She faltered for a moment, and Dick, staring through the darkness at her, could not decide whether it was because the woman in her was melting after the storm of anger, or whether she was merely weighing his partner's words. As abruptly as had been any of her actions in all the time they had known her, she turned and walked away from them, her soft "Good-night" wafting itself back with a note of profound sadness and misery. "I've decided what she is," Bill said, as they paused for a last look at the lights of the camp. "She's all woman, and a mighty good one, at that!" CHAPTER VIII THE INCONSISTENT BULLY "Them beans," declared the fat cook, plaintively, "looks as if they had been put through some sort of shrivelin' process. The dried prunes are sure dry all right! Must have been put up about the time they dried them mummy things back in Egypt. Apuricots? Humph! I soaked some of 'em all day and to-night took one over to the shop and cut it open with a chisel to see if it was real leather, or only imitation. The canned salmon, and the canned tripe is all swells so that the cans is round instead of flat on the ends. I reckon you'd better go down and see that storekeeper. I dassen't! If I did I'd probably lose my temper and wallop him. If somebody don't go, the men here'll be makin' a mistake, blamin' it on me, and I can't exactly see how they could keep from hangin' me, if they want to do justice." He had stood in the doorway of the office to voice his complaint, and now, without further words walked away toward his own particular section of the little camp village. "So that's the way that trader down there filled the order, is it?" Dick said, frowning at his companion. The latter merely grunted and then offered a solution. "Probably," he said, "that stuff was sent up here without bein' opened, just as he got it. If that's so it ain't his fault. About half the rows in life come from takin' things for granted. The other half because we know too well how things did happen." He stood up and stretched his arms. "What do you say we go down and hear what the trader has to say? If he's square he'll make good. If he ain't--we'll make him!" Taking it for granted that the younger man would accompany him, he was already slipping off his working shirt and peering around the corners of the room for his clean boots. Dick hesitated and had to be urged. He wondered then if it were not possible that something beside the errand to the trader's caused Bill's eagerness; but wisely kept the idea to himself.