the seow, up the bank. smashing brush, branches, dead roots, all that stood fin it's path. drawing steadily up to the anchor tree as the cable spooled up on the drum.
 tContinued Next Week.