“I do miss my morning plunge or shower,” Helen admitted. “I feel as though all this red dust and grit had got into my skin and never would get out again. But one can’t rough it and keep clean, too, I suppose.”
“That water in the sluice looks lovely,” confessed Jennie Stone. “I’d dearly like to go paddling in it if there weren’t so many men about.”
“After all,” said Ruth, “although we are traveling like men we don’t act as they would. Tom slipped off by himself and behind that screen of bushes up there on the hillside he took a bath in the sluice. But there isn’t a girl here who would do it.”
“Oh, lawsy, I didn’t bring my bathing suit,” drawled Jennie. “That was an oversight.”
“Old Tom does get a few things on us, doesn’t he?” commented Helen. “Perhaps being a boy isn’t, after all, an unmitigated evil.”
“But the water’s so co-o-ld!” shivered Trix. “I’m sure I wouldn’t care for a plunge in this mountain stream. Will there be heated bathrooms at Freezeout Camp, Fielding?”
“Humph!” Miss Cullam ejaculated. “The title of the place sounds as though steam heat would be the fashion and tiled bathrooms plentiful!”
The third day of the journey was quite as fair as the previous days; but the way was still more rugged, so they did not travel so far. They camped that night in a deep gorge, and it was cold enough for the fires to feel grateful. Tom and the Mexican kept two fires well supplied with fuel all night. Once a coyote stood on a bank above their heads and sang his song of hunger and loneliness until, as Sally declared, she thought she should “fly off the handle.”
“I never did hear such an unpleasant sound in all my life—it beats the grinding of an ungreased wagon wheel! I wish you would drive him away, Tom.”
So Tom pulled out the automatic that he had been “aching” to use, and sent a couple of shots in the direction of the lank and hungry beast—who immediately crossed the gorge and serenaded them from the other bank!