“The—­there isn’t any,” he stammered guiltily.  “The Pilgrim—­I mean Walland—­Fred Walland—­”

“It doesn’t matter in the least,” Miss Bridger assured him hastily.  “One can’t keep everything in the house all the time, so far from any town.  We’re often out of things, at home.  Last week, only, I upset the vanilla bottle, and then we were completely out of vanilla till just yesterday.”  She smiled again confidingly, and Billy tried to seem very sympathetic—­though of a truth, to be out of vanilla did not at that moment seem to him a serious catastrophe.  “And really, I like tea better, you know.  I only said coffee because father told me cowboys drink it a great deal.  Tea is so much quicker and easier to make.”

Billy dug his nails into his palms.  “There—­Miss Bridger,” he blurted desperately, “I’ve got to tell yuh—­there isn’t a thing in the shack except some dried apricots—­and maybe a spoonful or two of tapioca.  The Pilgrim—­” He stopped to search his brain for words applicable to the Pilgrim and still mild enough for the ears of a lady.

“Well, never mind.  We can rough it—­it will be lots of fun!” the girl laughed so readily as almost to deceive Billy, standing there in his misery.  That a woman should come to him for help, and he not even able to give her food, was almost unbearable.  It were well for the Pilgrim that Charming Billy Boyle could not at that moment lay hands upon him.

“It will be fun,” she laughed again in his face.  “If the—­the grubstake is down to a whisper (that’s the way you say it, isn’t it?) there will be all the more credit coming to the cook when you see all the things she can do with dried apricots and tapioca.  May I rummage?”

“Sure,” assented Billy, dazedly moving aside so that she might reach the corner where three boxes were nailed by their bottoms to the wall, curtained with gayly flowered calico and used for a cupboard.  “The Pilgrim,” he began for the third time to explain, “went after grub and is taking his time about getting back.  He’d oughta been here day before yesterday.  We might eat his dawg,” he suggested, gathering spirit now that her back was toward him.

Her face appeared at one side of the calico curtain.  “I know something better than eating the dog,” she announced triumphantly.  “Down there in the willows where I crossed the creek—­I came down that low, saggy place in the hill—­I saw a lot of chickens or something—­partridges, maybe you call them—­roosting in a tree with their feathers all puffed out.  It’s nearly dark, but they’re worth trying for, don’t you think?  That is, if you have a gun,” she added, as if she had begun to realize how meagre were his possessions.  “If you don’t happen to have one, we can do all right with what there is here, you know.”