she said, with a note of grief in her
voice. "Oh, you two don't know it all! You don't know what it takes to
make a woman, who tries to be decent, rebellious at everything under
the skies. What brutes there are walking the earth! Sometimes, lately,
I begin to doubt if there is a God!"

"And that," exclaimed the quiet, steadfast young voice at her side,
"is unworthy of you and your intelligence."

She halted again, as if thinking.

"And I," said the giant, in his deep, musical tones, "know there's
one. It takes more than men to make me believe there ain't. I know it
when I look at them!" He waved his hands at the starlit mountains
surrounding them, and towering in serenity high up to the cloudless
spaces.

"I'd be mighty ashamed to doubt when I can see them," he said, "and if
they went away, I'd still believe it; because if I didn't, I couldn't
see no use in livin' any more. It's havin' Him lean down and whisper
to you once in a while, in the night, when everything seems to be
goin' wrong, 'Old boy, you did well,' that keeps it all worth while
and makes a feller stiffen his back and go ahead, with his conscience
clean and not carin' a cuss what anybody says or thinks, so longs as
he knows that the Lord knows he did the right thing."

She faltered for a moment, and Dick, staring through the darkness at
her, could not decide whether it was because the woman in her was
melting after the storm of anger, or whether she was merely weighing
his partner's words. As abruptly as had been any of her actions in all
the time they had known her, she turned and walked away from them, her
soft "Good-night" wafting itself back with a note of profound sadness
and misery.

"I've decided what she is," Bill said, as they paused for a last look
at the lights of the camp. "She's all woman, and a mighty good one, at
that!"

CHAPTER VIII

THE INCONSISTENT BULLY

"Them beans," declared the fat cook, plaintively, "looks as if they
had been put through some sort of shrivelin' process. The dried prunes
are sure dry all right! Must have been put up about the time they
dried them mummy things back in Egypt. Apuricots? Humph! I soaked some
of 'em all day and to-night took one over to the shop and cut it open
with a chisel to see if it was real leather, or only imitation. The
canned salmon, and the canned tripe is all swells so that the cans is
round instead of flat on the ends. I reckon you'd better go down and
see that storekeepe