Almost immediately Steve's face grew less blank at that bland question, and although his eyes failed to shift from the invisible point beyond Joe at which he was staring, his lips did curl a little. He had long before learned to play up, solemnly, to those unprefaced and disingenuous leads. "Ornithologist?" he inquired soberly. "Ornithologist--if that is what you mean." Joe nodded briskly. "That's it!" he exclaimed. "I knew it was ornery something-or-other, and--and that makes it fit the case all the prettier, now don't it? Because in the last half-hour or so, since I left you here to tend to the cookin', I've been studying the birds somewhat myself. And having been a little successful, so to speak, I'm ornerier'n even before I commenced." He stopped to swallow half the steaming coffee in his cup, and if when he began again his voice had hardened perceptibly, it was nevertheless still elaborately guileless. "Steve," he said, "have _you_ ever stopped to consider real close and earnest any of the peculiarities of our feathered friends? Say--well, say owls, for instance?" Then Steve ceased to smile. He thought a moment, but his reply remained tuned to the other's artless key. "Why, yes," he drawled. "Yes, and no. As for the latter, however, I will admit that I have always believed their reputation for--er--wisdom to be a greatly overestimated thing." Widely Fat Joe grinned his pleasure. His chief's eyes were no longer vague nor blank. "Which just bears out my own personal research in the field," he stated. "Not that I'm saying I've been real thorough in the matter, because I ain't had the time. But what I've done I accomplished because I just naturally dote on that kind of thing." His eye flitted carelessly toward a window. "I happened to run into Harrigan, too, this morning," he murmured. As disinterestedly as had Joe, Steve now drained his coffee cup and waited. "He was down to the cook shanty," Fat Joe rambled on. "It's an hour since he'd ought to have been out there with the powder squad in the north cut, and when I asks him if he was feelin' indisposed this morning he says no, but the supply teams was going out and one of the drivers had told him that I was sending him along to help with the loadin'. He had such a nice, frank, open-faced way of lying that I couldn't bring myself to correct him. I just let it stand that way and told him such was the arrangement." Joe saw swift satisfaction play across Steve's face. "And--and then, after that, him and me--why, we just drifted off into a real interestin' and scientific discussion about them birds I been mentionin' to you. We--somehow we got to discoursing about owls.