"Can't we eat together ?" "You can call yourself lucky if you eat at all," Joe retorted glumly.
"The old man's pretty sore at the way you handled him.

He's runnin' this camp; I ain't." Casey let it go at that, chiefly because he was hungry and tired and did not want to risk losing his supper altogether.

Hounds like these, he told himself bitterly, were capable of any crime--from smashing a man's skull and throwing him off the rim-rock to starving him to death.
He was Casey Ryan, ready always to fight whether his chance of winning was even or merely microscopical; but even so, Casey was not inclined toward suicide.
When the old man presently returned and the three sat down to the table, Casey obeyed a gesture and sat down with them.

In spite of Joe's six-shooter laid handily upon the table beside his plate, Casey ate heartily, though the food was neither well cooked nor over plentiful.
After supper he rose and filled his pipe which they had permitted him to keep.

A stranger coming into the cabin might not have guessed that Casey was a prisoner.