“Is that all the tobacco you’ve got?”
“Why, yes. But it’s enough to do the trick.”
“Then what’ll you smoke? There ain’t any stores here.”
“Then I don’t smoke for awhile,” was the matter-of-fact reply.
Dropping the cans beside her, he strode over to the lantern and brought it and the gun to the overhanging wall. Swiftly then he put coffee to boil, dipped a cupful of water from the canvas bag, flipped a clean white handkerchief from the ditty-bag, and returned to her. Without a word she let him inspect the lacerated arm.
“You got a nasty rip,” he stated, scowling. “Right along the bone. How did you do it? Fall?”
“Yes.” Her tone was more gentle now than it had yet been, and her eyes dwelt on the sober face bending over the injury. “I’ve—I’ve got a little secret up here—a hole into the rocks that’s been my playhouse since I was little, and when mom’s awful mean or pop’s ugly drunk or—or I can’t stand it down there, I come up here and stay all by my own self. This time I got to dreamin’, I guess, and I went to sleep there. And when I woke up it was night. Mebbe I’d ought to have stayed there till mornin’, but I was awful hungry, and I tried to git down the rocks and took a fall.”
He nodded sympathetically, bathing the wound with gentle touch.
“And then that mis’rable catamount had to smell me. They’re awful bad when they’re hungry and smell blood. I thought I was a goner till your light showed. Who ever told you a catamount would run if you said boo?”
“Somebody who didn’t know as much as he thought he did, I guess.”