First came Jed Parker, his head bent to protect the fire in his pipe. He gained the very centre of the cave before he looked up.
Then he cast one glance at each bed, and one at me. His grave, hawk-like features relaxed. A faint grin appeared under his long moustache. Without a word he squatted down beside me.
Next the Cattleman. He looked about him with a comical expression of dismay, and burst into a hearty laugh.
"I believe I said I was sorry for those other fellows," he remarked.
Windy Bill was the last. He stooped his head to enter, straightened his lank figure, and took in the situation without expression.
"Well, this is handy," said he; "I was gettin' tur'ble dry, and was thinkin' I would have to climb way down to the creek in all this rain."
He stooped to the pool in the centre of the tarpaulin and drank.
But now our torches began to run low. A small dry bush grew near the entrance. We ignited it, and while it blazed we hastily sorted a blanket apiece and tumbled the rest out of the drip.
Our return without torches along the base of that butte was something to remember. The night was so thick you could feel the darkness pressing on you; the mountain dropped abruptly to the left, and was strewn with boulders and blocks of stone. Collisions and stumbles were frequent. Once I stepped off a little ledge five or six feet—nothing worse than a barked shin. And all the while the rain, pelting us unmercifully, searched out what poor little remnants of dryness we had been able to retain.
At last we opened out the gleam of fire in our cave, and a minute later were engaged in struggling desperately up the slant that brought us to our ledge and the slope on which our fire burned.