If, however, you cared for geology, you could study specimens of the Frazer river system through the wide chinks between the boards which walled the room without even leaving your chair. Indeed, there was more "bed rock," as Rampike called it, than boarding in the composition of his walls.
But neither geology nor furniture attracted any attention from Steve or Ned. When they entered the cabin their eyes lit upon two things only, and it was a good hour before they took any real interest in anything else. The two centres of attraction were a frying-pan and a billy, round which all three men knelt and served, making themselves into cooks, stokers, or bellows, until the billy sang on the hearth and the bacon hissed in the pan.
Then for a while there was silence, and this story does not begin again until someone struck a match upon the seat of his pants. I believe it was Rampike, because, having had more experience than Steve, he could bolt his food faster. I know that it was not Ned, for he could never finish his meal until about the end of Steve's first pipe. Steve said it was because the Englishman eat so much. Ned said that in England men eat their food, in America they "swallered down their grub." "Swallerin' down your grub," he said, "was a faster but less satisfactory process than eating your food." But as I wish to remain upon friendly terms with both disputants, I cannot enter into this matter.
"Do you reckon to go in again this fall?" asked Rampike, without any prelude but a puff of tobacco smoke.
"To the creek?" said Ned, reaching across his neighbour for the billy. "Yes, we must go in, and that soon."
"What's your hurry? Steve here cain't travel, and you're pretty nigh played out though you are hard; and as for the gold, that'll stay right there till spring."
"You forget that there were three of us at Antler. Phon is up at the creek now."
"Phon! What, that Chinee! Is he up at the crik?"
"If he is alive he is," answered Ned. "He may have starved for all I know."
"Starved! not he; but you'll never see that heathen agen. He'd live on dirt or nothin' at all, any Chinee can do that; but you bet your life he ain't up there now. He's just skipped out to Victoria by some other road with all the dust he can pack along. That's what Phon has done."