--Don't pay any attention to him. Five years. And I've been
hungerin' to see you all that--.--Where have you been?--Everywhere! but
this is the best thing I've seen.--Come in.--Wait till we get these packs
off the poor little devils.--Oh, I'm so glad to see you; so glad!--Hurry
up, Lee. Your fingers asleep?--How long have you been out?--Five months.--
Then you're hungry.--We've just ate.--But a piece of pie?--pie? I've been
dreamin' of pie!"
A fire already burned in the big living-room of the cabin, for at this
season, at such an altitude, the shadows were always cold, and around the
fire they gathered, each of the men with half a huge pie before him. They
were such as one might expect that mountain region to produce, big, gaunt,
hard-muscled. They had gone unshaven for so long that their faces were
clothed not with an unsightly stubble but with strong, short beard that
gave them a certain grim dignity and made their eyes seem sunken. They were
opposite types, which is usually the case when two men strike out together.
Buck Daniels was black-haired, with an ugly, shrewd face and a suggestion
of rather dangerous possibilities of swift action; but Lee Haines was a
great bulk of a man, with tawny beard, handsome, in a leonine fashion, more
poised than Daniels, fitted to crush.
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