“Asleep?” said Jack “I should say so. It’s five or six hours since you turned in and here Hugh and I have been working all that time to support you.”
Joe was not wide enough awake to appreciate Jack’s joke, but after he had walked a little way from the fire and given his face and hands a good scrubbing with snow, he brightened up a good deal and seemed to watch the progress of the meal with interest.
“I tell you what,” said Hugh, as they were eating, “let’s turn back the flaps of the tent and build a small fire right close in front of it. Of course, we’ll have to watch it pretty carefully and put it out when we want to go to bed, but it will seem a heap more comfortable than to be standing about the fire out here.”
“Good,” said Jack, “let’s do it. If you’ll wash the dishes I’ll cut some small wood and we’ll get something as near like a lodge as we can.”
When the fire was built and when the three were sitting on their soft blankets under the shelter of the tent, it seemed very comfortable.
“There,” said Hugh, “this is lots better than standing out there, boys, ain’t it?”
“Yes,” said Joe, “it is.”
“Bully,” said Jack. “We couldn’t be more comfortable than this, unless we had a lodge, and this is plenty good enough.”
“Yes,” said Hugh, “I would like to have brought a small lodge, but then I knew we were coming into a stormy country and very likely often would have to camp high up where we couldn’t get lodge poles, and so I thought it was better to bring this little tent with the folding poles. Of course, sleeping out on the prairie in this weather one doesn’t need a tent, but in the mountains here, where you’re likely to have ten rain or snow storms in a day, it’s good to keep your blankets dry.”
While he was speaking, Hugh was cutting tobacco, and when he had a pipeful, after grinding it up between his palms, he filled the bowl of the pipe and reaching out took a brand from the fire and lighting his pipe sat there in great comfort, drawing in deep breaths of the fragrant smoke.