Page:Mulford--The Bar-20 three.djvu/286

274 bridle and then splashed across to the hut, dumping his load, canteens, and all against the front wall. To make assurance doubly sure he scouted hurriedly down one side of the little valley, crossed the creek and went back along the other wall.

Thorpe's carefully stacked firewood provided fuel for a cunningly built-up fire; one of Thorpe's discarded tomato cans, washed and filled in the spring near the hut's walls sizzled and sputtered in the blazing fire and soon boiled madly. Picking it out of the blaze with the aid of two longer sticks the hungry cook set it to one side, threw in a double handful of Thorpe's coffee, covered it with another washed can and then placed Thorpe's extra frying pan on the coals, filling it with some of Thorpe's bacon. A large can of Thorpe's beans landed close to the fire and rolled a few feet, and the cheerful explorer emerged from the hut with a sack of sour-dough biscuits which the careless Thorpe had forgotten.

"Bless Thorpe," chuckled Hopalong. "I'll never make him climb no more walls. I wouldn't 'a' made him climb that one, mebby, if I'd knowed about this."

Looking around as a matter of caution, his glance embracing the stolid herd and his own horse grazing with the jaded animals left behind by the rustlers, he fell to work turning the bacon and soon feasted until he could eat no more. Rolling a cigarette he inhaled a few puffs and then, picking up telescope and rifle, he grunted his lazy way up the steep trail and mounted the ridge, sweeping the western horizon first with the glass and then completed the circle. Satisfied and drowsy he returned to the valley, spread his folded blanket behind the hut,