"
Parky made a belligerent motion, but Webber, the blacksmith, caught his
arm in a powerful grip.
"Not to-day," he said. "The boys don't want no gun-play here this
mornin'."
"You're a lot of old women and babies," said Parky, and pushing through
the group he walked away, a certain graceful insolence in his bearing.
"Speakin' of catfish," said Field, "we ought to git up some kind of a
celebration to welcome Jim's little skeezucks to the camp."
"That's the ticket," agreed Bone. "What's the matter with repeatin'
the programme we had for the Fourth of July?"
"No, we want somethin' new," objected the smith. "It ought to be
somethin' we never had before."
"Why not wait till Christmas and git good and ready?" said Jim.
The argument was that Christmas was something more than four weeks away.
"We've got to have a rousin' big Christmas fer little Skeezucks,
anyhow," suggested Bone. "What sort of a celebration is there that we
'ain't never had in Borealis?"
"Church," said Keno, promptly.
This caused a silence for a moment.
"Guess that's so, but--who wants church?" inquired the teamster.
"We might git up somethin' worse," said a voice in the crowd.
"How?" demanded another.
"It wouldn't be so far off the mark for a little kid like him,"
tentatively asserted Field, the father of the camp, "S'pose we give it
a shot?"
"Anything suits me," agreed the carpenter.
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