"You up?" he cried in delight when she entered. His arms were heaped with wood. "I'm not sure that you hadn't ought to rest another day. How do you feel?"
"As good as ever, as far as I can tell. And pretty well ashamed of being such a baby yesterday."
But his smile told her that he held no resentment. "I trust you'll be able to eat to-day?"
"Eat? Bill, I am famished. But first"—and her face grew instantly sober—"I want to know just how we stand, and what our chances are. I remember what you told me yesterday about getting out. But we can't live here on nothing. What about supplies?"
"That's what we've got to see about right now. It's an important matter, true enough. For a certain very good reason I couldn't make a real investigation till you got up. You'll see why in a minute. Well, we have a gun at least; you can see it behind the stove. It's an old thing, but it will still shoot. And we've got at least one box of shells for it—and not one of them must be wasted. They mean our meat supply. I'm still wearing my pistol, and I've got two boxes of shells for it in my pocket—it's a small caliber, and there's fifty in each box. There are plenty of blankets and cooking utensils, magazines for idle hours and, Heaven bless us, an old and battered phonograph on the table. Don't scorn it—anything that has to be packed on a horse this far mustn't be scorned. We can have music with our meals, if we like." He stopped and smiled.
"There's a cake of soap on the shelf," he went on, after the gorgeous fact of the phonograph had time to sink home, "and another among the supplies—but I'm afraid cold cream and toilet water are lacking. I don't even know how you'll comb your hair."
The girl smiled—really with happiness now—and fished in the pockets of a great slicker coat she had worn the night of the disaster. She produced a little white roll, and with the high glee opened it for him to see. Wrapped in a miniature face towel was her comb, a small brush, and a toothbrush!
They laughed with delight over the find. "But no mirror?" the man said solemnly.
"No. I won't be able to see how I look for weeks—and that's terrible. But where are your food supplies? I see those sacks hanging from the ceiling—but they certainly haven't enough to keep us alive. And there's nothing else that I can see."
"We'd have a hard time, if we had to depend on the contents of those sacks. Miss Tremont, can you cook?"