leeping-bag.

But few things on earth are more exasperating than trying to work
mounted on clumsy, long web-feet that keep jarring against, yet holding
you off from, the tree you are felling, or the fire you are cooking
over. You are constrained to stand wholly out of natural relation to
the thing you are trying to do--the thing you've got to do, if you mean
to come out alive.

The Colonel had been through all this time and time again. But as he
squatted on his heels to-night, cursing the foot and a half of
snow-shoe that held him away from the sullen fire, straining every
muscle to keep the outstretched frying-pan over the best of the blaze,
he said to himself that what had got him on the raw was that speech of
the Boy's yesterday about the stuff he had to eat. If the Boy objected
to having his rice parboiled in smoked water he was damned
unreasonable, that was all.

The culprit reappeared at the edge of the darkening wood. He came up
eagerly, and flung down an armful of fuel for the morning, hoping to
find supper ready. Since it wasn't, he knew that he mustn't stand about
and watch the preparations. By this time he had learned a good deal of
the trail-man's unwritten law. On no account must you hint that the
cook is incompetent, or even slow, any more than he may find fault with
your moment for calling halt, or with your choice of timber. So the
woodman turned wearily away from the sole spot of brightness in the
waste, and went back up the hill in the dark and the cold, to busy
himself about his own work, even to spin it out, if necessary, till he
should hear the gruff "Grub's ready!" And when that dinner-gong sounds,
don't you dally! Don't you wait a second. You may feel uncomfortable if
you find yourself twenty minutes late for a dinner in London or New
York, but to be five minutes late for dinner on the Winter Trail is to
lay up lasting trouble.

By the time the rice and bacon were done, and the flap-jack, still raw
in the middle, was burnt to charcoal on both sides, the Colonel's eyes
were smarting, in the acrid smoke, and the tears were running down his
cheeks.

"Grub's ready!"

The Boy came up and dropped on his heels in the usual attitude. The
Colonel tore a piece off the half-charred, half-raw pancake.

"Maybe you'll think the fire isn't thoroughly distributed, but _that's
_got to do for bread," he remarked severely, as if in reply to some
objection.

The Boy saw that something he had said or looked