From the chimneys a smoke arose. Twenty or thirty
rivermen lounged about the sunny side of the largest structure.
They had evidently just arrived, for some of their "turkeys" were
still piled outside the door. Orde clucked to his horses, and the
spidery wheels of the buckboard swung lightly over the wet hummocks
of the clearing, to come to a stop opposite the men. Orde leaned
forward against his knees.
"Hullo, boys!" said he cheerfully.
No one replied, though two or three nodded surlily. Orde looked
them over with some interest.
They were a dirty, unkempt, unshaven, hard-looking lot, with
bloodshot eyes, a flicker of the dare-devil in expression, beyond
the first youth, hardened into an enduring toughness of fibre--bad
men from the Saginaw, in truth, and, unless Orde was mistaken, men
just off a drunk, and therefore especially dangerous; men eager to
fight at the drop of the hat, or sooner, to be accommodating, and
ready to employ in their assaults all the formidable and terrifying
weapons of the rough-and-tumble; reckless, hard, irreverrent,
blasphemous, to be gained over by no words, fair or foul; absolutely
scornful of any and all institutions imposed on them by any other
but the few men whom they acknowledged as their leaders.
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