“I’d rather hunt bears,” said Crouch. “The highest that I want to get is up on the ‘poop deck’ of a horse. That’s far enough for me to fall. Well, here we are at the shack. What are you going to do now?”
“Take our car and hunt for a place to camp,” replied Bill.
“No use of your doing that. I am here all by myself. I haven’t any beds, but I can give you a room and you can spread out your blankets on a couple of old mattresses that I have and sleep in comfort. You must be tired and ought to get a good night’s rest. I can cook up some grub for supper and then you can turn in. What do you say?”
“It’s too good to be true,” said Bill. “If you hadn’t asked me to sleep in your house, I would have rolled up in my blanket out here by the car and slept on the ground. I am just that tired. That was a mighty big fire, wasn’t it?”
“Just a baby,” replied Sam. “Only about eight or nine hundred acres. Why some of them cover that many thousand acres and we have several at the same time.”
“I’ll get out blankets and bags while you help get supper,” said Bob to Bill as they reached the house.
Supper, the laying of their beds and the short talk after supper were like a dream to Bill. Both he and Bob were asleep as soon as they landed between their blankets.
“Say, are you fellows going to sleep all day?”
Bill sat up. The sun was shining into the room. It was late in the morning. His muscles were sore and he was stiff all over. Every movement that he made started new pains through his body.
“I thought that we might go fishing this morning,” said Crouch.