Casey watched the old man place food for one person in little dishes which he set in a bake pan for want of a tray.-He added a small tin teapot of tea and disappeared from the dugout.
"Two of us waitin' to see your boss, huh?"-Casey inquired boldly of Joe.-"Can't we eat together?"
"You can call yourself lucky if you eat at all," Joe retorted glumly. "The old man's pretty sore at the way you handled him.
He's runnin' this camp; I ain't."
Casey let it go at that, chiefly because he was hungry and tired and did not want to risk losing his supper altogether.-Hounds like these, he told himself bitterly, were capable of any crime--from smashing a man's skull and throwing him off the rim-rock to starving him to death.-He was Casey Ryan, ready always to fight whether his chance of winning was even or merely microscopical; but even so, Casey was not inclined toward suicide.
When the old man presently returned and the three sat down to the table, Casey obeyed a gesture and sat down with them.-In spite of Joe's six-shooter laid handily upon the table beside his plate, Casey ate heartily, though the food was neither well cooked nor over plentiful.
After supper he rose and filled his pipe which they had permitted him to keep.-A stranger coming into the cabin might not have guessed that Casey was a prisoner.-When the table was cleared and Hank set about washing the dishes, Casey picked up a grimy dish towel branded black in places where it had rubbed sooty kettles, and grinned cheerfully at Paw while he dried a tin plate.-Paw eyed him dubiously over a stinking pipe, spat reflectively into the woodbox and crossed his legs the other way, loosely swinging an ill-shod foot.
"Y'ain't told us yet what brung yuh up on the butte," Paw observed suddenly.-"Yuh wa'n't lost--yuh ain't got the mark uh no tenderfoot. What was yuh doin' up in that tree?"
"Mebbe I mighta been huntin' mountain sheep," Casey retorted calmly.
"Huntin' mountain sheep up a tree is a new one," tittered Hank.
"Wish you'd give me a swaller uh that brand.-Must have a kick like a brindle mule."
"More likely 'White Mule.'" Casey cocked a knowing eye at Hank.
"You're too late, young feller.-I chewed the cork day before yesterday," he declared.
While he fished another plate out of the pan, Casey observed that Paw looked at Joe inquiringly, and that Joe moved his head sidewise a careful inch, and back again.
"Moonshine, huh?" Paw hazarded hopefully.-"Yuh peddlin' it, er makin' it?"
Casey grinned secretively.-"A man can't be pinched without the goods," he observed shrewdly.-"I was raised in a country where they took fools out an' brained 'em with an axe.-You fellers ain't been none too friendly, recollect.-When's your boss expected home, did yuh say?-I'd kinda like to meet 'im."
"He'll kinda like to meet you," Joe returned darkly. "Your actions has been plumb suspicious.
