Philip, propped in his bunk, rocked his head on the blanket pillow.
“I don’t trust Garth,” he muttered. “One of these days, when he is sure we’re too nearly dead to try to trail him, he’ll go and we’ll never see him again.”
“Oh, give us a rest!” snapped Bromley, losing, for once in a way, the cheerful equanimity which had enabled him to grapple sanely, thus far, with the hardships and deprivations, “I wouldn’t have your narrow angle on humanity for all the gold there is in the ‘Little Jean’! Why, good Lord, man!—Jim has been loyalty itself, from start to finish! You’ve simply got a crooked convolution in your brain, Philip!”
“Call it what you like; he’ll go, just the same. You’ll see. And after he’s given us time to die properly, he’ll come back and take over the mine.”
Bromley gave it up and crept from his bunk to the hearth to get a light for his pipe, tobacco being the only provision supply that was not completely exhausted. As the day wore away, the echo of distant rifle shots penetrated to the cabin interior from time to time, but the sounds meant nothing more to them than that Garth was trying again, as he had heretofore, to kill something for the pot; trying and failing, as a matter of course.
The sun had gone down and a cloudy twilight was filling the gulch with shadows when Garth returned, dragging the hind quarters of a deer after him. Gaunt, bush-bearded and long-haired, the giant was by this time a mere bony framework of a man; and as he sank down upon his bunk he was gasping for breath and whimpering like a hurt child.
“I got a doe, after the longest,” he choked; “an’ then I had to go an’ leave most o’ the meat for the coyotes and buzzards—durn ’em—’cause I couldn’t tote it home! Time was when I could’ve took that li’l’ doe across my shoulders and brought her in whole; but I ain’t no damn’ good no more whatsoever!”
Bromley stumbled hastily out of his bunk.
“What’s that?—no good, did you say? By Jove, you’ve saved our lives, just the same, old-timer! Don’t you worry a minute about what you had to leave for the dogs and birds; half a deer is better than no meat. You just stretch yourself out and rest your face and hands—and you, too, Phil. I’ll call you both when supper’s ready.”
For the first time in many days they had a full meal for supper, and under the stimulus of a couple of juicy venison steaks, hot from the broiling twig, even Philip came out of his shell of hopelessness and joined in the discussion of the ways and means of escape. It was Garth who set the hopeful pace.