rough. Lonesome Pete jerked off the piece of rope which had held
them in a roll and flung them to the ground, directing toward Hapgood
a glance which was an invitation. And Hapgood, the fastidious, lay
down.

The red-headed man dumped a strange mess out of a square pasteboard
box into his frying-pan and set it upon some coals which he had
scraped out of his little fire. There was dried beef in that mess, and
onions and carrots and potatoes, and they had all been cooked up
together, needing only to be warmed over now. The odor of them went
abroad over the land and assailed Hapgood's nostrils. And Hapgood did
not frown, nor yet did he sneer. He lifted himself upon an elbow and
watched with something of real interest in his eyes. And when black
coffee was made in a blacker, spoutless, battered, dirty-looking
coffee-pot Roger Hapgood put out a hand, uninvited, for the tin cup.

Conniston, his appetite being a shade further removed from starvation
than his friend's, divided his interest equally between the meal and
the man preparing it. He found his host an anomaly. In spite of the
fiery coloring of mustache and hair he was one of the meekest-looking
individuals Conniston had ever seen, and certainly the most
soft-spoken. His eyes had a way of losing their brightness as he fell
to staring away into vacancy, his lips working as though he were
repeating a prayer over and over to himself. The growth upon his upper
lip had at first given him the air of a man of thirty, and now when
one looked at him it was certain he could not be a day over twenty.
And about his hips, dragging so low and fitting so loosely that
Conniston had always the uncomfortable sensation that it was going to
slip down about his feet, he wore a cartridge-belt and two heavy
forty-five revolvers. He gave one the feeling of a cherub with a
war-club.

During the scanty meal Lonesome Pete ate noisily and rapidly and spoke
little, contenting himself with short answers to the few questions
which were put to him, for the most part staring away into the
gathering night with an expression of great mildness upon his face.
Finishing some little time before his guests, he rolled a cigarette,
left them to polish out the frying-pan with the last morsels of bread,
and, going back to the buckboard, fumbled a moment in a second
soap-box under the seat. It was growing so dark now that, while they
could see him take two or three articles from his box and thrust them
under h