e weapons of her sex, she slipped on the kimono, and went into the
living-room to the cheerful glow of the fire.

Bill remained busy in the kitchen. Dusk fell. The gleam of a light
showed through a crack in the door. In the big room only the fire gave
battle to the shadows, throwing a ruddy glow into the far corners.
Presently Bill came in with a pair of candles which he set on the
mantel above the fireplace.

"By Jove!" he said, looking down at her. "You look good enough to eat!
I'm not a cannibal, however," he continued hastily, when Hazel flushed.
She was not used to such plain speaking. "And supper's ready. Come
on!"

The table was set. Moreover, to her surprise--and yet not so greatly
to her surprise, for she was beginning to expect almost anything from
this paradoxical young man--it was spread with linen, and the cutlery
was silver, the dishes china, in contradistinction to the tinware of
his camp outfit.

As a cook Roaring Bill Wagstaff had no cause to be ashamed of himself,
and Hazel enjoyed the meal, particularly since she had eaten nothing
since six in the morning. After a time, when her appetite was
partially satisfied, she took to glancing over his kitchen. There
seemed to be some adjunct of a kitchen missing. A fire burned on a
hearth similar to the one in the living room. Pots stood about the
edge of the fire. But there was no sign of a stove.

Bill finished eating, and resorted to cigarette material instead of his
pipe.

"Well, little person," he said at last, "what do you think of this
joint of mine, anyway?"

"I've just been wondering," she replied. "I don't see any stove, yet
you have food here that looks as if it were baked, and biscuits that
must have been cooked in an oven."

"You see no stove for the good and sufficient reason," he returned,
"that you can't pack a stove on a horse--and we're three hundred odd
miles from the end of any wagon road. With a Dutch oven or two--that
heavy, round iron thing you see there--I can guarantee to cook almost
anything you can cook on a stove. Anybody can if they know how.
Besides, I like things better this way. If I didn't, I suppose I'd
have a stove--and maybe a hot-water supply, and modern plumbing. As it
is, it affords me a sort of prideful satisfaction, which you may or may
not be able to understand, that this cabin and everything in it is the
work of my hands--of stuff I've packed in here with all sorts of effort
from the outside