“Well,” said Westy doubtfully, “I guess it’s all right; anyway, I guess we can’t go any farther, I’m all in.”
“If we don’t get out of this water, we’ll be all in,” said Ed. “I’m up to my knees already. So far I’m not so stuck on Yellowstone Park. Maybe it’ll seem better when I see it.”
“I’d like to know where we are,” said Warde. “I bet we’ve walked ten miles anyway.”
“Well,” said Westy, “let’s camp on shore and have some eats. They may be asleep yet and anyway, they couldn’t find us here.”
It was amusing how distance and utter weariness seemed to diminish the terrible power of Bloodhound Pete. He and his imprisoned accomplice seemed very far away, and effectually baffled, should they undertake pursuit. And as Westy and his two companions settled down to make a second camp and prepare their belated meal, the peril they had feared grew less and less and, in proportion as it ceased to dominate their minds, Westy’s exploit loomed large. And his two friends, sitting about their little camp-fire, reflected upside down in the still lake, examined the wallet of Mr. Madison C. Wilde, the Philistine, as if it were some relic from Aladdin’s Cave.
CHAPTER XXV
LITTLE DABS OF GRAY
So at last they cooked the fish. Warde cleaned them with his jack-knife on a flat stone while Westy and Ed gathered enough wood for a little fire. Westy was now so affluent in heroism, and had so far regained his poise in consequence, that he could stand calmly by and witness the civilized proceeding of lighting a fire with a match. Or perhaps he was too weary and hungry to experiment with any of those primitive devices for striking a spark with Nature’s raw materials.
And it might be observed that if you should happen to have escaped from train robbers in the Rocky Mountains and have walked a dozen miles more or less in the night, a mess of fish cooked loose upon a wood fire is not half bad. You will find them charred and tasting of smoke (which is well) and elusive when subjected to the rules of table etiquette. They crumble and fall apart and have to be sought for in the glowing fastnesses of consuming wood and extracted like the kernels of hickory nuts. They have to be caught all over again. But they are delicious—if you have lately escaped from train robbers in the Rocky Mountains.
In such a country as they were in one is much less likely to suffer from cold and exposure at night, notwithstanding the biting air, than in some tamer woodland where the ruggedness of Nature offers no natural shelters and wind-breaking rocks.
The boys, refreshed by their meal, but staggering from fatigue, walked around the little lake in search of a shelter along the precipitous shore. They found a place which seemed to have been made for three weary scouts, a place which, as Ed remarked, any boarding-house keeper in the East could get ten dollars a week for. It was not high enough to sit up in, but none of them felt like sitting up. Only a few pine branches were necessary to transform this little recess into a dormitory. And here the three award boys slept with a profundity which there is no word in any language capable of describing.