"She's peevish," Bill apologized. "She's getting such a darned nuisance in town I had to shut her up. Now you listen to me, old girl. Back you go in the box, if you don't behave. Be quiet--you know I mean it." Luella turned and walked up Bill's arm to his shoulder, and leaned forward to click her beak against his neck. "Lord, what a world!" she murmured, and began daintily to eat half a banana which Bill gave her. Jim Lambert took his few small packages and went out, and Bill saw him no more. Which does not mean that Jim ceased to take an interest in Bill Dale's prosperity and personal affairs. CHAPTER FIVE STRANGERS IN CAMP From beside a camp fire at the springs which Bill Dale had designated as the rendezvous, an undersized, ape-bodied individual rose and goggled up at Bill through thick-lensed spectacles that magnified his eyelids grotesquely. "Hello," said Bill, looking down at him whimsically. "Is this the outfit the Goldfield Supply Company sent out?" "An' if ye'll tell me what business it might be uh yoors, I c'd maybe say yis er no to that," the undersized one retorted, raising his voice at the end of the sentence as if it were a question. "All right, Tommy. You'll do, I reckon. I'm Bill Dale, and if I'm not mistaken you'll be looking to me for your pay." "An' from the look of ye I'll be earnin' that same," Tommy suggested drily. Bill lifted Luella and Sister Mitchell off Wise One, and began to unlash the heavy pack, Tommy helping him. The two studied each other with covert interest; Tommy seeking to discover whether Bill Dale would make a good boss, one easy to work for, which, next to the security of his pay, is a laborer's chief consideration. Bill measured Tommy shrewdly as a man who would work--and gossip. A man who could be loyal to the last gasp, but a man who might easily choose to be disloyal. He was a garrulous little Irishman, was Tommy; a man of indeterminate age and of problematic usefulness. But Bill was not inclined to carp. He was content to give Tommy a trial, which was as much as the best man could justly expect. If Tommy had received any hint of the probable value of Bill's claims, he gave no sign of knowing. Until he slept he sat cross-legged by the fire and stared into the flames through his thick-lensed glasses, and regaled Bill with choice anecdotes culled from his past,--that endless, obvious odyssey of the common laborer whose world is bounded by his "job." His voice was a soft, complaining monotone saturated with the eternal vague question. Never did his inflection fall to a period. At a distance which would blur the words of his speech, his voice would inevitably give one the impression that Tommy was asking one reproachful question after another, with never a statement to relieve the endless inquiry.