hands at taking care of themselves in
the woods, so matters of their own accord fell into a rough system. Some
built the fire, one mixed bread, others busied themselves with the rest
of the provisions. Elliott rummaged about, and set the rough table with
the battered service. Only Curtis, seated with his back against a tree,
appeared too utterly exhausted or ignorant to take hold at anything.
Indeed, he hardly spoke to his companions, ate hastily, and disappeared
into his own quarters without offering to help wash the dishes.

This task accomplished, the little group scattered to its afternoon
work. In the necessity of stringing wire without cutting himself to
ribbons, Bob forgot everything, even the flight of time.

"I reckon it's about quittin' time," Jack observed to him at last.

Bob looked up in surprise. The sun was indeed dropping low.

"We must be about half done," he remarked, measuring the extent of the
meadow with his eye.

"Two more wires to string," Pollock reminded him.

The mountaineer threw the grain sack of staples against the last post,
tossed his hammer and the hatchet with them.

"Hold on," said Bob. "You aren't going to leave them there?"

"Shore," said Pollock. "We'll have to begin there to-morrow."

But Bob's long training in handling large bodies of men with tools had
developed in him an instinct of tool-orderliness.

"Won't do," he stated with something of his old-time authority in his
tones. "Suppose for some reason we shouldn't get back here to-morrow?
That's the way such things get mislaid; and they're valuable."

He picked up the hatchet and the axe. Grumbling something under his
breath, Pollock shouldered the staples and thrust the hammer in his
pocket.

"It isn't as if these things were ours," said Bob, realizing that he had
spoken in an unduly minatory tone.

"That's right," agreed Jack more cheerfully.

In addition to the new men, they found Ross Fletcher and Charley Morton
at the camp. The evening meal was prepared cheerfully and roughly, eaten
under a rather dim lamp. Pipes were lit, and they all began leisurely to
clean up. The smoke hung low in the air. One by one the men dropped back
into their rough, homemade chairs, or sprawled out on the floor. Some
one lit the fire in the stone chimney, for the mountain air nipped
shrewdly after the sun had set. A general relaxing after the day's work,
a general cheerfulness, a general dry, chaffing wit took possession of
them.