His companion grinned.
"It strikes me the first thing is to set the stove going. Guess if I'm going to get on a record hustle I want my breakfast."
Thorne frowned impatiently, but he carried an armful of birch billets into the house, and when half an hour later he called in his companion, the latter glanced with undisguised disgust at the provisions on the table and the contents of the frying-pan.
"Well," he ejaculated, "if you can raise steam on that kind of truck, I most certainly can't. The first of the boys who drives by to the settlement is going to bring us out something fit to eat, if I have to pay for it."
"What's the matter with this?" Thorne asked indifferently.
Hall raised a fragment of half-raw pork upon his fork.
"It would be wasting time to tell you, if you can't smell it," he retorted.
Then he took up a block of bread and banged it down on the table.
"Not a crack in it! You want to bake some more and sell it to the railroad for locomotive brakes."
Thorne laughed.