The forenoon was well advanced when Broome stirred, opened his eyes and sat up with a start. He was a moment or two realizing his surroundings and recalling the events that had brought him to this place.
He sat staring at the cabin; at the rough mud-and-stone walls; the primitive fireplace; the rude furnishings, and finally summed up his impressions in a phrase:
“Hell! What a layout!”
Then, remembering Gard’s probable proximity, he went heavily to the door.
There was no one in sight. In the big outer fireplace an “Indian” fire smoldered, guarded on one side by the earthen coffee-pot, on the other by the big kettle of beans. On the table were a bowl and a plate; the former upside down over some cakes of oat bread. Broome welcomed the sight, for he was hungry.
“Wonder where the patron got to so early,” he muttered as he fell upon the food.
He ate swinishly, standing before the fire, and had nearly completed his meal when he caught sight of the inscription Gard had put upon the cup from which he was drinking. His little shifty eyes studied it curiously as he turned the cup about.
“What in tunk is that for?” he muttered, perplexed, and when he had managed to decipher the words he nearly dropped the little vessel in his surprise.
“T-h-e c-u-p o-f f-o-r-g-i-v-e-n-e-s-s,” he spelled again, holding the cup up to the light and feeling the sunken letters with one hard finger. “Rummy kind o’ cup that’d be.”
He stooped to refill it with “coffee” from the blackened pot in the embers and, as he straightened up, his eye met another inscription, on a broad stone beside the door of the cabin. He read it aloud, laboriously: