The horses, in their rope corral, lay down
and rolled in sheer ecstasy when their heavy packs were removed. The
cook set up his sheet-iron stove beside the creek, built a wood fire,
lifted the stove over it, fried meat, boiled potatoes, heated beans, and
made coffee while the tents were going up. From a thicket near by came
the thud of an axe as branches were cut for bough beds.
I have slept on all kinds of bough beds. They may be divided into three
classes. There is the one which is high in the middle and slopes down at
the side--there is nothing so slippery as pine-needles--so that by
morning you are quite likely to be not only off the bed but out of the
tent. And there is the bough bed made by the guide when he is in a great
hurry, which consists of large branches and not very many needles. So
that in the morning, on rising, one is as furrowed as a waffle off the
iron. And there is the third kind, which is the real bough bed, but
which cannot be tossed off in a moment, like a poem, but must be the
result of calculation, time, and much labor. It is to this bough bed
that I shall some day indite an ode.
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