"Does it make you sore to have me ask you questions?" asked the boy.
"No! I guess it's more natural for a kid than the sulks you've been keeping up with Seaton."
"I'm not such a kid. I'm going on fifteen and I've earned my own way since I was twelve. And I earn it with men, too." Nucky jerked his head belligerently.
Frank ate a hard boiled egg before speaking. Then, with one eyebrow raised, he grunted, "What'd you work at?"
"Cards and dice!" this very proudly.
"You poor nut!" Frank's voice was a mixture of contempt and compassion. Nucky immediately turned sulky and the meal was finished in silence. When the last doughnut had been devoured, Frank stretched himself in the warm sand left among the rocks by the river at flood.
"Must be eighty degrees down here," he yawned. "We'll rest for a half hour, then we'll make the night camp. It's after two now and it will be dark in this narrow rift by four."
Nucky looked about him apprehensively. The Canyon here was little more than a gorge whose walls rose sheer and menacing toward the narrow patch of blue sky above. He could not make up his mind to lie down and relax as Frank had done. All was too new and strange.
"Are there snakes round here?" he demanded.
Frank's grunt might have been either yes or no. Nucky glanced impatiently at the guide's closed eyes, then he began to clamber aimlessly and languidly over the rocks to the river edge. At a distance of perhaps a hundred feet from Frank he stopped, looked at the bleak, blank wall of the river opposite, bit his nails and shuddering turned back. He crouched on a rock, near the guide, smoking one cigarette after another until Frank jumped to his feet.