Stanley Mitchell kicked the blankets flying. "Whoo-hoo-oo! This is the
life!" he proclaimed. Orisons more pious have held less gratitude.

He tugged on one boot, reached for the other--and then leaped to his feet
like a jack-in-the-box. With the boot in his hand he pointed to the
south. High on the next shadowy range, thirty miles away, a dozen
scattered campfires glowed across the dawn.

"What the Billy-hell?" he said, startled.

"Stan-ley!"

"I will say wallop! I won't be a lady if I can't say wallop!" quoth Stan
rebelliously. "What's doing over at the Gavilan? There's never been three
men at once in those fiend-forsaken pinnacles before. Hey! S'pose they've
struck it rich, like we did?"

"I'm afraid not," sighed Pete. "You toddle along and wash um's paddies.
She's most ripe."

With a green-wood poker he lifted the lid from the bake-oven. The biscuit
were not browned to his taste; he dumped the blackening coals from the
lid and slid it into the glowing heart of the fire; he raked out a new
bed of coals and lifted the little three-legged bake-oven over them; with
his poker he skillfully flirted fresh coals on the rimmed lid and put it
back on the oven. He placed the skillet of venison on a flat rock at his
elbow and poured coffee into two battered tin cups. Breakfast was now
ready, and Pete raised his voice in the traditional dinner call of the
ranges: