Some
one lit the fire in the stone chimney, for the mountain air nipped
shrewdly after the sun had set. A general relaxing after the day's work,
a general cheerfulness, a general dry, chaffing wit took possession of
them. Two played cribbage under the lamp. One wrote a letter. The rest
gossiped of the affairs of the service. Only in the corner by himself
young Curtis sat. As at noon, he had had nothing to say to any one, and
had not attempted to offer assistance in the communal work. Bob
concluded he must be tired from the unaccustomed labour of the day.
Bob's own shoulders ached; and he was in pretty good shape, too.
"What makes me mad," Ross Fletcher's voice suddenly clove the murmur,
"is the things we have to do. I was breaking rock on a trail all day
to-day. Think of that! Day labourer's work! State prison work!"
Bob looked up in amazement, as did every one else.
"When a man hires out to be a ranger," Ross went on, "he don't expect to
be a carpenter, or a stone mason; he expects to be a _ranger_!"
Immediately Charley Morton chimed in to the same purpose. Bob listened
with a rising indignation.
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