Page:Gibbs--The yellow dove.djvu/279

 ledges, and at last they came out into the amphitheater of bowlders from which he had descended.

She was almost too weary for comment and followed blindly as he led her to the wall of the rock where he seemed to disappear in its very face. She followed him inside a dark opening and when they were well within he relinquished her hand and struck a match. A brief glimpse she had of a small chamber in the cliff not twenty feet square when the match went out. He struck another and shading it with his hand went forward. She saw him find what he was looking for and in a moment a candle, after faintly sputtering for a moment, sent forth a steady glow of light.

“Sit here on this stool. I’ll have you right in a jiffy.”

She obeyed him and looked around her. At one side was a bed of pine needles, at another a small table and in the middle of the rocky floor the gray embers of what had been a fire.

“A bit roughish, but not so bad?”

She nodded while he busied himself in building the fire. There were dry leaves, twigs and logs in the corner, and soon a blaze was leaping cheerfully upward. And while she wondered at the signs of occupancy he answered her thought.

“It’s Lindberg’s. He comes here often. It was here that he and I always slept when we went on hunting trips. You see there’s a natural chimney overhead in the rocks where the bally smoke goes out. They might observe the smoke by day, but at night we’re quite safe. I’ve been all around the place when the fire was goin’ and there isn’t a sign of it outside.”

He helped her put her coat off and made her com-