There were too many; they were too hungry.
Besides, I had come on a pleasure-trip, and the idea of cooking for
fifteen men and thirty-one horses was too much for me. I made some cocoa
and grumbled while I made it. We lunched out of tins and in savage
silence. When we spoke, it was to impose horrible punishments on the
defaulting cook. We hoped he would enjoy his long walk back to
civilization without food.
"Food!" answered one of the boys. "He's got plenty cached in that bed of
his, all right. What you should have done," he said to the teamster,
"was to take his bed from him and let him starve."
In silence we finished our luncheon; in silence, mounted our horses. In
black and hopeless silence we rode on north, farther and farther from
cooks and hotels and tables-d'hote.
We rode for an hour--two hours. And, at last, sitting in a cleared spot,
we saw a man beside the trail. He was the first man we had seen in days.
He was sitting there quite idly. Probably that man to-day thinks that he
took himself there on his own feet, of his own volition. We know better.
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