Budd poured a generous portion into a tin cup and stared reflectively at the bright cap. His next remark, mellowed by whiskey, had a genial candor. "Say! if I'd a popped you over, as I had a mind to when you came along the trail, just think what I'd a missed!"
"And so you had a mind to pop me over?" queried the other. "May I ask why?" Having finished his labeling, he was at leisure to regard his companion still more closely.
"There's fellers prowling in the timber I ain't got no use for," the cook explained, drinking. "But you're all right! You haven't got a cigar handy, now, have you?"
The scientist was well supplied, and as the cook bit off the end of a large and black cigar he sighed with satisfaction.
"I get the horrors sometimes," he explained. "I get as scary as a cottontail. Them quaking asps is enough to drive a feller crazy, anyhow."
"There's nothing like a little whiskey in such cases," remarked the professor, filling the extended cup.
"If this keeps up, one of us is liable to get drunk," remarked Budd. "That's a handy flask of yours. Come all the way from New York?"
"From Richmond, I believe," responded the other. "My brother found it on a battle field and sent it home to me."
"I take it you wasn't there yourself," the Scorcher chuckled.