meal since yesterday morning, and I grabbed that at a quick-lunch
joint. I'm open to supper engagements, brother."

"All right. There's a side of bacon in that kyack over there.
Get it out and slice some off, and we'll have supper before you
know it. We will," he added pessimistically, "if this dang brush
will burn."

Bud found the bacon and cut according to his appetite. His host
got out a blackened coffeepot and half filled it with water from
a dented bucket, and balanced it on one side of the struggling
fire. He remarked that they had had some rain, to which Bud
agreed. He added gravely that he believed it was going to clear
up, though--unless the wind swung back into the storm quarter.
Bud again professed cheerfully to be in perfect accord. After
which conversational sparring they fell back upon the little
commonplaces of the moment.

Bud went into a brush patch and managed to glean an armful of
nearly dry wood, which he broke up with the axe and fed to the
fire, coaxing it into freer blazing. The stranger watched him
unobtrusively, critically, pottering about while Bud fried the
bacon.

"I guess you've handled a frying pan before, all right," he
remarked at last, when the bacon was fried without burning.

Bud grinned. "I saw one in a store window once as I was going
by," he parried facetiously. "That was quite a while back."