Beyond
that, and her name, she had offered no enlightenment.
In the brief space that he had been with her he had mentally tabulated her
age as twenty-eight--no older. Her beauty alone, the purity of her eyes,
the freshness of her lips, and the slender girlishness of her figure, might
have made him say twenty, but with those things he had found the maturer
poise of the woman. It had been a flashlight picture, but one that he was
sure of.
Several times during the next hour he turned to his work, and at last gave
up his efforts entirely. From a peg in the wall he took down a little
rifle. He had found it convenient to do much of his own cooking, and he had
broken a few laws. The partridges were out of season, but temptingly fat
and tender. With a brace of young broilers in mind for supper, he left the
cabin and followed the narrow foot-trail up the river. He hunted for half
an hour before he stirred a covey of birds. Two of these he shot.
Concealing his meat and his gun near the trail he continued toward the ford
half a mile farther up, wondering if Stevens, who was due to cross that
day, had got his outfit over.
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