threw separately upon the
sputtering fire, and while they heated he washed his hands, mixed the
biscuits, cut slices of meat off the deer haunch, and put water on to
boil. He broiled his meat on the hot, red coals, and laid it near on
clean pine chips, while he waited for bread to bake and coffee to boil.
The smell of wood-smoke and odorous steam from pots and the fragrance of
spruce mingled together, keen, sweet, appetizing. Then he ate his simple
meal hungrily, with the content of the man who had fared worse.

After he had satisfied himself he washed his utensils and stowed them
away, with the bags. Whereupon his movements acquired less dexterity and
speed. The rest hour had come. Still, like the long-experienced man in
the open, he looked around for more to do, and his gaze fell upon his
weapons, lying on his saddle. His rifle was a Henry--shiny and smooth
from long service and care. His small gun was a Colt's 45. It had been
carried in a saddle holster. Wade rubbed the rifle with his hands, and
then with a greasy rag which he took from the sheath. After that he held
the rifle to the heat of the fire. A squall of rain had overtaken him
that day, wetting his weapons. A subtle and singular difference seemed
to show in the way he took up the Colt's. His action was slow, his look
reluctant. The small gun was not merely a thing of steel and powder and
ball. He dried it and rubbed it with care, but not with love, and then
he stowed it away.

Next Wade unrolled his bed under the spruce, with one end of the
tarpaulin resting on the soft mat of needles. On top of that came the
two woolly sheepskins, which he used to lie upon, then his blankets, and
over all the other end of the tarpaulin.

This ended his tasks for the day. He lighted his pipe and composed
himself beside the camp-fire to smoke and rest awhile before going to
bed. The silence of the wilderness enfolded lake and shore; yet
presently it came to be a silence accentuated by near and distant
sounds, faint, wild, lonely--the low hum of falling water, the splash of
tiny waves on the shore, the song of insects, and the dismal hoot
of owls.

"Bill Belllounds--an' he needs a hunter," soliloquized Bent Wade, with
gloomy, penetrating eyes, seeing far through the red embers. "That will
suit me an' change my luck, likely. Livin' in the woods, away from
people--I could stick to a job like that.... But if this White Slides is
close to the old trail I'll never stay."

He