Page:The man on horseback (IA manonhorseback00abdurich).pdf/62

46 the skillet, and mixed the proper ingredients for that Western culinary, marvel prosaically called flapjacks.

"Here you are," he said, when everything was finished and, passing to his guest the frying-pan filled with pork, "have some mountain veal! And say—" laughing, jovial, now thoroughly at his case, "don't dirty any more plates than you have to. Gamble and I are taking turn and turn about, and this is my day to cook and wash up and get messy generally. Fall too, stranger!"

Breakfast finished, he took Baron von Götz-Wrede to the mine tunnel and into the hands of Gamble while he returned to the cabin, sat himself upon a stone, and smoked, doing nothing successfully and blissfully.

Late that night, after dinner, with their guest in the back room hunting in his Gladstone bag for cigars, Gamble turned to Tom Graves with a sudden, hurried whisper:

"Did you say that fellow's an officer in the German cavalry?"

"Sure. Why?"

"Well, he knows as much and more about mining engineering than I do and, believe me, I am no slouch at the game. He"

"Shut up!" whispered Tom.

But it was too late. The Baron had come into the front room. He must have overheard the last sentence, at least caught the sense and drift of it, for he laughed, very much like a schoolboy surprised in a naughty prank.

"I do know mines, don't I, Mr. Gamble?" he asked. "Well, I am not ashamed of it. You see, we Prussian army chaps, while we like our career, of course get tired of drill, drill, drill all the time. We get