"I can't see it, anyway. I dare say I couldn't have brought another one, after all."
He moved away with Drakesford and looked at the latter when they were some distance from the tent.
"It's curious about that stick," he observed. "I'm not convinced yet that I've got as many as I brought with me."
"Why should he want to keep one?" his companion asked.
"I don't know," Watson confessed. "But there was something in his face that didn't please me."
"Yes," agreed Drakesford; "I've once or twice seen overdriven men look like that, and so far as I can remember there was trouble afterward."
They said nothing further, and while they proceeded along the crest of the coulée Winthrop, still sitting beside his tent, took a stick of giant-powder from his pocket.
CHAPTER XVI
CORPORAL SLANEY'S DEFEAT
The sun had just dipped, and there was a wonderful invigorating coolness in the dew-chilled air. Winthrop sat in the cook-shed which was built against the back of the iron store-shack. Outside, as he could see through the doorway, the prairie ran back, a vast gray-white stretch, to the horizon, beneath as vast a sweep of green transparency. The little shed, however, was growing shadowy, and a red twinkle showed through the front of the stove in which the sinking fire was still burning.