"All pack animals are stubborn," he declared. "It's the only privilege
they have."

"You are much too presumptuous, also, as I discovered in your quarters."

"My only presumption is in loving you."

"That was not presumption," she smiled; "it was pre-emption. You must
be punished."

"I shall run away," he threatened. "I shall gallop right off through
the woods and--begin to eat grass. I am very wild."

As she talked she drew from her pocket a spool of line, and took a
fly-hook from her hat; then, in a trice, she had rigged a fishing-rod,
and, creeping out upon a ledge, she whipped the pool below of a
half-dozen rainbow trout, which she thrust into his coat while they
were still wriggling. Then she as quickly put up her gear, and they
resumed their journey, climbing more steeply now, until, when the sun
was low, they quit the stream-bed and made through the forest towards
the shoulder of an untimbered ridge that ran down into the valley. And
there, high up on the edge of the spruce, they selected a mossy shelf
and pitched their camp.

They had become so intimate by now as to fall into a whimsical mode of
speech, and Necia reverted to a childish habit in her talk that brought
many a smile to the youth's face. It had been her fancy as a little
girl to speak in adjectives, ignoring many of her nouns, and its
quaintness had so amused her father that on rare occasions, when the
humor was on him, he also took it up. She now addressed herself to
Burrell in the same manner.

"I think we are very smarts to come so far," she said.

"You travel like a deer," he declared, admiringly. "Why, you have tired
me down." Removing his pack, he stretched his arms and shook out the
ache in his shoulders.

"Which way does our course lie now, Pathfinder?"

"Right up the side of this big, and then along the ridge. In two hours
we come to a gully running so"--she indicated an imaginary
direction--"which we go down till it joins another stream so, and right
there we'll find old 'No Creek's' cabin, so! Won't they be surprised to
see us! I think we're very cunning to beat them in, don't you?" She
laughed a glad little bubbling laugh, and he cried:

"Oh, girl! How wonderful you are!"

"It's getting very dark and fierce," she chided, "and all the housework
must be done."

So he built a fire, then fetched a bucket of water from a rill that
trickled down among the rocks near by. He made as if to prepare their
meal, but she would have