y cooked the smaller birds in a simpler manner, especially
when they were at the bark shanty, which they nicknamed the
"Suburban Villa." The bird was plucked of its feathers, drawn
and washed, and then they cut it down the back in order to spread
it out. Nothing was left but to put the bird on the end of a
sharp stick, hold it over the coals, and turn it around until it
was thoroughly broiled or roasted. They also roasted slices of
big game in the same way.

As Albert was cooking a partridge in this manner one evening at
the Suburban Villa, Dick, who was sitting on his buffalo-robe
blanket in the doorway, watched him and began to make comparisons.
He recalled the boy who had left Omaha with the wagon train six or
eight months before, a thin, spiritless fellow with a slender, weak
neck, hollow, white cheeks, pale lips, and listless eyes. That boy
drew coughs incessantly from a hollow chest, and the backs of his
hands were ridged when the flesh had gone away, leaving the bones
standing up. This boy whom Dick contemplated was quite a different
being. His face was no longer white, it was instead a mixture of
red and brown, and both tints were vivid. Across one cheek were some
brier scratches which he had acquired the day before, but which he had
never noticed. The red-brown cheeks were filled out with the effects
of large quantities of good food digested well. As he bent over the
fire, a chest of good width seemed to puff out with muscle and wind
expansion. Despite the extreme cold, his sleeves were rolled up
to the elbow, and the red wrists and hands were well covered with
tough, seasoned flesh. The eyes that watched the roasting bird
were intent, alert, keenly interested in that particular task,
and in due course, in any other that might present itself.

Dick drew a long breath of satisfaction. Providence had treated
them well. Then he called loudly for his share of the bird,
saying that he was starving, and in a few moments both fell to
work.

Their fur operations continued to extend. They had really found
a pocket, and isolated corner in the high Rockies where the
fur-bearing animals, not only abundant, were also increasing. It
was, too, the dead of winter, the very best time for trapping,
and so, as far as their own goings and comings were concerned,
they were favored further by the lucky and unusual absence of
snow. They increased the number of their traps--dead falls, box
traps, snares, and other