They ate, mostly in silence, and when the meal was done Philip carefully cleaned his revolver and oiled it with bear grease, which he found in a bottle on the shelf.
DeBar watched him as he wiped his weapon and saw that Philip lubricated each of the five cartridges which he put in the chamber.
Afterward they smoked.
Then DeBar stretched himself out in one of the two bunks, and his heavy breathing soon gave evidence that he was sleeping.
For a time Philip sat beside the stove, his eyes upon the inanimate form of the outlaw. Drowsiness overcame him then, and he rolled into the other bunk. He was awakened several hours later by DeBar, who was filling the stove with wood.
“How's the eyes?” he asked, sitting up.
“Good,” said the other. “Glad you're awake. The light will be bad inside of an hour.”
He was rubbing and warming his hands, and Philip came to the opposite side of the stove and rubbed and warmed his hands. For some reason he found it difficult to look at DeBar, and he knew that DeBar was not looking at him.
It was the outlaw who broke the suspense.
“I've been outside,” he said in a low voice. “There's an open in front of the cabin, just a hundred paces across. It wouldn't be a bad idea for us to stand at opposite sides of the open and at a given signal approach, firing as we want to.”