Page:J Allan Dunn--The Girl of Ghost Mountain.djvu/30

12 magic wand of his steel-rod and a Royal Coachman fly, always a part of his equipment when he went to Lake of the Woods.

"You can build a railroad an' all the cities you want down there on the mesa," went on Jackson, "but they aint goin' to change the landscape a heap while the mountains stick around. An' you can't shift them in a hurry. Stick one of them skyscrapers, now, up again the foot of the peak, an' what would it amount to? Not to shucks. A match laid up to the trunk of a yeller pine 'ud make a better showin'. You can change the ways of men but you can't shunt them peaks, nor what they stand for. No, sirree."

Sheridan was used to occasional outbursts like this from the cowpuncher, who usually masked all feelings beneath a certain suggestion half swagger, half boredom. And he knew he was not expected to answer. Red was long on poetry and short on the expression of it, save at rare intervals. So Sheridan laid the trout tenderly in the sizzling bacon grease and checked the bubbling coffee in the blackened pot with a few drops from the pail they had unearthed from the undisturbed cache.

"She smells good." Red hunkered down, prodding the fire. "You are one almighty good cook, Sheridan. It wouldn't do to have the boss huggin' the cookstove, but I sure do wish you'd give Stoney a few tips. His hotcakes taste like they was made out of old cinches." He peered into an oven improvised from a cracker tin. "Biscuit. Hot biscuits! Whoopee! Let's never go back to the ranch. Let's you an' me play hermits."