ter?" said Mart.

"Stealin'. But he figured he'd come again."

"He didn't like my gun much."

"Guns always skeers him when he don't know the parties shootin'.
That's his dumbness. Maybe he thought I was after him; he's jest that
distrustful. Begosh! we'll have the laugh on him when he finds he run
from a little girl."

"He didn't wait to see who he was running from," said Mart.

"Of course he didn't. Andy hears your gun and he don't inquire further,
but hits the first hole he kin crawl into. That's Andy! That's the kind
of boy I hev to work for me. All the good ones goes where you're goin',
where the grain grows without irrigation and the blacktail deer comes
out on the hill and asks yu' to shoot 'em for dinner. Who's ready for
the bottom? If I stay talkin' the sun'll go down on us. Don't yu' let
me get started agin. Just you shet me off twiced anyway each twenty-four
hours."

He began to descend with his pack-horse and the first load. All
afternoon they went up and down over the hot bare face of the hill,
until the baggage, heavy and light, was transported and dropped
piecemeal on the shore. The torn-out insides of their home littered the
stones with familiar shapes and colors, and Nancy played among them,
visiting each parcel and folded thing.

"There's the red table-cover!" she exclaimed, "and the big
coffee-grinder. And there's our table, and the hole Mart burned in it."
She took a long look at this. "Oh, how I wish I could see our pump!" she
said, and began to cry.

"You talk to her, mother," said Clallam. "She's tuckered out."

The men returned to bring the wagon. With chain-locked wheels, and
tilted half over by the cross slant of the mountain, it came heavily
down, reeling and sliding on the slippery yellow weeds, and grinding
deep ruts across the faces of the shelving beds of gravel. Jake guided
it as he could, straining back on the bits of the two hunched horses
when their hoofs glanced from the stones that rolled to the bottom;
and the others leaned their weight on a pole lodged between the spokes,
making a balance to the wagon, for it leaned the other way so far that
at any jolt the two wheels left the ground. When it was safe at the
level of the stream, dusk had come and a white flat of mist lay along
the river, striping its course among the gaunt hills. They slept without
moving, and rose early to cut logs, which the horses dragged to the
shore. The outside trunks were nailed and lashed with rop