"Not daytimes. Smoke 'd give me away if he suspicioned me," answered the mountaineer. "I don't take no chances. Never can tell."
"Water?" asked Sinnet, as though interested in the surroundings, while all the time he was eying the mountaineer furtively--as it were, prying to the inner man, or measuring the strength of the outer man. He lighted a fresh pipe and seated himself on a rough bench beside the table in the middle of the room, and leaned on his elbows, watching.
The mountaineer laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh to hear. "Listen," he said. "You bin a long time out West. You bin in the mountains a good while. Listen."
There was silence. Sinnet listened intently. He heard the faint drip, drip, drip of water, and looked steadily at the back wall of the room.
"There--rock?" he said, and jerked his head toward the sound.
"You got good ears," answered the other, and drew aside a blanket which hung on the back wall of the room. A wooden trough was disclosed hanging under a ledge of rock, and water dripped into it softly, slowly.
"Almost providential, that rock," remarked Sinnet. "You've got your well at your back door. Food--but you can't go far, and keep your eye on the Bend too," he nodded toward the door, beyond which lay the frost-touched valley in the early morning light of autumn.
"Plenty of black squirrels and pigeons come here on account of the springs like this one, and I get 'em with a bow and arrow. I didn't call myself Robin Hood and Daniel Boone not for nothin' when I was knee-high to a grasshopper." He drew from a rough cupboard some cold game, and put it on the table, with some scones and a pannikin of water. Then he brought out a small jug of whiskey and placed it beside his visitor. They began to eat.
"How d'ye cook without fire?" asked Sinnet.
"Fire's all right at nights. He'd never camp 'twixt here an' Juniper Bend at night. The next camp's six miles north from here. He'd only come down the valley daytimes. I studied it all out, and it's a dead sure thing. From daylight till dusk I'm on to him--I got the trail in my eye."
He showed his teeth like a wild dog, as his look swept the valley. There was something almost revolting in his concentrated ferocity.