"You can git the squaw-axe and hack out a place fer a bed-ground and you can hunt up some firewood and take a bucket out of the pack and go to the crick and locate some water while I'm finding a place to picket these horses."
Because it would hasten supper, it seemed to Wallie that wood and water were of more importance than clearing a place to sleep, so he collected a small pile of twigs and dead sagebrush, then took an aluminum kettle from his camping utensils and walked along the bank of Skull Creek looking for a pool which contained enough water to fill the kettle. He finally saw one, and planting his heels in a dirt slide, shot like a toboggan some twenty feet to the bottom. Filling his kettle he walked back over the boulders looking for a more convenient place to get up than the one he had descended.
He was abreast of the camp before he knew it.
"Whur you goin'?" Pinkey, who had returned, was hanging over the edge watching him stumbling along with his kettle of water.
"I'm hunting a place to get up," said Wallie, tartly.
"How did you git down?"
"'Way back there."
"Why didn't you git up the same way?"
"Couldn't—without spilling the water."
"I'll git a rope and snake you."