The Devil's Playground Author:John Mackie Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. " WHAT CHANCE HAS BROUGHT YOU HERE ? " It was indeed a glorious morning when Dick Travers and Jack Holmes awoke. The sun was already up, and l... more »ooked as if he intended to make up for his eclipse of the previous evening by shining out a little sooner and fiercer than usual. " Just wait a little," he seemed to say, " until I get a little farther up, and then I'll roast you a bit!" For in this land of extremes, the sun either sulks altogether and hides himself, or else comes out bold and strong, meaning business. They had slept over-night in the men's quarters, which was a comfortable weatherboard building attached to the manager's house, whose wife, Mrs. MacMillan, prepared the meals of the two or three men generally employed on the ranche. MacMillan was already up; he was a dark, wiry-looking man, with a pleasant Celtic face; he might be bordering upon forty years of age or so. As our knights of the trail were dressing, he sang out to the other two men who occupied two of the other bunks in the hut. MacMillan seldom betrayedany Gaelic accent save under some strong emotion; he had been for the greater part of his life in Canada. The two men whom Mac- Millan called to got up when called. One of them was an active young fellow, with a pleasant face, who was called Reynolds, and who gave the newcomers a cheery good- morning ; but the other was not quite so pleasant to look upon. He was of that neither-fish nor good-red-herring type, which Tom Treden- nis had on the previous night characterized as " tough," or at least whose sole ambition was to be considered so. He drawled his speech through his nose, was always talking about getting " the drop upon his man," and as he once had been a cowboy in Montana, had generally some wonderful experiences to relate, in which...« less