“I don’t doubt it,” he said soberly. “I’m a good deal of a duffer at this game.”
“But then,” she put in generously, “you caught more than I did, and that evens matters.”
They had begun eating now, and in a moment it seemed that food was the only thing they had lacked. As became two healthy young animals, they ate ravenously of the biscuits she had carried and all of the fish she had prepared, and then Gallatin cooked more. The girl removed the metal cup from the bottom of her flask and taking turn and turn about with the tiny vessel they drank the steaming tea. In this familiar act they seemed to have reached at once a definite and satisfactory understanding. Gallatin was thankful for that, and he was careful to put her still further at her ease by a somewhat obtrusive air of indifference. She repaid him for this consideration by the frankness of her smile. He examined her furtively when he could and was conscious that when his face was turned in profile, she, too, was studying him anxiously, as only a woman in such a situation might. Whatever it was that she learned was not unpleasing to her, for, as he raised his hand to carry the tea to his lips, her voice was raised in a different tone.
“Your hands!” she said. “They’re all cut and bleeding.”
He glanced at his broken knuckles impersonally.
“Are they? I hadn’t noticed before. You see, I hadn’t any hatchet.”
“Won’t you let me—hadn’t you better bathe them in the water?”
“A bath wouldn’t hurt them, would it?”
“I didn’t mean that. Don’t they hurt?”