"Come on," he said. "We'll go and get the other fellow and then we'll camp near you so as to have some fire."
"All right," I said.
He led off, and I picked up the rabbits and followed. He kept hooting, and the other boy answered, and we went down into the gulch where the creek flowed. Now, that was the dickens of a place to camp! Anybody ought to know better than to camp down at the bottom of a narrow gulch, where it is damp and nasty and dark. They did it because it was beside the water, and because there was some soft grass that they could lie on. (Note 25.)
The other boy was about seventeen, and was huddled in a blanket, trying to scratch a match and light wet paper. He wore a big Colt's six-shooter on a cartridge belt about his waist.
"Come out, Bat," called the boy with me. "Here's a kid from another camp, where they have fire and things."
Bat grunted, and they gathered their blankets and a frying-pan and other stuff.
"Lookee! This beats rabbit," said the first boy (his name was Walt); and he showed me what they had killed. It was four grouse!
Now, that was mean.
"It's against the law to kill grouse yet," I told him.
"Aw, what do we care?" he answered. "Nobody knows."