"Let them eat their fill now; before night we'll be eating them!"
"You haven't even a gun...."
"I could run a scared rabbit to death, I'm that starved! And now suppose we get out of this."
The sun was striking at the tops of the yellow pines on the distant ridge; the light was filtering downward; shadows were thinning about them and even in the ravine below. Walking stiffly, until their bodies gradually grew warm with the exertion, and always keeping to the thickest clump of trees or tallest patch of brush, they began to work their way down into the cañon. The sun ran them a race, but theirs was the victory; it was still half night in the great cleft among the mountains when they slid down the last few feet and found more level land underfoot, and the greensward of the wild-grass meadow fringing the lower stream. The cañon creek went slithering by them, cold and glassy-clear, whitening over the riffles, falling musically into the pools, dimpling and ever ready to break into widening circles, a smiling, happy stream. And in it, they knew, were trout. They stood for a moment, catching breath after the steep descent, looking into it.
"I wonder if you have a pin," said Deveril.
She pondered the matter, struck immediately by the aptness of the suggestion; he could see how she wrinkled her brows as she tried to remember if possibly she had made use of a pin in getting dressed the last time.
"I've a hairpin or two left. I wonder if we could make that do?"
"Just watch and see!" he exclaimed joyously.
In putting her tumbled hair straight just now she had discovered two pins, which, even when her hair had come down about her shoulders, had happened to catch in a little snarl in the thick tresses; these she had saved and used in making her morning toilet. Now she took her hair down again and presented him with the two pins, gathering her hair up in two thick, loose braids, while with curious eyes he watched her; and as curiously, the thing done, she watched him busy himself with the pins.