With a determined little set to her lips, her only inheritance from her father, Tressa Torrance passed through the living room and seized him by the ear; and he returned to earth with a howl of mock pain.
"You little tyrant!" he protested, wrapping one arm about her and hoisting her to his shoulder. "Your mother wasn't a patch to you."
She wriggled herself free and, still holding to the ear, led him into the shack.
"At least you can empty the water," she ordered.
"Oh, I can do more than that. How about the pans?"
He was really contrite. "I guess I did forget, little girl."
He rubbed his moustached lips along her bare arm and swung her again to his shoulder.
She bent from her lofty perch until her cheek lay along his hair, and they passed into the kitchen, where he set her down with elaborate care.
"I guess that trestle isn't through with me yet," he observed, a frown marking his forehead. "It's dropped six inches in the last week." He picked up a pan of dirty water and started for the door. "You won't be beaten," she told him confidently. "It's sinking less every day. You've put in half the country now--there must be bottom somewhere." He disappeared without a word and tossed the water over the edge of the chasm. "Anyway," she protested, as he returned, "looking at it isn't going to stiffen its backbone. If it is, you can do the pans and I'll do the looking. See those hands!" She held them outspread before his face. "Aren't you ashamed?"
"They're the dandiest little hands in the world to me. They're your mother's over again. You don't need to care who sees them out here."
He saw the slight flush come to her cheeks, and his voice sobered.
"Adrian Conrad looks a pretty big fish where there's nobody but bohunks."
"Adrian's a 'big fish' anywhere," she flamed, "and you know it. Besides, there's the Police. Counting you that makes four real nice people. We've often been where there are fewer. The daughter of James Torrance, the big railway contractor--"
"Big Jim Torrance, you mean," he interrupted, throwing back his huge head to laugh. "The crudest boss that ever hammered a lazy bohunk to his pick. No, no, little girl, not all your airs, not all my big jobs, can make me more than a half-taught rough-neck--a success, I'll admit. But the biggest success he ever had was in having a daughter--"