Endicott tossed down his wood, and Alice could not help but notice the sorry appearance of the erstwhile faultlessly dressed gentleman who stood collarless and unshaven, the once delicately lined silk shirt filthy with trail dust, and the tailored suit wrinkled and misshapen as the clothing of a tramp.  She noted, too, that his movements were awkward and slow with the pain of overtaxed muscles, and that the stiff derby hat he had been forced to jam down almost to the tops of his ears had left a grimy red band across his forehead.  She smiled as her eyes swept the dishevelled and uncouth figure.

“I am glad,” said Endicott with asperity, as he brushed the dirt and bits of bark from his coat, “that you find the situation so humorous.  It must be highly gratifying to know that it is of your own making.”

The tone roused the girl’s anger and she glanced up as she finished lacing her leggings.

“Yes,” she answered, sweetly, “it is—­very.  And one of the most amusing features is to watch how a man’s disposition crabs with the mussing of his clothing.  No wonder the men who live out here wear things that won’t muss, or there wouldn’t be but one left and he’d be just a concentrated chunk of unadulterated venom.  Really, Winthrop, you do look horrid, and your disposition is perfectly nasty.  But, cheer up, the worst is yet to come, and if you will go down to the creek and wash your hands, you can come back and help me with the grub.  You can get busy and dig the dough-gods and salve out of that sack while I sizzle up the sow-belly.”

Endicott regarded her with a frown of disapproval:  “Why this preposterous and vulgar talk?”

“Adaptability to environment,” piped the girl, glibly.  “You can’t get along by speaking New York in Montana, any easier than you can with English in Cincinnati.”

Endicott turned away with a sniff of disgust, and the girl’s lips drew into a smile which she meant to be an exact replica of the Texan’s as she proceeded to slice strips of bacon into the frying-pan.

The meal was a silent affair, and during its progress the moon rose clear of the divide and hung, a great orange ball, above the high-flung peaks.  Almost simultaneously with the rising of the moon, the wind rose, and scuds of cloud-vapour passed, low down, blurring the higher peaks.

“We got to get a move on,” opined the Texan, with an eye on the clouds.  “Throw them dishes into the pack the way they are, an’ we’ll clean ’em when we’ve got more time.  There’s a storm brewin’ west of here an’ we want to get as far as we can before she hits.”

By the time the others were in the saddle, Bat was throwing the final hitch on his pack outfit, and with the Texan in the lead, the little cavalcade headed southward.

An hour’s climb, during which they skirted patches of scrub pine, clattered over the loose rocks of ridges, and followed narrow, brush-choked coulees to their sources, found them on the crest of the Cow Creek divide.