Jimmie laid the paper down on his bunk and looked at it solemnly and stupidly. After a little he said softly: "Yes, John, you did everlastingly put one over on me." Augusta broke all her rules as she announced gravely: "He had us kidded to death." Then she dropped laughing into Jimmie's arms. "Augusta," Jimmie howled, between spasms of laughing, "do you remember how I stood nobly in the dense forest while the gatling guns were charging down upon us and announced in a dying whisper: "'Surrounded!'" "And I," Augusta cried through tears of laughing, "I was behind your back all the time motioning the man to take Donahue and fly for liberty!" "It's a good thing we're married to each other," roared Jimmie. "It'd be a pity to spoil two houses with us." Augusta got up suddenly. She had made a discovery. "Do you know," she inquired indignantly, "why that man went away from the fire so suddenly like that. He went away some place to laugh at us!" "He's laughing yet," said Wardwell, and he went off into another roar. "But, we'll be game, dear. We won't run away. We'll stay right here till John McQuade comes back and has his laugh out." Augusta went out of the wagon and Jimmie began to dress. With one shoe on and the other in his hand he thought of something. He pulled the curtain of the wagon door about him and called Augusta in a bated whisper. "For heavens' sake," he appealed, "don't let Donahue hear of this! I never could face him." VII Jimmie was coming down through the woods in triumph. All day he had tramped and hunted over the crests of the hills and he was returning with the spoil. His rifle was slung with just a little angle of careless swagger across the crook of his arm and from the same arm hung two pairs of fat partridges. He knew a great deal more now about partridges than he had known that night, weeks ago, when two of them had given him such a start. He knew, in fact, a great deal more about many things than he had known that night. And he was a vastly different man. He was still thin, but it was not the pale thinness of before. He was lean and brown, his frame was filling slowly but evenly, and his one care was the procuring of food. For he had the perpetual hunger of the gaunt young animal whose growing cells are ever demanding more and more building materials. His step had none of the nervous hurry of those who tread city streets. In his rough tramping boots he swung down through brush and over rocks with a long, sure, loping stride which showed that he had forgotten that he had such things as nerves, and though he was physically tired his face shone with the zest of a boy in the game and of the hunter hurrying to his mate with the kill.