"Were you ever almost starved?" said Brooke, who felt the life coming back to him, with no great show of interest.
"Oh, yes," said Saxton, drily. "Twice, at least. I was three days without food the last time. One has to take his chances in the ranges, and you don't pick up dollars without trouble anywhere. Still, we'll talk of that afterwards. Had enough?"
Brooke said he fancied he had, and Saxton hammered upon the iron roof of the shanty until a man appeared.
"Give him a pair of blankets, Ike. He can sleep in the lean-to," he said.
Brooke went with the man, vacantly, and in another few minutes found himself lying in dry blankets on a couch of springy twigs. He was sensible that it was delightfully warm, but he could not remember how he got there, and was wondering why the rain no longer lashed his face, when sleep came to him.
It was next morning when he was awakened by the roar of a blasting charge, and lay still with an unusual sense of comfort until the silence that followed it was broken by the clinking of the drills. Then he rose stiffly, and put on his clothes, which he found had been dried, and was informed by a man who appeared while he was doing it that his breakfast was waiting. Brooke wondered a little at this, for he knew that it was past the usual hour, but he made an excellent meal, and then, being shown into a compartment of the little galvanized iron shanty, found Saxton sitting at a table. The latter now wore long boots and jean, and there were pieces of discolored stone strewn about in front of him.
He looked up with a little nod as Brooke came in. "Feeling quite yourself again?" he said.
"Yes," said Brooke, "thanks to the way your men have treated me. This is, of course, a hospitable country, but I may admit that I could scarcely have expected to be so well looked after by one I hadn't the slightest claim upon."
"And you almost wondered what he did it for?"
Brooke was a trifle astonished, for this certainly expressed his thoughts, but he was in no way disconcerted, and he laughed.