Delilah of the Snows by Harold Bindloss

Darkness had closed down on the hillside, and supper was over, when Ingleby and Leger lounged on a cedar log outside the shanty. Hetty lay close by in the deer-hide chair, and Tomlinson had stretched his long limbs just clear of the fire. He lay placidly smoking, with no more than an occasional deferential glance at Hetty. Now and then the flickering firelight touched his face and showed the harsh lines of its rugged chiselling and the steadiness of his contemplative eyes. Tomlinson, it was generally admitted, could do more with axe and shovel than most of the men in that valley, but a certain deliberateness of speech and gesture characterized him in repose. He was a man who worked the harder when it was necessary because he seldom wasted an effort.

It was slowly he raised his head and glanced at Hetty. "The boys can get away with another twenty loaves this week," he said. "Jake figured you'd have seven or eight more of them from the gully workings coming in. They told him they'd no use for flapjacks or grindstones when they could get bread like that."