Part 73 (1/2)

”What!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the Boy, aghast; then quickly, to keep a good face: ”You take my life when you do take the beans, whereby I live.”

When the Colonel had disposed of his strawberries, ”Lord!” he sighed, trying to rub the stiffness out of his hands over the smoke, ”the appet.i.te a fella can raise up here is something terrible. You eat and eat, and it doesn't seem to make any impression. You're just as hungry as ever.”

_”And the stuff a fella can eat!”_

The Colonel recalled that speech of the Boy's the very next night, when, after ”a h.e.l.l of a time” getting the fire alight, he was bending forward in that att.i.tude most trying to maintain, holding the frying-pan at long range over the feebly-smoking sticks. He had to cook, to live on snow-shoes nowadays, for the heavy Colonel had ill.u.s.trated oftener than the Boy, that going without meant breaking in, floundering, and, finally, having to call for your pardner to haul you out. This was one of the many uses of a pardner on the trail. The last time the Colonel had trusted to the treacherous crust he had gone in head foremost, and the Boy, happening to look round, saw only two snow-shoes, bottom side up, moving spasmodically on the surface of the drift. The Colonel was nearly suffocated by the time he was pulled out, and after that object-lesson he stuck to snow-shoes every hour of the twenty-four, except those spent in the sleeping-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 d.a.m.ned 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 att.i.tude. 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 had been misinterpreted.

”Hey? Too much fire outside, and not enough in? Well, sir, I'll trust _my_ stomach to strike a balance. Guess the heat'll get distributed all right once I've swallowed it.”

When the Colonel, mollified, said something about cinders in the rice, the Boy, with his mouth full of grit, answered: ”I'm pretendin' it's sugar.”

Not since the episode of the abandoned rifle had he shown himself so genial.

”Never in all my bohn life,” says the Colonel after eating steadily for some time--”never in a year, sah, have I thought as much about food as I do in a day on this----trail.”

”Same here.”

”And it's quant.i.ty, not quality.”

”Ditto.”

The Boy turned his head sharply away from the fire. ”Hear that?”

No need to ask. The Colonel had risen upright on his cramped legs, red eyes starting out of his head. The Boy got up, turned about in the direction of the hollow sound, and made one step away from the fire.

”You stay right where you are!” ordered the Colonel, quite in the old way.

”Hey?”

”That's a bird-song.”

”Thought so.”

”Mr. Wolf smelt the cookin'; want's the rest of the pack to know there's something queer up here on the hill.” Then, as the Boy moved to one side in the dark: ”What you lookin' for?”