"Sergeant can have the bunk—I reckon he's asleep right now, ain't he? An' you can spread your kit behind the counter. I'm goin' to sleep in the extension."
He nodded and went out, and Dick heard his heavy tread round the shack-corner, among the refuse of spent bottles and tins. It ceased with the slamming of a door somewhere, and Dick crossed the floor to Tempest.
"I'm sleeping behind the counter," he said. "Randal left the bunk for you."
Tempest's eyelids flickered open, but the grey lines round the mouth did not relax.
"Thanks," he said.
Dick hesitated an instant. Then he turned sharp on his heel; walked to his corner, pulled the blankets over him and lay still. But he did not sleep. So much had come and gone since first he and Tempest had answered to the wild winds calling and had swung out with bold forehead against the blast and a careless whistle up the dark fir trail. So much had gone. Dick watched with wide eyes where, beyond the open door, the light from the tepee died down and out. The night was very still. Stars rode in sight above the pointing pines. The slow talk of the river grew louder. Somewhere one stick cracked as a small night animal sprang to its kill. And either side the shack two men lay motionless, with senses taut with the contact of each to each; knowing the pull and the resistance in each quivering nerve, and fighting it sternly.
And to each man the Voices of the Dark were speaking, and each man was interpreting as loneliness had taught him to do. For those voices can never be understood of the men who walk with the firm shoulder of a friend beside them, or the warm cheek of a woman laid to their own. They sing a battle-song—but it is for the lonely man. They flash light down the long trail, where one pair of feet shall tread. With the deep lancet-plunge of reality they innoculate in man the inevitable lesson—the need for facing life's fires with shut lips and ready hands and Death's grey waters with a jest.
Dick stirred in his bankets with a bitten-off groan. The nightwind was blowing on his face, bringing the smell of
