"I knew that he would be first," he murmured.
Then he sat down and began to broil a juicy deer steak on the end of a sharpened stick.
Henry Ware came into the little glade. He had seen the fire afar and he knew who waited. All was plain to him like the print of a book, and, without a word, he dropped down on the other side of the fire facing Shif'less Sol. The two nodded, but their eyes spoke far more. Sol held out the steak, now crisp and brown and full of savor, and Henry began to eat. Sol quickly broiled another for himself, and joined him in the pleasant task, over which they were silent for a little while.
"I was on the Ohio," said Henry at last, "when the trapper brought me your message, but I started at once."
"O' course," said Shif'less Sol, "I never doubted it for a minute. I reckon that you've come about seven hundred miles."
"Nearer eight," said Henry, "but I'm fresh and strong, and we need all our strength, Sol, because it's a great task that lies before us."
"It shorely is," said Sol, "an' that's why I sent the message. I don't want to brag, Henry, but we've done a big thing or two before, an' maybe we kin do a bigger now."
He spoke the dialect of the border, he was not a man of books, but that great look of exaltation came into his face again, and the boy on the other side of the fire shared it.
"It seems to me, Sol," said Henry presently, "that we've been selected for work of a certain kind. We finish one job, and then another on the same line begins."
"Mebbe it's because we like to do it, an' are fit fur it," said Sol philosophically. "I've noticed that a river gen'ally runs in a bed that suits it. I don't know whether the bed is thar because the river is, or the river is thar 'cause the bed is, but it's shore that they're both thar together, an' you can't git aroun' that."