“About them dawgs, Angela?”
“Yes.”
“It’s kinder unfortunate, because grub’s low and it’s a hell of a way to Dawson. I guess we’ll have to pack up to-morrow and git going. We can do a bit o’ digging on the way back.”
Her eyes shone strangely.
“It was all my fault, Jim.”
“Bound to happen at times,” he said. “Dawgs is the silliest things. See here, you’re worrying some over that, ain’t you now?”
“I—I know what it means—to you.”
“It don’t mean nothin’ so long as you didn’t go over that cliff with ’em. We’ll make Dawson all right. I’ve bin up against bigger trouble than this.”
He jumped up and commenced vigorously to wash up the cups and saucers, talking rapidly all the while and refusing to allow her to lend a hand.
“I done this for years, back there in Medicine Bow,” he said. “Gee, them were times! There wasn’t water enough to make tea with in the 255 summer. Me and my two chums used to buy a pail of water for twenty dollars. It had to serve the three of us a whole day. We washed in it, and then drank it——”