Five years.

And I've been hungerin' to see you all that-- .-- Where have you been ?--Everywhere! but this is the best thing I've seen .-- Come in .-- Wait till we get these packs off the poor little devils .-- Oh, I'm so glad to see you; so glad!--Hurry up, Lee.

Your fingers asleep ?--How long have you been out ?--Five months .-- Then you're hungry .-- We've just ate .-- But a piece of pie ?--pie?
I've been dreamin' of pie!" A fire already burned in the big living-room of the cabin, for at this season, at such an altitude, the shadows were always cold, and around the fire they gathered, each of the men with half a huge pie before him.
They were such as one might expect that mountain region to produce, big, gaunt, hard-muscled.

They had gone unshaven for so long that their faces were clothed not with an unsightly stubble but with strong, short beard that gave them a certain grim dignity and made their eyes seem sunken.
They were opposite types, which is usually the case when two men strike out together.

Buck Daniels was black-haired, with an ugly, shrewd face and a suggestion of rather dangerous possibilities of swift action; but Lee Haines was a great bulk of a man, with tawny beard, handsome, in a leonine fashion, more poised than Daniels, fitted to crush.