"Keep an eye on them," was Daylight's answer.
And this was their sole conversation throughout the meal. Once,
with a muttered imprecation, Kama leaped away, a stick of
firewood in hand, and clubbed apart a tangle of fighting dogs.
Daylight, between mouthfuls, fed chunks of ice into the tin pot,
where it thawed into water. The meal finished, Kama replenished
the fire, cut more wood for the morning, and returned to the
spruce bough bed and his harness-mending. Daylight cut up
generous chunks of bacon and dropped them in the pot of bubbling
beans. The moccasins of both men were wet, and this in spite of
the intense cold; so when there was no further need for them to
leave the oasis of spruce boughs, they took off their moccasins
and hung them on short sticks to dry before the fire, turning
them about from time to time. When the beans were finally
cooked, Daylight ran part of them into a bag of flour-sacking a
foot and a half long and three inches in diameter. This he then
laid on the snow to freeze. The remainder of the beans were left
in the pot for breakfast.
It was past nine o'clock, and they were ready for bed. The
squabbling and bickering among the dogs had long since died down,
and the weary animals were curled in the snow, each with his feet
and nose bunched together and covered by his wolf's brush of a
tail.
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