_can't_ have been Watson Grider," Prime mused over his sixth
cigarette--he was rolling them now in the label paper of the vegetable
tins, frugally soaked off and saved. "If it had been his joke, he
wouldn't have left it up in the air; he would have followed along to get
the good of it. But if it isn't Grider, who is it, and what is it all
about?"

The riddle always worked around thus to the same tormenting question,
with no hint of an answer; and, as many times before, Prime was obliged
to leave it hanging, like Mohammed's coffin, between heaven and earth.
But when he renewed the fire and rolled himself in his blankets for the
night, he was still casting about for some means of bringing it to
earth.

Figuring it out afterward, he was certain that he could not have been
asleep for more than an hour or two before he was awakened, with the
echo of a noise like volley-firing of some sort still ringing in his
ears. His first impulse was to spring up, but the second, which was the
one he obeyed, was more in keeping with the new character development.
Deftly freeing himself from the blanket wrappings, he reached over to
make sure that one of the guns could be caught up quickly, and lay
quiet.

For some little time nothing happened, and the night silence of the
forest was undisturbed. Just as he was beginning to think that it had
been the mosquitoes, and not a noise, which had awakened him, and was
about to get up and renew the smudge which he had made to windward
before turning in, he heard cautious footsteps as of some one
approaching from the direction of the river.

The measured tread assured him that the footfalls were human, and his
hold tightened mechanically upon the grip of the gun-stock. By this time
he was thinking quite clearly, and he told himself that the militant
precaution was doubtless unnecessary; that there was little chance that
the approaching intruder--any intruder who would be attracted by the
light of the camp-fire--would be unfriendly. Yet it was the part of
prudence to be prepared.

After a moment or two he was able to note that the approaching footsteps
were growing more cautious. At this he rolled over by imperceptible
inchings to face toward the river, drawing the gun with him. It was
useless to try to penetrate the black shadows of the background. The
fire had died down to a mass of glowing embers, its bedtime replenishing
of dried wood blazing up fitfully only now and then to illumine a
sli