“Mercy, Mr. Cook, Sir Cook, My Lord Cook, Reverend Cook!” cried Alice.
“All right, s’long as you don’t call me Dr. Cook,” said Joe, peeping in the stew kettle to see how it was coming along.
“Here, no flirting with the cook,” Mills called out. “You girls have got to make the beds.”
“All right,” laughed Lucy Elkins. (Joe thought to himself that Lucy was a nice name.) “Where are the sheets and pillow-cases?”
“You’ll find ’em in the linen closet, next door beyond the bathroom,” Mills grinned.
Then she and Alice grabbed armfuls of blankets from the packs, and disappeared into the tents.
Meantime Val arrived, and the Ranger asked him why he didn’t wait and drive all the horses up together.
“’Cause I’m a natural born mut, and didn’t think of it,” said Val.
The Ranger growled, and turned away. “Because he’d rather do that than pitch tents,” he muttered. “All cowboys are lazy.”
The two weary congressmen and Bob now reappeared, with armfuls of evergreen boughs, and the Ranger went to show them how to lay their beds. The sun was getting well down toward the tops of the peaks on the Great Divide to the west. Already it was getting colder, and the women had put on their sweaters. The green waters of the lake were lap-lapping against the shore, and the smell of Joe’s stew was rising with the smoke of the fire. When he saw it was about done, he made a big pot of coffee, then opened his cans of soup, and poured them into the other kettle of boiling water, and mixed it to the right consistency. As soon as this was ready, and Val appeared down from the woods above, he pounded a frying-pan and yelled,