"Don't you let me sleep like that again, Paul Trent. I can sleep in a New York hotel to the tune of the Elevated. Did you sleep?"
"Yes."
"That helps some."
They rode through the late afternoon, when the air was like amber; through the time of the setting sun, when the world was like a glass prism of many colours; through the shadow time, when long bars of blue lay below in the valley to mark the mountains. Then, just before the red disk burned into the mountain top and disappeared, Bill announced camp for the night.
A mountain stream bounded and roared along beside the place. A hut had been set up by a logging gang, and a thick bed of hardwood chips and bark powder marked the spot where the forest giants had met their inglorious end. Bill attended to the ponies while Bob and Paul collected firewood.
Supper was a silent function—the silence of people who understand each other and need not talk. Bob smiled at Paul when their eyes met, and for the rest, they looked off over a sample of God's handiwork that made man-talk as futile as monkey chatter.
"Do ye want to sleep in the cabin, Mrs. Bob?"
They both smiled at his appropriation of her name.
"No, Bill, I want to sleep on that bank, in the tanbark beside the brook."
"It'll keep ye awake. Awful noisy critter."