Tempest had to take a journey to Winnipeg in connection with these arrangements, and on his return he stayed an hour with Randal at Pitcher Portage. Slackness of effort and shortness of funds, combined with a divided interest at headquarters, had held back the work on the telegraph-line, and Randal still continued to live in his little shack and to connect himself with the world by his little key on the lonely river-rim of the Portage.
Randal was cooking his mid-day meal when Tempest came to the door. The shack was as crowded and uncomfortable as it ever was; but Tempest noticed a deep-worn track straight from it to the tepee among the spruces, and when he walked in he found a couple of half-Indian babies sprawling with the dogs on the earth floor and chewing strips of raw bacon. Randal pushed the living tangle of content aside with his foot and hastened to sets beans and bannock before Tempest, and Tempest smiled, remembering.
"Got the better of you at last, have they, Randal?" he asked. Randal reddened up his swarthy skin, and clattered knives and forks with embarrassment.
"Why—I guess they can't help it, the little" he said. "Canadian-born they are, anyways." He jerked his thumb at the smaller of the two where it lay on its chest, sucking hard, and staring with round, unwinking eyes.
"Near died this winter, she did," he remarked. "Croup or colic or suthin', an' them domned parents didn't know what to do no more'n nuthin'. So I up an' het a biler o' water an' shoves her inter it. Tell her she looked cute settin' there—like a little brown squ'r'l, an' hangin' onter me finger like grim death fer a nigger. So—she pulled around, an' she a-took a shine ter me, someways. Like she was wonderin' what I'd be like s'posin' I was tried out fer good. Git away out o' this, Abosti. Git! You won't find no bootlaces ter chew here."
He lifted the little solemn armful, and Tempest chucked it under the round, brown chin.
"That's right, Randal," he said cheerfully. "After all, they are going to be our colonists, you know. We must
