One day I was picking my way down the bogs and marshes of Forest Cañon. All at once it narrowed, boxing up between high walls. To go on I had either to climb the walls or back-track for some distance. I elected to climb. After the struggle up the face of the rock I sat down to rest.
"No one within miles," I panted as I sat down.
"Don't look like there's ever been anyone here," I added as I recalled the way I had come.
"What ya take me fur?"
Ten feet away, standing motionless beside an old stump, stood a cadaverous fellow whose rags suggested the moss that hung from the trees.
"Hungry?" he shot at me before I recovered from my surprise. "Camp's right hyar."
He led the way with all the poise of a gentleman.
But his camp! Beside an old tunnel that plunged beneath the side wall of the cañon was a lean-to. Upon green boughs were spread a single pair of ragged blankets. His campfire still smoldered. Upon its coals were his only culinary utensils, an old tin bucket, in which simmered his left-over coffee, and a gold pan containing a stew. The pan had seen better days—and worse ones, too, for one side of its rim was gone, and the bottom had been cleverly turned up to form a new one, making it semi-circular with a straight side.
"Prospectin'?" my host ventured, eying me dreamily.
"No, lookin'," I told him.