The trapper tapped his gun. “Put a piece of paper on the cap so’ I kin see her and I’ll pop it.”
“That’s a new one on me,” laughed Gillis.
He sent the man aloft to place a square piece of pasteboard on the cap. The men moved back from the foot of the tree, and Gillis gave the signal that all was clear. The old man sprang briskly to the top of a stump, tipped his big hat to the back of his head, and raised his rifle slowly. For an instant the long barrel wavered slightly, then steadied. The report of the rifle was drowned by a splintering crash. The heavily-branched top lifted, then came hurtling through the air to strike the ground a mass of wreckage. For a moment the big spar swayed drunkenly from the shock, then stood stark and rigid. Deprived of its fronds of green, it appeared a ghastly relic of its former self.
That afternoon, as they waited the arrival of the train, Gillis talked again of his “redshirts.” “White men, every one of them,” he declared proudly, “and every one of them with a nickname that is known all over the Coast. Ye just ought to see my two ‘high-riggers,’ ‘Hoop-la’ McKenzie and ‘Blackie’ Anderson. ‘Blackie’ is as black as an Indian, and ‘Hoop-la’ got his name from standing on the top of a spar-tree, after he cuts her off, wavin’ his hat and yellin’ ‘Hoop-la’.
“I got five Jack McDonalds in the gang. Their names are ‘Sly’ Jack, ‘Fightin’ Jack, ‘Check-Book’ Jack, ‘Johnnie-On-The-Spot,’ and ‘Crazy’ Jack. An’ if they had all bin named ‘Crazy’ Jack it wouldn’t bin no mistake,” he finished with a laugh.
The train rumbled to the station and the usual crowd of workers came pouring from the cars, while a crowd stood waiting to board the train. It was the same every day—men coming and men going.
Gillis uttered the glad cry, “Here they are!”
A big, ostentatious man, with broad shoulders and narrow hips, stepped to the platform. His dress was truly colourful and striking—wide hat, high boots, a vivid scarlet shirt, with a cloth belt of the same bright hue tied at the side, the ends dangling loosely.
“Get out of the way, hunkies, and make room for a logger!” he roared, as he elbowed his way through a crowd of scattering foreigners behind him, a line of men clad in the same brilliant attire.