“Fine—come on. Well, Mr. Mills, did I make good?”
Mills gave him a funny look out of his pale, keen blue eyes.
“I never pick a man that doesn’t,” he said. “By the way, here’s your money—seven days at three dollars a day. Cooks are coming high this year.”
He handed the astonished Joe twenty-one dollars—six of it in cart wheels, which you almost never see in the East.
“Say, I didn’t expect so much. Is that on the level?” Joe demanded.
“Regular price this season—labor’s awful scarce. I don’t see why you shouldn’t have all the work you want for the rest of the season.”
“Gee, and it isn’t work—it’s fun!”
“Glad you think so,” the Ranger laughed. “Yesterday struck me as work.”
“Sure, but it was fun, too.”
The two boys and the Ranger ate their lunch at the tepee camp, where Tom had been experimenting on the stove. Poor Tom! He wasn’t much of a cook—not compared to Joe, at any rate, and he got rather sore for a minute when Mills suggested that Joe remake the coffee.