Page:Jackson Gregory--joyous trouble maker.djvu/132

116 softly about his dinner-getting. Then, stretched out upon his blankets, he watched the first stars come out, and watching them went to sleep.

It was a full week, perhaps longer, before he so much as thought of returning to his eighty acres. He didn't count the days as they fled by, all golden sunshine and blue nights, any more than he sought to count the butterflies in the tiny meadows, or the cliffs or trees or stars. Never had he been more richly content than now; he didn't plan for the future, he didn't even think a great deal. He just emulated the environment into which he had come, loafed through the woods, lay stretched out luxuriously half in sun and half in shadow, ate and slept and lived quietly. He shot what game he needed, caught the fish which he required and grew every day browner, clearer eyed, more thankful that he had gone broke down in Mexico and had had this nook of the world waiting for him.

When his thoughts did go back along the trail which had brought him here they either clung brightly to Beatrice Corliss who, he admitted, interested him, darkly to Joe Embry whom he distrusted, or to Bill Rice and Turk who had his commands. He had emptied his pockets of his small pile of gold and silver into Bill Rice's hard palm, instructing him to buy what provisions and tools he and Turk required. He supposed that his men had lost no time in packing in a much needed supply, that they had now bacon and beans and flour, hammers, nails and saws, all in sufficient plenty, all purchased from the store at Camp Corliss or in Summit City. Toward the end of his idle