They're smaller and they ain't so fighty." It was on the tip of Jack's tongue to observe that a man might hide out here for months and months and never be seen, much less caught; but he checked himself, and remarked only that he would certainly have to get a gun.

He would like, he declared, to take home some good heads, and maybe a bear skin or two.

He forced himself to speak of home in the careless tone of one who has nothing to hide, but the words left an ache in his throat and a dull heaviness in his chest.
Hank Brown went on talking and saw nothing wrong with his mood.
Indeed, he never saw anything wrong with a man who would listen to Hank's hunting and fishing stories and not bore him with stories of his own prowess.

Wherefore, Jack was left alone in peace to fight the sudden, nauseating wave of homesickness, and in a little while found himself listening to the steady monotone of Hank Brown's voice.
So, they came to a tiny, sunken meadow, one side of which was fenced with poles, rimmed round with hills set thick with heavy timber.

On the farther side of the meadow, almost hidden from sight, was a square log cabin, solid, gloomily shaded and staring empty-eyed at a tiny, clear stream where the horses scared an eight-inch trout out of a pool when they lowered eager noses to drink thirstily.
After that they climbed up into a more open country, clothed with interlaced manzanita bushes and buck brush and thickets of young balsam fir.