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148 evenly so that when they came to the top he could not offer further remarks upon her frailty. Arrived at the top she stopped with a quick little beat of the heart as she saw the cabin. She had not looked for this from him.

Now she had made it her business that not only was he to be denied supplies at Camp Corliss and Summit City, but any sort of lumber from either the Blue Cañon mills or from the Indian Valley camp. What Steele had done here must be accomplished very largely without tools and nails, unless he went far for them, without such hardware as hinges and door knobs. And at the first glimpse of Steele's cabin she told herself that her commands had not greatly inconvenienced him and that his abode was nothing short of charming.

He and Turk Wilson and Bill Rice had cut four young trees for the corner posts, leaving the branches unmolested save upon the sides which were turned toward the queer building's interior. With trunks sunk deep in the ground the trees appeared to be growing here, to have been standing here since the cones fell from the big mother. Though the construction of the walls had been the simple matter of stringing slender saplings horizontally and then interweaving them with the thick, flat branch-ends of fir, in their completed state they appeared to be flourishing where they were massed, catching the sunlight upon their myriad glistening needles, hinting at a bower within which was not to be expected from the big hands of Bill Steele.

Nor had Beatrice looked to him for these other