ks Lee's got in
his sthores! Cake an' pie, it's likely they must have in the house er
they think they're not eatin'." Murphy talked as he worked, putting
the tools in a pile ready to be carried to camp, picking up pieces of
rope and wire and boards and nails, and laying a plank roof over the
windlass and weighting it with rocks. Mike had gone pacing to camp,
swinging his arms and talking to himself also, though his talk was
less humanly kind under the monotonous grumble. Mike was gobbling
under his breath, something about law-suing anybody that come
botherin' him an' tryin' t' arrest him for nothin'. But Murphy
continued to harp upon the subject of domestic preparedness.

"An' that leanto them men sleep in is no better than nothin' an' if it
kapes the rain off their blankets it'll not kape off the shnow, an'
it won't kape off the wind at all. An' they've not got the beddin'
they'll be needin', an' I'll bet money on it.

"They should have a cellar dug back av the cabin where's the hill the
sun gets to, an' they should have it filled with spuds an' cabbages
an' the like--but what have they got? A dollar's worth av sugar,
maybe, an' a fifty-poun' sack av flour, an' maybe a roll av butter an'
a table full of nicknacks which they could do without--an' winter
comin' on like the lope av a coyote after a rabbit, an' them no better
prepared than the rabbit, ner so, fer the rabbit's maybe got a hole he
can duck inty an' they have nawthin' but the summer camp they've made,
an' _hammicks_, by gorry, whin they should have warrm overshoes an'
sourdough coats! Tenderfeet an' pilgrims they be, an' these mountains
is no place fer such with winter comin' on--an' like to be a bad wan
the way the squrls has been layin' away nuts."

Pilgrims and tenderfeet they were, and their lack of foresight might
well shock an oldtimer like Murphy. But he would have been still more
shocked had he seen what poor amateurish preparations for the coming
winter another young tenderfoot had been making. If he had seen the
place which Jack Corey had chosen for his winter hide-out I think he
would have taken a fit; and if he had seen the little pile of food
which Jack referred to pridefully as his grubstake I don't know what
he would have done.

Under the barren, rock-upended peak of King Solomon there was a narrow
cleft between two huge slabs that had slipped off the ledge when the
mountain was in the making. At the farther end of the cleft there was
a ca